AMOLED Battery Life - Real Life Experience

Been searching around for some early info on how the Amoled model batteries stack up to specs, so really glad to stumble on this. Almost ready to pull the trigger on a 45mm Amoled to replace my 1st gen instinct. Would have gone with the solar model, but that orange bezel is a deal breaker.

Are you saying you have both aod AND gesture both turned off? Does that mean you have to manually hit a button to activate the screen? I can see myself realistically doing everything you are doing, but using the gesture feature. I’m usually running gps about an hour per day most days as well. If it can determine I’ll get a couple weeks out of a charge, I’m sold.

There are separate AoD and gesture options for General Use and During Activities, hence you can set it up as you find comfortable. I do not do any activities with this specific watch during the time I log the consumption. Normally, I do have the wrist gesture enabled  and AoD disabled (by default it is on) during activities. 

So, in general non-activity use you keep the screen off all the time except around 20 times per day and you turn it on by pressing a button. Correct?

Yes, except that the screen lights up also when notifications come in, or when the watch is not on my wrist and I move it.

How's the battery looking now after another week+?

OK, so you kind of got yourself a woop band without subscription. Not sure if this is the intended use for a watch, I certainly couldn't live with a workflow like yours. And it's not surprising that you manage to squeeze more out of it than what Garmin are stating. Did they even consider anyone would keep their screen off all the time, without enabled gestures? I guess yes, since they gave you an option - that said I believe that option should be used as an extreme battery saver. 

Indirectly your finding proves that without a screen you can have a tracker which would last for days on end. It would be nice if Garmin finally released a device without a screen, something that could be worn under a shirt, allowing us to not have to compromise and either not wear a mechanical watch or wear both and look like a dork.

I think that's what he's going for here.. testing how long the battery could realistically last in an "extreme" mode.  He mentions that he normally has gesture enabled and also isn't using it during activities right npw (implying he usually would).  Obviously if someone were intending to use it this way all the time, this isn't the device.  If nothing else, this is just another data point and I'm curious how it does.

Yeah, in this context it makes sense. But it's an extreme context, and making any reference to the official numbers published by Garmin is meaningless. It's more of a "how much can you squeeze out of it" situation. And since with MIP you can't turn the screen off the AMLOED has an advantage.

This watch is indeed set for a test in a minimalist mode, simulating the situation when one really needs to use it as long as possible, without the possibility to charge. I do not use it normally in this way, as I do not use any of my Garmin watches in purely smartwatch mode anyway. And probably nobody else is doing that normally either. Yet, the specifications claim the watch should hold 18 days in smartwatch mode, hence I wanted to see whether it can really hold that long. To my surprise, after 19 days, the watch is still at 65% of battery.

On my standard watch, I record several hours of activities every day, and that is with standard settings. Still the watch seems to discharge much slower than the specifications tell. Currently, I cannot run any serious test with it, because I need to connect it relatively frequently to my PC. Once the watch that I am using for the smartwatch mode test discharges completely, I will test it in real-life, including plenty of GPS and screen usage. However, at the moment it looks like it will take another ~40 days, till the watch dies.

BTW, this is how the data looks like, at the moment: