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Fenix 6x pro solar batter life test

Lexis
over 2 years ago

Hi All,

I've read some posts here and on reddit, trying to find like-cases but am coming up short. I've just concluded testing the battery life of my brand new fenix 6x pro solar and am rather disappointed. Before I take it to garmin, I tried to see if I can find tests suggesting what sort of % impact certain features have on the battery life.

My settings are 100% stock out of the box, including the watch face, and I only remember making the following changes:

- PulseOx measurements are set to measure only at night

- Bluetooth always on and connected

My battery test results are as follows:

- almost exactly 10 days of smartwatch mode battery life

- no gps activities

- no solar exposure


From my understanding, I got less than half the battery life advertised for non-solar exposure. I've been unable to determine to what extent the nighttime pulse ox impacts the  battery.
Can anyone provide some insightful input or commentary please? Do I perhaps have a dud 6x?

  • 0 over 2 years ago
    Lexis said:
    almost exactly 10 days of smartwatch mode battery life
    Lexis said:
    PulseOx measurements are set to measure only at night

    PulseOx is not included in smartwatch mode. Disable PulseOx. What value is your backlight set to?

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to bluefish

    I've just finished charging to 100% again. I'll turn pulseox off for testing, thank you for advising.
    The backlight is set to only come on with the button, and I seldom use the light/watch at all.
    I had brightness at 20% as well.

    I'll redo the test - the battery already anticipates 22 days after turning the pulseox off entirely, battery saver during sleep hours (7 hours daily) and backlight at 10%.
    Despite this, only time will tell. Before the test, my batter anticipated 15days, but would always drop 2 days every day.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Lexis

    You can also turn wifi off, if you are not using it

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to darnich

    Since Wifi only consumes power when you're actively using it, disabling it doesn't do much.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to bluefish

    I know but with all the battery drain issues it is better to be on the safe side. In my case I also disable the external hr sensor just to make sure it won't be searching for it when it is not used

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    Thanks for the extra suggestions everyone - worth knowing about! I came from a vivoactive 3 that didn't have quite as many intricacies.

    I actually never had wifi on the first test around, but did activate it after charging this morning. It hasn't seemed to affect the anticipated battery life (significantly).

    I've also read that the notifications also drain the battery substantially. I haven't yet found the place to disable specific app's notifications, but I did turn off the backlight for notifications during daytime. At best this should help not reduce the anticipated battery life much more!

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Lexis

    Go in Connect app settings, notifications, app notifications and then select which ones you want

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to darnich

    Thanks Darnich. I see I had that set since the previous watch, so nothing to change there. It would be convenient if I could turn off promotional notifications (like ubereats) and keep important notifications on (like uber eats delivery).

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    Just an update - PulseOx seems to have made a significant impact by far. I've logged a 90 minute gps ride with about 15 minutes map use, and a 15 minute non-gps activity, and the batter has drained 15% in total.
    I'll continue tracking this charge's performance (claimed 19 days left), but seems like there was nothing wrong with the watch after all (thankfully) and it was just PulseOx that is immensely heavy on the battery!

    Haven't been able to figure out why the watch goes into power save mode during 11am-6pm, when the settings are confirmed as 24-hour mode and "power mode during sleep hours", with the do-not-disturb function working correctly during 11pm-6amUpside down My battery-life test isn't going to include power mode efficiency for this reason

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Lexis

    Thought I'd share the performance after my recent test. I charged the watch to 100% at least 23 days ago (threw away the paper that had the date and time) and logged some activities, about 2 hours of GPS use and 1 hour non-GPS use, and the watch was on 8% (2 days left predicted) before I charged it now. During this time there has been a marginal amount of solar, probably less than 5%, so the watch is performing as it should, its just the PulseOx was murdering the battery. Would be great if one could set PulseOx to activate for 10 minutes every 8 hours or so instead, but alas, I don't believe that is possible.