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Real-world battery life

So how is everyone's battery life?

I'm currently getting about 9h with the following settings:

-Power save on
-All Wake-ups disabled (screen never turns on unless touched)
-Smart recording
-Display brightness 0%
-no active routing, one track is selected as "show always"
-about 20-30min. Of active routing per day
-no ant+ sensors (all paired are disabled)

This is really short battery life for a day of riding, and since the unit is as power conservative as possible before turning it off... I'm thinking if I got a defective battery maybe?
  • I have the same thing, running 5.2. Mine runs for about 3 hours from full to 7%, then going into battery save mode (GPS nav, 2 sensors, 30% brightness). It was very frustrating. The second time it was not fully charged (my mistake) and set out with 57% battery off the charger. It ran for about an hour before it went into BS mode (forgive the pun) and continued for a full hour more like this.

    I read this thread and decided to give it a dry run. I turned it on, switched to normal mode, turned on my light, all starting at 0% battery and started a ride at full brightness. The light ran out after 2 hours, the head unit kept running for one hour more before I turned it off myself.

    Ergo, at 0% battery indicated it can run for at least 2 hours and probably much longer than that. Definitely a software issue. Would appreciate a fix from Garmin.

    (Still 8 hours is still pretty crappy :) )

  • Same *** here. I bought mine exactly 1 year ago, due to circumstances i just recently started to use it, battery life is less than 4 hours with brightness 60% and zero sensors. I've put it on my desk with brightness 60%, screen on, and it lost a whopping 40% in just 2 hours.

    Clear enough. Tomorrow i will bring it back.

  • Adding to the database, here's a newbie's experience. 

    SETTINGS:

    • *NO* communication with sensors nor phone
    • Route Recalculation: Off
    • Auto-Sleep: On.
    • Battery Save Mode: On
    • Smart Recording: On
    • Firmware: 5.20

    It's my understanding these settings are the most energy efficient possible. 

    RIDE:

    1. Started a 9h 12min ride with 100% charge
    2. One hour into the ride loaded a course with active routing
    3. With 40 minutes remaining (8 1/2 hour mark) turned off turn-by-turn guidance, that is, I unloaded the active course, though the Explore was still recording telemetry for the duration. 
    4. 9.25 hours mark, end of ride. Battery charge was down to 43%,  ~7.5 hours of that involving turn-by-turn guidance.

    One anomaly during the run: when I loaded the course an hour in the Explore calculated it twice, starting over after reaching 99% the first time. Course calculation took about 5 minutes for a 190 km ride.

  • My wife has an Edge explore on the 5.20 firmware and hers does exactly the same - the battery drops to 0% after 4-5 hours but it then continues to run for 3-4 hours after that at 0%.

    We bought a varia radar at about the same time as the firmware update went on so haven't been able to work out if the varia  or the firmware was the cause, but having read this thread I'm coming to the conclusion that its probably a firmware issue too

  • I've read somewhere in this forum that the incorrect indicated battery level can be resolved by completely depleting the battery (until the device turns off) and then performing a factory reset. That should recalibrate the battery level indicator.

  • That information came from me:

    In the forum of a Dutch GPS-shop I found a possible solution for this problem:

    They have now been able to solve it for several customers by resetting the device after it was completely empty.
    Make sure your device is completely empty, so really until it switches off.

    Then connect to the charger and simultaneously press and hold the start / stop and lap button (the 2 on the front).
    You will then see the Garmin logo and then a white screen. When you see the white screen, you can release the 2 buttons.

    The device is then reset and knows the 'zero' point of the battery.
    You have to set it back to Dutch, etc.
    Then really leave it on the charger for about 6 hours until the battery is 100% full.

    Beware: you loose your settings. Make a backup.

  • Today I went for a ride with Edge 520 plus and Explore both starting at 90% of battery charge. I rode for 3 hours/60km. Bluetooth on, screen on, backlight off ( screen is bright under the sun. ) I was following a gpx in both. At the end both devices were at 70 %

  • We have made battery life improvements with SW version 5.30 that was released on 12/17/2020. If you are still experiencing an battery life issue, please create a new thread.