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Battery impact on head unit

How much battery consumption does the RTL510 Radar affects the head unit (Edge 830) no other sensors connected to the head unit.

  • That will depend on they amount of traffic that is detect as traffic will causes the overlay to be added that tracks the vehicle movement on the screen. This also activates the back-light.

  • I didn't notice a significant drop in battery life on my egde 1000 - however, I've always had a boat-load of other sensors attached anyway. It does cause the screen to light up though so if you have the screen on bright there will be a battery drain there.

  • As a very rough guess, it might knock about 20% off the stated life. The battery hit on my 530 is less than it was on my 520 Plus.

    I did a 9 hour ride over the weekend, and battery went from 100% to 44%. I was running the Varia Radar, following a course and had a speed sensor, HR and PM connected.

  • I have the impression it has a significant impact on my 1030 more than 30%. For a 3h30 ride it went from 100% to 24% with a cold temp though

  • A significant impact indeed.
    I use a 520 plus and could ride 8-10 hours between charges until I got the 510. I ride mostly country back roads and on a 2-3 hour ride my head unit will end up with 40-50% remaining. It would be even less on a busier highway.

    I dont think I could do a century lasting 6-7 hours without some sort of help which is something I dont want to worry with on a ride.

  • You can't..... I just did a century in under 6 hours with a 520 plus and Varia 510 and had 2% battery at the end.

  • Seems like that depends on your Backlight Timeout setting, setting it to the smallest available 15 sec will significantly increase Garmin edge battery life. At least this did a trick for me with edge 830 + rtl 510.

    Also, it would be nice to have "Stays Off" option along with "Stays On" in backlight timeout settings, anyway backlight did not add a lot during day rides. 

  • Thanks for the tip about Backlight and Varia.

    I did a 9 hr ride yesterday with the backlight settings to minimum, and finished with 67% battery on my 530. Compare this to my experience earlier in this thread where a 9hr ride lead to just 44% battery left.