Did they ever fix the battery drain issue?

They have not fixed it. After spending time with Garmin support via e-mail they claim it is my product and not an issue on their end and offered me the ability to buy a discounted replacement (that isn't in stock right now) for more $$ since I am of course out of warranty. Why would I buy a product I already know has issues and is likely to never have them fixed?

I pointed them to this thread, but clearly they are more concerned with selling product than fixing existing product issues. I urge you all to contact support so maybe Garmin will finally acknowledge the issue and fix it.

Hi all. I am also still stuck with this problem. At the beginning of the year, as I was about to send in my watch to my local Garmin service centre for evaluation, I checked the watch one last time. A firmware update dropped and the watch was fixed again! I was so happy. End of January the same problem came back. The battery lasts just a few hours and must be recharged twice daily. It also drains completely even with the watch turned off.

I have held off for the month of Feb, hoping new firmware will drop but no such luck. 

P.S. I turned off the HR sensor completely and nothing changed. I also don’t use the GPS. 

PeterZA said:

I checked the watch one last time. A firmware update dropped and the watch was fixed again! I was so happy.

My advice is to send it to Garmin and get it evaluated.

From my experience I am certain that it is not software related. What you describe are all symptoms of a battery that has reached the end of its life. I think that Garmin have had major issues with the batteries in some Instinct Solar watches failing prematurely.  When I was testing mine to verify the problem there were a few times that I thought the problem was fixed, but that didn't last long. In countries with strong consumer laws, like Australia, Garmin are exchanging the watches with no hassle. Mine was exchanged a few months ago and I spoke to somebody at cycling the other day who had theirs exchanged recently.

No

I am super pleased to provide this update today. 

On 31 October 2022, 9 months ago, I stopped trying to “keep my watch alive”. It was clearly on life support and I no longer had any desire to tolerate dealing with it. 

I had been meaning to send a letter of complaint to Garmin South Africa, with a detailed breakdown of my issues to date - especially since the watch was out of warranty (13 October 2021 purchase date). However, I was just drained from all the issues. I kinda wrote it off as a bad purchase and that was that. 

Three days ago, something told me to test my watch. I charged it up to 100%, turned it on, and immediately a new firmware version (19.01) pushed to the device. I wore the watch for the rest of the day, took it off at bedtime…and to my amazement, the alarm woke me up at 6:15am. I checked the battery and it had only lost around 9%. 

I repeated the above process for another two days, with a change in my routine - charging the watch via USB cable connected to my work laptop. Each morning, only 7-9% battery has discharged in the previous 24 hour cycle. Further, it only takes < 20 minutes to reach 100% again. 

In conclusion, all these issues are not related to faulty batteries but faulty firmware. It’s a disgrace how customers have had to experience and tolerate this. I am just glad I can use my watch again as intended.

P.S. I have a good mind to turn off auto updates because the next firmware version might just break my watch again.