battery life issue

Garmin-AmberD I have the same problem. When i deactivate the Bluetooth connection my va4 runs about five days. With Bluetooth only 1 1/5 days. Overnight the battery looses more then 30 %. Phone runs with iOS 14.2. I have restore, phone, app, watch and ave the latest updates for ant/bte/bt. 

i Hope it helps for finding the solution. 
no CIQ runs. Just the standard apps. 

Al P said:

How do these Bug Reports work? Can we create one for the watch itself in addition to Connect IQ?

From what I could see, some Garmin developers have been replying and following up on bug reports in there. It is more likely that they follow the CIQ section of the forum instead of device-specific sections like this one (vivoactive 4 series).

I would not create a bug report for the watch itself unless there's a particular issue related to CIQ (like the battery issue when using CIQ faces).

I think what might help the most is in voting for the bug/idea, because the page sorts the bugs by number of votes by default. This way we increase the chances that it will be also seen by CIQ face developers, who might have received battery drain complaints from VA4 users. This might lead someone to finally investigate. Looking at the replies we've gotten so far in here, I don't think that anything has been done yet.

I did additional research and compared different watch faces to an exact % battery drain per day.  The data I provided in this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/jtgz5g/vivoactive_4_battery_drain_compared_by_a/ . The testing was performed on a brand new watch, with SW 5.10 released. As you can notice, a lot of people having the same issues, after this release. Two months ago all the third party CIQ watchfaces were consuming reasonably less battery! The watchfaces I was experimenting with having a long credible history, and a big community, so I'm strongly sure it's not a "poor development" or a code related issues.

The default garmin's watchface shown significantly less power drain (13% a day) in comparison to any third-party watch faces, which shown stats 25-33% power drain a day.. and the watch didn't last more than 2-3 days.

I think you should not compare battery drain from CIQ faces vs stock faces. If you use any Garmin's CIQ face you will also get a really bad battery performance from SW 5.10 onwards.

Quoting from https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/1532/timer-in-a-watchui-watchface-view/9617#9617

"I'll let you in on a little secret: The default watch face does not run on the main processor, but instead runs on a much lower power micro which doesn't have enough memory to run Connect IQ. It honestly doesn't have enough memory to hold the screen buffer; I work with some mad/crazy embedded hackers here at Garmin. All that for a second hand."

In other words, you cannot compare stock faces with CIQ faces because the stock ones exclusively run on a much more efficient (but limited) microprocessor.

I didn't state anything wrong either. I understand that default built-in watch faces are way more optimized, and it's fine them being more efficient!
But come on, we are speaking here of drastic difference! 8 days on a default stock Garmin's watch face, and barely holding up 2 days (!!!) doing nothing with CIQ faces... It is a HUGE difference! It's a real problem, which wasn't there before the SW update.

In the reddit post you compared battery performance of 3 different faces. Two were CIQ and one was stock. You also wrote: "Why Garmin got such a crazy battery impact?! "

I was just trying to point out that stock faces run in a completely different way than CIQ faces. That's all.

We all want Garmin to fix the battery regression with CIQ faces once and for all.

Just adding in that the Sleep as Android widget is a huge battery drain (50% overnight). The developer is aware of this, but says the problem is on Garmin's side and doesn't occur with other platforms. Just for the sake of competition, it would be good to have an alternative to the mediocre sleep tracking Garmin has for now. It only adds value to the watch, and it would be better still if the Sleep as Android app would also be able to read the pulseox levels or variation (which I have found to be very wacky though).

Updated last Friday (nov. 13th) and must charge mij Vivoactive 4S every day since (before it lasted 6 days). I changed nothing, watchface is the same as I had the last 4 months, a very minimalistic one and all my settings are as they were.
I read a lot about backing up the data/settings and put the watch back to factory settings, how do I backup? Or will my settings and data remain in the Connect-app? Please help, it is a very annoying problem plus the main reason I choose this watch was the excellent battery-life

OK, if you have restored the watch and you are not using CIQ apps and its still experiencing a battery drain. May I please have you reach out to your local Garmin support?