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Instinct 2/2X Solar is Not Always Solar Charging When It Should Be

Vlad B
over 1 year ago

Hello, my Instinct 2X doesn't charge by sunlight or charges max 1% per day even though I get strong exposure to the sun. Is this normal?

I bought the watch because of all the hype they created around the idea of unlimited power. Ok I get that the watch still needs to be charged by cable from time to time. But barely getting 1% for a full day of exposure makes the solar charge function useless. Garmin marketed this watch as twice more capable of extracting power from sunlight but it doesn't seem to work.

I'm attaching a photo of today's solar exposure, i left it on the balcony in direct sunlight, no shadows, it was on power saving mode all the time.

I did many similar trials and never got more than 1% charge. I also wore it during August at a festival where i would get max sunlight exposure daily. Still no more than 1% charge per day.

.

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to Garmin - Chris

    Same here with my instinct 2 Solar, cannot solar charge after using USB to charge until reboot.

    Now, June 13, and still find no way to solve

  • 0 8 months ago

    +1

    I have instinct 2 solar OS 15.08 and after usb charge from PC or 220V adapter my watch dont charge from sun

    In my case soft reset dont help me

    Solar change begin working only after full reset with delete all data :(

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to 7337725

     did update16.10 solve this problem?

  • 0 7 months ago in reply to 7337725

    After the charge level drops below 80 percent charge from sun starts working 

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to 7337725

    Hi,

    I have bought Instinct 2 solar recently to replace my fenix 6 pro. Excellent battery life and potential unlimited battery they said. I was excited.

    Now, two days ago I did charge the watch for the first time with the cable to 100%. Later that day I checked the solar intensity applet when the watch was exposed to the sun and I saw that the Charging icon was switching between showing the intensity and showing the disabled charging icon. Intensity graph shows some lines.

    Not sure what all that means, does it mean it charges intermittently or does it mean its not charging at all but its just switching the display between icons to show both intensity as well as that its not charging?

    Doing some experiments with exposing the watch to light shows that the icon keeps switching between intensity and no-charging but the rate of that switching seems to depend on the light intensity. With more light it will stay on the not-charging icon more time, eventually switching back to charging and back to not-charging again.

    Its almost as they do PWM(Pulse width modulation) of the charge at a very slow frequency :D.

    I am still above 80%, will see what happens below 80%.

    Cheers,

    Vlado

    PS: BTW I'm on Software 16.11