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How good is the solar?

Josh
over 3 years ago

I bought an i2 solar several weeks ago before my trip to iceland. The guy at REI explained the differences between the fenix 7 and i2 and I just liked the look of the i2 better, didn't really need all the touch stuff. (I came from an apple watch 7 and was trying to tech-down some)

I turned off my pulse-ox all day, have battery saver on at sleep hours, and I get about 8 or 9 days out of it. I used GPS for a good bit of the trip at iceland hiking around, tracking activities etc. 

I purposely held my hand towards the sun driving around for hours and the solar intensity chart definitiely was filling up, but i didn't notice the percentage going up at all after, lets say, a 2 hour drive with the watch in direct sun.

So my questions are:

1) The solar intensity chart, what does that really even tell you in the real world? The watch saw sun? Why is there no "6% battery gained" or anything?

2) If I let the watch sit in the sun for the 50k+ lux for 3 hours, what does that do for me exactly? Charge it up x percentage? I've put the watch in the direct sunlight where I live (it's hot here) and let it sit for a hour 30-45 minutes to see what it would do. I am sure its well over 100k lux, but when I brought it back in, didn't see anything change with battery percentage.

Just trying to determine the real life use case of it since I see a lot of threads complaining about battery life here, just wasn't sure if I am doing something wrong or understanding something wrong. Yes I know you can shut down features in power modes etc too.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    In real life you will rarely - if ever - see battery increase due to solar charge, because the watch, even in low power mode, draws more power than the solar panel can provide. What solar will do for you, though, is slow down battery discharge, which practically means you will get some extra hours of operation.

  • 0 over 3 years ago
    It's very familiar, I have similar settings and if I don't use GPS, I have, for example, 50% battery in the morning and 55-60% in the evening, which I think is great. I was in the Alps for 4 days, I climbed the mountains, GPS was on for about 10 hours a day and I still reached 41%. So great. There are IQ apps where you can track the increments more easily than counting down. Full sun is not necessary, you can see it in the chart. If I used little GPS, the watch lasted over 1 month.
  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I was doing some stuff on the roof and after about 3-4h being on the roof in direct sunlight, my watch change jumped 2% up I think, but after going inside, after few mins it jumped 1% back, so probably something like 1%-1.5%. It prolongs battery, but its not something like we wont need to charge it for a long time :D

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Dominik

    It works really well for me. A little sun is enough, it doesn't have to be clear, and if I'm 3 hours or more, my battery increases and I have more in the evening than in the morning. So maximum satisfaction. IS Solar was already very usable, there I got +5-7% for the whole day, but with IS2 that is double, which is really enough.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 2394279

    Is this reflective in the water face battery indicator?

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    When I walk in the morning to the office I sometimes see an increment, but as the display is only +/- 1% it not very accurate. Once I was a whole day on the motorbike in mostly sunny weather and I gained multiple % of charge during that time.

    I've create a small widget that might help you to find out how much battery you have gained by solar: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/572b8232-7fb6-4e4f-a938-2395d0df3c7c

    It shows the battery gain/loss with two decimals over a certain period and also a battery graph

    With that I often would see something like 15min: +0.13% when walking to the office

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to tmk2

    This is simply not true on the IS2.  On the IS1 yes, not here. I do 50k bike rides several times a week and in between I'm on a lbeach in the sun without tracking and the percentage goes up.  When I'm out and about in sunlight, the percentage goes up.  There are prerequisites involved, like making sure the watch is exposed to sun at or near 90 degrees.  I also noticed that the IS2 is much more forgiving regarding the angle compared to the IS1.

    Pocketnavigation estimated in their tests that the solar panel on the IS1 would max at approximately 0.7%/hr which I also guesstimated.  I'm at much more than that with the IS2 and it is definitely providing surplus power, as advertised.  

    Of course, it's also based on the intensity of the sunlight and I'm not in a particularly bright part of the world and we don't have clear skies very often.  

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to NoTrux

    Actually Pocketnavigation (Test Garmin Instinct Solar › pocketnavigation.de | Navigation | GPS | Blitzer | POIs) said 0.6-0.7% at 400 Watt/m2 (similar to 50K and matches Garmin specs), but charge can more than double (at max 2%) under ideal conditions with much higher light intensity (but display doesn't show that extra range).

    The numbers on paper which all can more than double in ideal conditions (but probably not for a long time):

    • Instinct 1 solar : 0.7% at 50k
    • Instinct 2 solar: 1.3% at 50k
    • Instinct 2S solar: 1.0% at 50k

    The battery estimate isn't super precise over just few hours / % so I can see you wouldn't see right away a change. In addition in smart watch mode it also consumes so net the diff is not big.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Luc

    I don't see how that's a correction or anything.