Fenix 7s: at least battery is good when not using GPS

Can't tell if this post is raving about the battery life in smartwatch mode, or complaining about the battery life when using GPS. Maybe both? But if your battery life is really bad when using GPS, have you tried using some of the other available GPS settings? Such as using SatIQ instead of all-sytems+multiband (if your watch is Sapphire), or just All-systems (no multiband), or even GPS-only. There are some other tricks to extend the battery life in GPS mode as well, such as scrolling away from the map screen while you're not using it, as the constant map refresh/redrawing draws a lot of power. And of course, if you're using the watch for music, that'll pretty much double the battery drain rate as well.

on the extreme ends of the spectrum, if you're using all-systems+multiband plus music plus keeping the map open all the time, you'll be lucky to get 5 hours of battery out of a 7S. But if you use GPS-only, no music, and don't keep the map open, you should get at least 36 hours.

Sorry to hear about your accident, glad to hear you're on the road to recovery!

Both a bit. Garmin doesn't really say how long the battery last when only using the watch as a watch with health metrics. So the answer for the 7s is about 18 days. When doing a gps activity per day for about 30-60 minutes it's only 8 days. So that's actually quite interesting.

Oh yeah, and pulling garmin's legs for releasing firmwares that kill battery life (and lots of other things) regularly of course.

18 days seems a bit hard to believe.  Will be interesting to see if that's consistent.  Did you have notifications enabled ?

They do make this claim for the 7s ss ->

- Smartwatch: Up to 11 days/14 days with solar*

I believe smartwatch mode does not include spo2 and of course implies 0 GPS activities. 

No notifications. I don't have any need for it. So many notifications eat up a lot of battery life. I do walk a fair bit but don't enable GPS mode. There's just not point in it other than getting the x activities in a month badge or something like that.

I don't think Garmin actually tells us what smartwatch mode includes, and whether that's with battery saver at night. But if the latter is not included in those 11/14 days then of course the number of days would be higher. It's certainly interesting, yeah.

So to use my self as an example (I have the 7s ss);  I'm consistently getting 8-9 days, this is with maybe 3 or 4 - 45min mutli-band GPS workouts, battery saver at night, no sp02, no backlight ever (unless I press it of course).

I find what has the most impact is notifications and the vibration / screen change caused by that, sometimes I go into battery saver mode during the day and that helps, otherwise I get a ton of notifications (when I want them I want them so ... :) ...)

The other interesting factor I haven't experimented with is the watch-face, I have a default one, but it has the HR, which of course changes all the time.

It's not outside the realm of possibility - I get well over the 28 days specified by Garmin for the 7X when I go for lengthy periods of time without recording anything - my watch actually displays 32 days on a full charge with my settings, and I've gotten 35+ days out of it before with minimal sun exposure. I once got to 33 days, and my battery still showed 18% left.

and yes, I agree that I do need to start using my watch to record activities more ;)

Garmin tends to be pretty conservative with their battery estimates.

I find many on here state otherwise and/or complain about battery life

I think there are so many factors.

I'm very happy with the battery life and I'd say it's inline with what they advertise (not more or less) for the 7s ss.

But I do think GPS tracking has a huge impact i.e. you do 8 hours of multi-band GPS (they claim 15/16 hours), I suspect you'd like get 4/5 days total with the 7s only (more for the 7, 7x of course).