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My Fenix 8 Experience

kstate1980
5 months ago

I have the Fenix 8 51 MM Solar and to date I have experienced zero issues with the device. My current battery life in Smartwatch Mode is between 28 and 30 days depending on how much I play around with the settings. When I first got the watch, the battery drained about 2% very quickly and then settled in to between 3% and 4% per day. I use GPS only mode which connects very quickly and there is no excess battery drain. Some of the things I did which might help other are as follows:

  1. Prior to getting the watch, I looked at my phone and realized I have numerous notifications everyday that I never look at. Since every notification transferred to the watch causes the watch to generate a notification which uses power, I went through my settings and removed notification for all apps except for what I deemed important (phone, texts, home automation etc).
  2. When I got the watch, I plugged it in and let it charge for 2 hours as recommended (when the watch started, I turned it off)
  3. Once the watch, I connected it to Garmin Express for the initial setup and updates (I turned off auto update as I want to control when updates happen and I suspect OTA updates cause issues).
  4. I then connected my watch to Garmin Connect Mobile and completed the setup process
    1. Since I have MIPS display, most of the time I can read the watch and in those instances where I can't, I just have to touch the display to turn on the backlight. So, I turned gestures off to  eliminate the display coming on when it wasn't necessary. I did change the watch face to get as close to white on black so it would be easy to read in lower light.
    2. Display brightness is set o20% which is plenty bright
    3. PulseOX is off
    4. I use the Sleep Focus at night and use the power saving watch face, I still record my HR to collect my nighttime metrics.
    5. Just like a kid in a candy store, I was constantly playing with it and checking the battery. I suspect when the new wears off, my battery life might improve slightly as I won't be turning it off and on all the time.

Admittedly, I have a plain vanilla setup which works well for me (I believe that this could be Garmin's Typical User definition).

I could be really wrong here but, I wonder if a lot of the problems other users are experiencing is a result of OS corruption, full memory or the OS is fragmented. Which leads me to believe that a factory reset and a fresh start would help, and by fresh start, I mean deleting the watch from Garmin Connect (mobile and web).

Of course, there could those who have hardware problems which need to be addressed.

  • 0 5 months ago

    The adventure starts that very moment when you buy a new Garmin outdoor device and it ends approximately at the time a generation of new models is out, which usually marks the moment when the previous-gen firmware becomes mature. So if beta-besting is a passion, buy ASAP. However, if you trust your health or life to a Garmin device, buy a previous model instead.

  • 0 5 months ago

    Man, having 28 - 30 days of battery life means you're not doing a lot of gps activities or using functions. I've been using my Fenix 8 for over a month and charge weekly. I don't seem to have really big problems atm. But it can't draw navigation routes on roads where Fenix 7 can without issues. It has such tiny issues. It still feels not baked fine enough. Also I have issues with phone assistant but it's deifinitely a problem with Google side, so I'm not accounting it.

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to sis651

    You’re I didn’t buy a sports watch to use it exclusively as a smart watch.

    To be clear, 28 to 30 days is based on the percentage battery drain when I’ve not done any activity. This is smart watch mode which Garmin advertises to be 30 days.

    On days with GPS activity my percentage battery drain is an additional 1% per hour of GPS activity which is inline with Garmin’s stated 95 hour battery life while using GPS

    The bottom line is that my battery life falls within Garmin’s advertised parameters.

  • 0 5 months ago

    I also have fenix 8 solar 51mm since 1.11.2024,i have not any problems with watch. I did 6 running per week / every One is about 1 hour with music/airbuds and hrm cheststrap connected. Charge my watch every 10-11 days. Before that i have fenix 6x pro sapphire(used for 5 years) , with same conditions baterry is drained for 6-7 days. Here i readed people have a lot of problems with fenix 8, but mine is work verry well till now(fw 12.35)

  • 0 5 months ago

    Coming from MIPs Tactix C and Tactix D Sol, my only complaint about the F8 51 AMOLED is the display dimming, which makes it very difficult to read at a glance in any dark environment, whether outdoors or indoors. 

  • 0 4 months ago

    Quick update. Tomorrow will be 21 days since my last charge. In that time, I have done 15 activities (Outdoor Cycle, Outdoor Walk, Indoor Walk, Indoor Row and Indoor Cycle) with between 5 and 6 hours of GPS time. My battery stands at 15% which when projected out, will give me around 25 days on this charge. I'm also using a Garmin Pro + HRM.