Battery drains instead of charging when under the sun

Noticed that my Instinct Solar's battery drains instead of charges when left under the sun/a steady light source. Have attached images of the progression. The solar cell in the watch is working as the solar intensity is tracked pretty reliably in the intensity graph. Watch is on normal smartwatch settings. No signs of overheating (watch feels as warm as it does when I wear it for a late morning run). Could this be a faulty unit? Any help and suggestions are appreciated! I've already written into Garmin Support, but am still awaiting their reply.

(Last full charge to 24 days/100% via cable was on 20 May)

I gave up and removed it from under the light source. The drain is still happening.

0 sspanak over 2 years ago

You are probably experiencing the battery drain issue that has started happening recently. It's the same with the regular Instinct. See here.

Looking at the complaints in the forum, I suppose it is related with the display freezing fix that they applied in the latest firmware version. They may have accidentally broken power saving at the same time.

Can you try using another watchface, that does not change every second, to see if battery life improves?

0 7546996 over 2 years ago

I had the same problem on beta 13.20. I need to turn off and turn on the clock. This solved the problem

0 Tidalpilot over 2 years ago in reply to 7546996

I've tried powering the watch on and off; the drain still happened

0 Tidalpilot over 2 years ago in reply to sspanak

I tried that; drain did not improve... in fact I think it drained even quicker. Hoping Garmin support gets back ASAP with a fix

0 Fedde over 2 years ago

If you have pulse and pulse ox enabled(and assuming all smart features enabled) the watch simply can't produce enough power to charge, it will only drain at a slower rate.

But in this case it looks like a bigger drain, you should maybe try the new 14.30 beta?