Time to fully charge

I am using the supplied cable and it is slow charging the Instinct Solar, it took over 2 hrs to charge from 25% to 60%, is this typical? 

Top Replies

All Replies

  • Weird, it's brand new out of the box and it took around 6 hrs to fully charge, not sure what's wrong. I see you are using a 3rd party USB cable from eBay, how long does it take you with the original cable?

  • I wouldn't label 6 hours as too long on a charge. I don't pay attention to the exact length of time my Instinct Solar takes to charge but if you want the best lithium-ion battery experience for the overall lifespan, slow and true is the way to go. Whether you are using your computer USB port or a wall adapter. It really comes down to - you can fast charge your battery but you have no way of knowing how that will impact the battery's lifetime down the road. There are enough studies now available that suggest it is a bad idea no matter what product the lithium-ion battery is within.

  • so what charger do you suggest to charge the watch? 1 amp?

  • so what charger do you suggest to charge the watch? 1 amp?

    The amperage of the charger is completely unimportant. With a 100 mA (0.1 ampere) charger, you could charge the battery (approx some 700 mWh) in a bit over an hour, if the full current of 100mA was used (500 mWh in an hour). Hence the 1 amp is far more than enough, especially when you see from the charging times, that the charging current is apparently limited just to a few tens of mA.

    What is important is a charger of good quality with perfectly stable and smooth tension, with no spikes or AC noise. The bigger it is and the bigger capacitors it has, the better. Small chargers use high frequencies and small capacitors, hence the stability may be worse, and the AC fraction/noise stronger (especially at cheap and/or old chargers).

    While at bigger devices such as phones, the tension instability or the AC fraction play no important role, since they can be filtered by the electronics of the device, at the extremely miniaturized electronics of the watch, there is no room for capacitors that could efficiently filter out the instabilities/spikes/noise, and they could be harmful not only for the battery, but also for the watch.

  • Our watches and their lithium-ion batteries will do their best charged at 5V/1A. Slow and true.

  • Our watches and their lithium-ion batteries will do their best charged at 5V/1A. Slow and true.

    With 5V/1A you could fully charge the watch in 9 minutes Slight smile Far less is sufficient. Even the standard 0.5 amps of an USB 2.0 port is much more than needed.

  • I ALSO HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WITH MINE WHICH I SENT TO GARMIN FOR SUPPORT AND THEY REPLACED IT WITH A NEW ONE. THE THING IS THAT THE NEW WATCH ALSO HAS THE SAME PROBLEM AND NEEDS EVEN 7 HRS TO FULLY CHARGE. SINCE I DID NOT WANT TO BUY A 30 DOLLAR CABLE I FOUND ONE AT 7 EYROS SINCE I LIVE IN GREECE. IT NOW WORKS PERFECTLY AND THE  WATCH ONLY TAKES ABOUT 2 HRS TO FULLY CHARGE. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND TRYING A NEW CABLE BEFORE MAKING ANY OTHER MOVE. THAT IS WHAT ACTUALLY SOLVED THE PROBLEM FOR ME AS WELL AS A LOT OTHERS

    HERE IS A LINK TO THE CABLE I BOUGHT:   https://www.skroutz.gr/s/15849804/Charging-Cable-for-Garmin-Fenix-5.html

    BTW FOR ENYONE WHO DOESN T KNOW GARMIN USES THE SAME CABLE FOR MOST OF THE WATCHES SO DONT BE SCARED BY THE FACT THAT IT SAYS FOR FENIX5

    *THE PRICE DROPPED EVEN MORE NOW AT 5 EYROS

    THE FACT THAT I GOT TWO WATCHES WITH THE EXCACT SAME FAULT LEADS ME TO BELIEVE THAT THE CABLE IS SURE THE THING THAT CAUSES THEM. A LOT OF COMPLAINTS HAVE BEEN MADE ABOUT THIS TYPE OF CABLE. AT LEAST NOWDAYS THERE ARE MORE AFTERMARKET ONES TO AVOID SPENDING 30 ON A NEW ONE(EVEN SINCE THE WATCH IS UNDER WARRANTY).

  • Same here. Garmin sent me a replacement cable which was just as slow as the originally supplied cable. I got a third party charging dock and the charging is so much faster. 

  • I am experiencing the same with my new from the box Instinct. I’m using the supplied Garmin charging cord and it has gone from 22% charged to 80% charged in about 5 hours. This seems really slow compared to prior Garmin devices I’ve owned.  Is the consensus that something is defective with the charging cord or my Instinct?  It seems people are fixing by going to a knock off charging cord rather than the Garmin one but that seems wrong.  Thanks.