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Battery life of Fenix 6 Pro when using navigation / course feature in Ultra Race.

Silky Runs
over 3 years ago

I’m doing my first ultra (56km) soon and would like to use the navigation / course feature on Fenix 6 Pro for the event, but nervous its battery will run out before I finish and leave me stranded and worse still not record my run! I've done 25 mile runs using it and it's been ok, but this will be a much longer run. Looking at elevation I could be out there for 7/8hrs. I know the length of time that Garmin quotes, but has anyone got any real-life experience? From what I’ve read ultratrac is very unreliable GPS so can’t be used for a race and reliable GPS navigation. Am I better to use Connect Explore on phone and just track run on watch? Thanks very much,

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  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Yep I've done 50 milers with a 6Pro and navigation - no issues there

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Ɛpsilon

    What I do to really eke out my power is use a custom power profile for ultra that disables the phone connection. I only lose live track and it helps enormously. I have done 14 hour plus events with a 6pro. I do have a 6x now but still do the power profile. I use full navigation and a CIQ field called next stop to track checkpoints

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Not an ultra runner, but I routinely use my F6 Pro for 8-9 hour bike rides without even thinking about battery life. Even 18 hour rides have used only 44% of battery (admittedly with some more conservative settings).

    Definitely worth using Power Manager and creating a custom power profile for your ultra races. This allows you to turn unecessary (for that event) features off - turning off the phone connection and music are obvious ones, backlight to After Sunset, you can even create a timeout for the display itself.

    One thing to be aware of when navigating longer events like that - constantly re-rendering the map screen as you move along is processor and battery intensive. Leave it on a data screen most of the time, and just scroll to the map screen whenever you need to do a navigation check (eg. at a trail junction).

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Fenix 6 Pro. 13hr 100km ultra trail run with standard GPS (GPS only), smart record, course navigation, HR measurement enabled, phone connected, about 55% of battery used.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to mcalista
    mcalista said:
    One thing to be aware of when navigating longer events like that - constantly re-rendering the map screen as you move along is processor and battery intensive. Leave it on a data screen most of the time, and just scroll to the map screen whenever you need to do a navigation check (eg. at a trail junction).

    What helps here is changing the map display from track up to north up. Then the redrawing is minimal as rather than redrawing the whole screen as you turn around it just redraws the arrow representing you and your direction of travel. Using this I can keep mine on maps for longer periods if the paths a little uncertain.