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battery life seems to drop fasterbatt

Former Member over 5 years ago

Hi everyone,

I recently bought a Vivoactive 4 and during the first few weeks of using it, the battery lasted a lifetime. I went to Malaysia for 8 days and didn't need to recharge it once (turned the watch off at night though).

However, out of nowhere, the past week or so I noticed that my battery is draining a lot faster for no apparent reason. Just wearing it idle without doing any tracking, it's losing battery at about 1% per hour, that leaves about 4 days if used purely inactively. Doing any active tracking kills the battery even faster. I am not using any custom apps or watch faces or anything, everything is stock.

Anyone been experiencing this as well? Any idea what is causing this, or something I should check? I read that disabling Pulse Ox helps, but that feature has always been turned off.

Cheers!

0 Panos K over 5 years ago

Same dissapoinment for me. Recent byer of VA4, instead of practicing fitness, I sadly became a Garmin's "beta-tester" for a week.

My detailed battery measurements with the same setup as yours, showed that battery life drops incredibly fast below 60%. From 100% to 60% droped at 0,3-0,6% per hour. From 60% to 17% droped within 1,5 hours!!!

0 RunnerM over 5 years ago

I have generally had very solid battery life with my VA4 (about 10 days per charge). One time I had a faster battery drain for 12 hours that seemed to be triggered by the use of WiFi (an update check that used wifi). I powered the watch off for 5 minutes and then back on and that cleared things up.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

I just can't figure out why it's now draining so fast out of nowhere

0 RunnerM over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I think wifi can cause a battery drain. For example, the watch turns on wifi for some function (like checking for updates) and then doesn't turn it off successfully. I noticed there is a setting in the wifi settings for "auto upload" of data. I leave that setting off and do everything through my phone with bluetooth.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to RunnerM

i just checked, and that options appears to be disabled already. So it wouldn't be that in my case.

0 harryg over 5 years ago

I've had similar setup as yours, stock watch face, no wifi, no music, no gps tracking, not even garmin pay is setup, I dont even use bluetooth connection with my phone other than to sync it once or twice a day. Other than just wearing it as a watch i have hrm on the default setting out of the box and i workout about 4-5 hours a week, that's it. Based on this i have to charge my watch every 4th day coz on the 5th day it dies in the middle of the day when im at work. This is nowhere near the upto 8 days claim garmin makes. I am now on my 4th watch and the retailer i bought it from here in netherlands says that they might have received a bad batch because other customers have approached them with a similar problem, so now they have asked garmin to replace my watch instead of the retailer itself. However, the garmin support is so excruciatingly slow it feels like the 7th circle of hell. If this 5th watch has similar issues i think i am going to ask for my money back, coz working out 4-5 hours a week should not reduce battery life by 3 days!

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to harryg

agreed, having a lifetime half of what is advertised when being idle all the time is already considered some serious misadvertising. If it is effectively a bad batch, I'll go over to the garmin retailer I bought it

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

To give a quick update. I performed a reset and erased all data to see if it works any better. However, my battery is now dropping every faster when idling. I left this morning with 53% on the battery, merely 4 hours later, it dropped to 44%, that's over 2% per hour idle. I will go and have it checked out and hopefully get it replaced.

0 harryg over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I hope replacement works for you I am on my 4th watch and they have all had the same problem. I'm just guessing some batches were just defective as not everyone has this problem. But sad to say this Garmin is not willing to officially accept this and come up with a worldwide solution

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to harryg

Actually, I downloaded the battery app. This is getting absolutely ridiculous now at 3.5%/h idle. Is there some kind of setting I'm missing that just eats battery life?