battery life issue

Resetting the watch will not work. The easiest recommendation is to install temporarily the stock garmin's watch face instead of 3rd party CIQ watchface... and to wait until Garmin will patch the issues with the firmware, introduced within SW 5.10.

Maybe yes, but it’s only with active Bluetooth connection. I will wait for the next update, if it doesn’t work I will contact the local support. 

Chiming in with my case as well, @Garmin-AmberD hopefully you can add me to whatever tickets are created on this battery issue.

I was happy with the Vivoactive 4, battery life was 5-7 days depending on activities. Then after the recent software updates, it went down dramatically, barey 2 days if that. MyBattery reports consumption around 0.8%-0.9%/hour (!!!).

I'm using a standard simple Garmin watchface, no seconds display. Didn't have many apps or CIQ faces to begin with, but yesterday I uninstall everything and hard rebooted, to be sure - made no difference. I'm not using SPOx, no WiFi, not doing sport activities at the moment, monitoring set to "Smart". Another strange issue noted, after the updates the PhysioTrueUp, which I disabled in the past, was enabled again (why do developers keep thinking it's OK to change users' settings?). I disabled it, but makes no difference.

Have not done a factory reset yet, and I'm not inclined to do one because: 1) I shouldn't have to waste time to compensate for failures in Garmin software quality assurance process; and 2) I see from other posts on this thread that it's not even guaranteed to solve the problem. 

Firmware at version 5.10, GPS 4.80, ANT 6.11, Wi-Fi 2.60, TSC 2.0, Sensor 7.0, WHR 0.09.01, CIQ 3.2.1, BMX 0.9.1, Secondary BMX 0.8.0

1987017 said:

Chiming in with my case as well, @Garmin-AmberD hopefully you can add me to whatever tickets are created on this battery issue.

I was happy with the Vivoactive 4, battery life was 5-7 days depending on activities. Then after the recent software updates, it went down dramatically, barey 2 days if that. MyBattery reports consumption around 0.8%-0.9%/hour (!!!).

I'm using a standard simple Garmin watchface, no seconds display. Didn't have many apps or CIQ faces to begin with, but yesterday I uninstall everything and hard rebooted, to be sure - made no difference. I'm not using SPOx, no WiFi, not doing sport activities at the moment, monitoring set to "Smart". Another strange issue noted, after the updates the PhysioTrueUp, which I disabled in the past, was enabled again (why do developers keep thinking it's OK to change users' settings?). I disabled it, but makes no difference.

Have not done a factory reset yet, and I'm not inclined to do one because: 1) I shouldn't have to waste time to compensate for failures in Garmin software quality assurance process; and 2) I see from other posts on this thread that it's not even guaranteed to solve the problem. 

Firmware at version 5.10, GPS 4.80, ANT 6.11, Wi-Fi 2.60, TSC 2.0, Sensor 7.0, WHR 0.09.01, CIQ 3.2.1, BMX 0.9.1, Secondary BMX 0.8.0

Hello! Thank you for the feedback and information. I certainly apologize this has affected your device. Garmin is working on a fix for this and we do appreciate your patience while its getting worked out. 

Garmin's poor software stability is going to be a fact of life going forward, as it's been like this for a few years already. I'm not sure how many long term and die hard users have left Garmin already due to this. Once my devices break or fail to work, I'm moving on. If I were to deal with a 2 day battery, I'm better looked after with an iWatch. 

Back to the point, a factory reset/restore can fix things. It did for me back with some late V4 update. 

Garmin fails to really advertise this, but there is a semi-useful backup and restore process for their devices. You can read about it HERE. Give it another consideration. 

Garmin resets some settings on occasion with updates. It happens often in an update that my watch goes back to a 12h watch face.  Move IQ and Auto Activity Start are both a source of additional battery drain. Usually not much, but who knows, it could even be a cause for a large battery drain.

But also consider isolating variables one at a time, and perhaps that way you could find that one thing that contributes most to battery consumption. For example, it could be your BT connection to your phone. Disable your phone connection on the watch over night or during the day, and see if you have a considerable battery savings, then the next step may be that you need to delete the connection and start the pairing again. 

Yes, it is a total waste of time to need to even reboot a device like this after every update, but it has proven effective. 
Factory reseting does work, although it won't have a 100% success rate.
Garmin support is not worth all that much after all. If you have the time and interest to browse the other forums for Garmin watches, you'll come across a pattern of "massive battery drain after x update" post. The vivoactive 3 has for all intents been discontinued, yet in that forum there are users that have a massive increase in battery drain from one day to the next thanks to an update. To make matters worse, updates pushed to us cannot be declined, and we are forced to install immediately or later that evening ONLY! I know someone personally that's on a VA3 with a battery issue. I also know someone personally with a FR235 that has had a massive battery drain issue at one point. The fact is it's pretty common, and many people won't bother with forums.

Most of the time, the presence of complaints or posts on issues in forums is absolutely not a reflection of the product in the real world. However, with Garmin I'm not convinced that this is true. This is purely based on how many issues my wife and I've had with Garmin over the past few years, and those from friends, family and acquaintances. 

Garmin-AmberD After reading comments in this forum it looks like people are experiencing battery issue after 5.10 update. Now I just bought this watch and I'm already using 5.10 SW version.

From day 1, I'm only getting 2 days battery backup. I'm not using any third party watch face. Only a Garmin's inbuilt customized watch face. Weird thing is that if I charge my watch at any time for instance to 70 %. The first drop take few hours sometimes 4-5 hours to drop and then it drops at somewhat 3-5 % per hours. If I run with music and gps for around 30 mins,  battery drop is normal to about 4-5 % per run. 

The problem is with normal day to day battery drop. The whole reason switched from my fitbit ionic was because of great battery with always on display and settled for a trans reflective display.

I still have a holiday period to return the watch to bestbuy. If the issue is not resolved then I'll switch back to my fitbit ionic.

Hi Rakshit Varshney

In my humble opinion, 2 days of battery under normal circumstances is not acceptable. I'd send an email to garmin support stating the battery issues and then consider one of these two choices, depending on your patience and budget:

a) Return the watch and get your money back (consider sticking to your Fitbit Ionic or going for a much pricier Fenix 6)

b) Return the watch and get a replacement

After 2 months following the forums, my personal view is that there are high chances you'll get the same copypasted message I've seen multiple times. Don't hold your breath for any imminent fix or status updates or status on feature requests. If you are still on time to return the watch, that's what I'd do (just send an email to garmin support first).

I'll return it if issue is not resolved mid Jan. Fenix 6 is a overkill for me as I'm a casual runner. 

Vivoactive 4 looks good and will fit my requirement even if I get 5 days backup with my activities. Fitbit ionic lacks spotify offline music and always on display. I still feel fitbits software is a lot cleaner and easy to use than Garmin but you get used to it when you start using garmin.

I have already emailed garmin support about this issue but I get a feeling that garmin support will send me an copy pasted reply.

I'm not sure how people are claiming 6-7 days battery backup. If that is the case and version 5.10 is fine then it looks like I need to get a replacement.

Good thing is that I bought it from best buy and I have Jan 16th to return it.

Hi Amber, I got my Vivoactive 4S in October, so it's a month old, and I'm already having this issue. I charged my watch yesterday to 100, it dropped 10 percent overnight. I went on a 30min run using Garmin Coach and now the battery is at 76%.