Battery flaw in Fenix 7X Pro?

What was the outcome for those who have tried to switch back to the F7x non pro, some useful data to compare?

Is there someone that actually left his watch in a drawer to 'measure' the battery draining? Not talking about an estimate, like 'if it drains x% in 1 day  then it will last xtime', since it could be a wrong calculation done by the software, but actually counting days/hours before it turns off by itself.

Genuinely curious about this.

For reference, my 7x Pro fully charged last me about 21 days (it says 29 days @100%)

Brightness fixed at 30%, gesture On only for activity after sunset, I do at least 4-5 hours GPS activity runs every week, so it makes 12 to 15hours of GPS (AUTO) every 3 weeks. In this last tree weeks especially I've done also 8 -12 ECG and some oxygen measurements. Often I use the red flashlight at night after I go to bed if I need light to go the bathroom or find something. I'm tracking everything except for oxygen at night. I do not use wi-fi, since it's very slow to move data and I prefer the cable.

 > What was the outcome for those who have tried to switch back to the F7x non pro, some useful data to compare?

The result is the Fenix 7X (non-pro) looses around 2-3% less each day, but nothing very formal in testing, that's why battery saver, in a drawer is probably the best way to measure.

> Is there someone that actually left his watch in a drawer to 'measure' the battery draining? Not talking about an estimate, like 'if it drains x% in 1 day  then it will last xtime', since it could be a wrong calculation done by the software, but actually counting days/hours before it turns off by itself.

The one thread I linked to in my OP has someone who took pictures of this exact thing. It's based on percentage, not estimated days. But they didn't run it to empty, just based on percentage left.

Do you think it's possible for the percent left to be wrong consistently and we can run it negative? We did try running some of them to empty as per the battery calibration doc, but that was by keeping a GPS activity and light on, not normal usage.

> For reference, my 7x Pro fully charged last me about 21 days (it says 29 days @100%)

That's not bad. It's good to see someone else getting some decent results. Do you have a lot of sunlight during your GPS activities?

Also keep in mind that the battery life estimates for the watche models with solar energy harvesting also anticipate a certain level of sun exposure.

I have a Tactix 7 Pro Ballistics Edition and get 21 or 22 days of battery life out of a full charge. I don't try to conserve battery use although I have Pulse Ox off, it's not useful to me and would drastically reduce battery life. I record two or three outdoor activities (about two hours) with location data every day (using Auto Select satellite selection). Some of those happen before sunrise or when the watch is likely covered by clothing, so the watch doesn't get sun exposure every time.

I can't complain about charging the watch once every three weeks. I have considered getting an OLED model, but battery life is more important to me than a pretty watch face.

Steve said:

The one thread I linked to in my OP has someone who took pictures of this exact thing. It's based on percentage, not estimated days. But they didn't run it to empty, just based on percentage left.

That's the guy with 40% brightness and 30 notification a day. If he has 30sec timer on notification (as default) it means that his display stays ON like 15minute a day doing nothing, at that brightness... and that excluding everything else.

That test in the drawer also was done on an quite old firmware, and he did not check when actually the watches were at zero %. Maybe the battery measurement was off for some reason, and did not scale in a linear fashion at 100% but eventually it would catch up. So it is basically a useless test.

Not here to deny that some watches could be defective, but assuming that this series has battery problems without considering all the variables is quite a jump.

It reminds me a lot when people don't actually realize how they use their phone, but they be like 'this battery doesn't last!'. But then you see them leaving the phone unlocked on a table with display turned on for minutes, like 50 times a day.

Also, I checked CIQ and there are some third parties app with battery graph, I guess it could be useful to try.

Steve said:

How long have you had your watch for and did you follow the battery calibration steps here: https://forums.garmin.com/apps-software/mobile-apps-web/f/garmin-connect-web/355158/troubleshooting-guide-for-high-battery-drain

“The battery gauge is decalibrated. Fully charge the watch and leave it plugged in for an hour more, after it shows 100%. Then disconnect, sync, and perform the soft-reset (hold the Light button for up to 30s till the watch shuts down, keep holding the button through the emergency notification if any comes). No worry - no data, and no settings get lost, at the soft-reset (unlike at the master reset to factory defaults)! When powered down, wait 10s, and restart. Use the watch until it fully discharges and shuts down. This process should recalibrate the battery gauge.”

My experience is that  it is  fully true, and sync is important otherwise some unsynchronised data like sleep data are lost.

Or maybe there is some exception, but I am not fully sure: Time to recovery data is lost it resets to ZERO hours even after a sync. At least it was the case when I did the long push shutdown last time.

I did and promote an even more aggressive battery gauge recalibration with my Enduro earlier, I let it down to zero % and switched on as many times as it could boot properly. So 100% first, some extra hours of charging, soft reset, discharging with 100% backlight on, down to zero %, keep on  squeezing with backlight on, durin* the squeezing some soft reset, when it was stonedead then charging to  100% again, extra hours of charging again. It may have been an overkill, but the proposed method from the other thread did not cure the consumption of my Enduro. Fun fact: my Enduro even showed minus 1 percent battery level.