Poor battery life

try lowering the brightness?

Originally posted in wrong section:-(plus I thought I had the 820 Explore not 820 :o )

My 820 battery seems to drain quicker than my old 800.On a recent 4 hour ride the power went from 100% to 44% without using Maps/navigation:eek: 15hr Battery life seems to be the figure expected but is this when used as a navigation aid or just as a cycling computer as it looks like I'll be getting half the expected battery life just running the unit as a cycling computer!Are maps always running in the background whether being used or not?
My 800 battery lasted around 18hrs if not using mapping.

Turn off wifi?

Brightness is as low as it can be for me to be able to see the screen.
WIFI is off.
Going to try it on GPS only but can't see that doubling the battery life.
I'm not at all impressed with this unit.I doubt it would last a ride if I was using it as a Satnav!
It might be more modern and have more features than my old 800 but upto now it's nowhere near as good.

Turning the unit off?

It took me 3 weeks to figure out to hold the power button and select shut down rather than just hit it once quickly which just seems to turn off the screen. It sat for a couple days betwee rides just idling...

It took me 3 weeks to figure out to hold the power button and select shut down rather than just hit it once quickly which just seems to turn off the screen. It sat for a couple days betwee rides just idling...

I figured that out straight away.
The issue isn't between uses it's whilst actually using the unit.56% of battery life over a 4 hour ride is just poor.If the battery% is to be believed it wouldn't last two rides!
I haven't bothered to see how long it lasts using it as a navigation device.
I'm going to try a couple of other things but I'm afraid it looks like I'll be dropping Garmin.
This is my 4th and by far poorest Garmin unit.

I managed 6:43 fro fully charged yesterday - pretty poor

Originally posted in wrong section:-(plus I thought I had the 820 Explore not 820 :o )

My 820 battery seems to drain quicker than my old 800.On a recent 4 hour ride the power went from 100% to 44% without using Maps/navigation:eek: 15hr Battery life seems to be the figure expected but is this when used as a navigation aid or just as a cycling computer as it looks like I'll be getting half the expected battery life just running the unit as a cycling computer!Are maps always running in the background whether being used or not?
My 800 battery lasted around 18hrs if not using mapping.

I managed 6:43 fro fully charged yesterday - pretty poor. Having to carry a 2nd Garmin for an 8 hour spin is...a bit pointless

I managed 6:43 fro fully charged yesterday - pretty poor. Having to carry a 2nd Garmin for an 8 hour spin is...a bit pointless

8hrs without without navigation is the best I've had.Very poor.
I have a 220mile ride coming up in June and it looks like I'll need a couple of external chargers!

I managed 6:43 fro fully charged yesterday - pretty poor. Having to carry a 2nd Garmin for an 8 hour spin is...a bit pointless

Do you have the back light on? I have the backlight timeout to 15 sec. I certainly get more than 6:43 while navigating, recording HR, Power, Cadence, position & altitude.

Nick

I was going to ask the same question on the back-lighting level and duration. The last really long ride I did I get 13 hours of recording and still had 15% left. (No navigation or segments)

Oddly, the battery life is the one aspect of the 820 I've been relatively happy with. I've also exceeded 13 hours - despite having to have the back-light set to 'always on' (at 30%) for the portion of the ride that was in darkness (15secs when in daylight). Sadly the reason for that is that (unlike the 800) I can't rely on being able to tap the screen with my glove to get it to light up when I need it - prior to doing that I had been resorting to trying to stab the screen with my nose to avoid taking gloves off in the sub-zero rain!

I do have almost everything disabled though (GLONASS is my only 'extra' enabled function). No sensors, no segments, no navigation (just a line on the map), no livetrack, no bluetooth or wifi, plus screen on night mode (possibly a placebo!)*. I Imagine I may get worse results in the summer when a brighter screen is required to be seen in the sun..

*Oh, and just for the record (and probably famous last words), the unit also hasn't crashed or lost any data using that set up (it's done 4000 miles) - which is a problem I'd occasionally had with previous versions.