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Shutting off in cold temperatures - but ample battery life

My Garmin Edge 530 battery had been working fine indoors, but yesterday at -16C outside, the device just turned off after about 15 minutes of use with the battery still at 60%. The device is 2 years old. I assume the issue is that the battery is not as good as it was, and now at cold temperatures the voltage is going down too low and the device turns off as a result.

Has anyone had this type of issue and found that any setting or firmware rev made any difference?

With my 2 year old 520 at cold temperatures battery life was significantly reduced, but on a full charge I would still get 5 hours of use out of it and it did not turn off until the battery hit close to zero, and with the 520 I was using it at -30C and it still worked.

The funny thing is is just recently I was thinking how good the battery in the device was...and now this.

0 mcalista over 2 years ago in reply to 1056485

1056485 said:
Mine is 3 years old and has exhibited what you describe since new. It’s very frustrating because I fatbike in Canada so it’s basically a summer use head unit. I now use my epix2 to record my winter riding. Interestingly I’m the only one in my riding group that uses a 530. There are a couple of 1030’s an 830 and a 520 that never shut down even at todays temps of -25 C.

This sounds like a good use case for Extended Display - record the ride on your Epix (which stays warm on your wrist), while viewing the data on your 530. Hopefully the lower power demands in ED (only having to run the display, not the GPS) avoids the shutdown issue.

(I'm just spitballing here - I don't live where it's cold enough to have battery issues.

0 1056485 over 2 years ago in reply to mcalista

Thanks for the advice, I had forgotten about that feature. It doesn’t work up here; tried it yesterday fat-biking at -25 Celsius felt like -30 with wind chill. Edge 530 shut down within 15 minutes. My buddies Edge 1040 shut off at the 44 minute mark. This week will be even colder so I expect more Edge units to follow suit. Epix2 under coat sleeve it is for the winter months I guess!