I'm only 2 weeks into ownership, but I've been playing a bit with different watch faces (both stock and connect iq) to weigh the cost/benefit of using different faces. I'm hoping to share my currently limited findings here and hoping others can share their own info.
Background
it seems universally in the reviews (eg, DCRainmaker, DesFit), with AOD, they seem to be getting 7 days of battery life even with an hour of GPS activity each day. I found that very interesting, but then realized that the specs Garmin provides gives some insights:
7 days (up to) for AOD
16 days for Gesture based.
if one uses a Sleep Focus which disables AOD for 8 hours (like I do from 10pm-6am), the above stats translates exactly into 10 days of battery life (2/3*7 + 1/3*16 = 10 days). ie, 10%/day for smart watch use. so with 3-4%/day of GPS/activity usage, the endurance of the watch is roughly a week.
in my own experience, SatiQ seems to be using 3.5%/hour or so, so for my 6 hours of running, that adds up to 21% for a week, and with 3 hours of indoor strength training eating up maybe 3% more, I too get over a week of battery endurance. however, because I dont' like running my battery down to single digits (I like sticking about 20%), I am left with a 6 day charge cycle.
my specific settings: 1/3 brightness, AOD for 16 hours + battery saver (with OH enabled) for 8 hours each day; no wifi, PulseOx on demand, screen dims after 4 seconds. BT on with notifications silenced by counted up and read on the watch regularly.
The data
BigEasy / BigEasyIQ : this watch face, using AOD and showing all things on the screen (tons of metrics) uses just under 10%/day (day and sleeping); the developer noted that in his experience, showing only the time in "lower powered mode" doesn't save much energy/battery
Stock Faces (I have less data but these numbers are pretty accurate):
Deep Sea without any 1 hz data (shown body battery, battery, and date): seems to use 9%/day
Portal with 1hz seconds and HR: uses close to 15%/day (limited data but very power hungry compared with Deep Sea)
what is everyone else seeing? or am I the only detail oriented, battery anxious guy out there?
