The charging cable has 4 spring loaded pins to contact the 4 charging posts in the watch. The spring action is designed to maintain contact to the posts so a snug fit is not necessary to charge. Occasionally…
The charging cable has 4 spring loaded pins to contact the 4 posts on the watch. The spring action is designed to keep contact even when the charger fit is not snug. Occasionally, a pin will stick and…
Unfortunately, I bought 2 of these for my kids. Both have charging issues and it is clearly a bad design and/or construction on the connection between cable and device. I have many Garmin devices including…
It's the last resort before I bin it for this rubbish watch that has plagued me with charging issues since the day the warranty ran out. I've ground down the top of the plug with a file to expose the four pins, cleaned the contacts with carbon tetrachloride and use a 3 way clamp to literally force it connect. It works for now but not for long I expect.
Same problem. Charging got less and less reliable. Lots of wiggling and eventually got to where I could barely get the charging to start. I have multiple chargers, none worked. Read this thread and learned that the watch has charging pads, not sockets. As others have written the charger pins are spring loaded. They just need to contact the pins. I learned a long time ago that a good way to clean edge connectors on circuit boards was to use an eraser. Grabbed a pencil and gave the pads on the back of the watch a good scrubbing using the eraser. Now all the charges work like when I first got the watch. I expect I will need to clean the pads an a regular basis.
Regular wd40 is not very good for electrical contacts but certainly can help with sticky pins. There is a version of wd40 made specifically to clean contacts. When the pads are clean and pins are making contact, the watch will charge unless some other part is broken.
Funny this is coming up today. I resolved the issue 2 years ago to this month by getting new charger cable. It came in a 2-pack, and I'm just now having to start using the 2nd once as it started acting up again this week. So that's good resolution for me.
Same issue here. Bought a new cable, troubleshot/cleaned everything as described in this thread to no avail.
Reached out to Garmin Support and they said they'd replace for $110. I said "No thanks," and they said, "Have a good evening" and closed the chat.
Nice thread of information. I had tried eraser, rubbing alcohol ... but a regular cleaning with an electrical contact cleaner sprayed onto a Q-Tip keeps my charging system working on my Vivoactive 3. I used CRC QD Electronic Cleaner because I had it, but any cleaner should work. The watch is up against skin which is covering the contacts with skin/grease ... and then transfers to the contacts on the charging cords, so the watch and cables require maintenance.