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Solved: Vivoactive 4s won't charge. Charging cable issue.

Vivoactive4
over 3 years ago

I'm just letting others know how my Vivoactive 4s charging problem were fixed:

For several months, my Vivoactive 4s had sporadic charging issues. Sometimes it didn't charge after plugging it in. It slowly became worse until finally it wouldn't charge at all.

To be honest I was frustrated with the product. I thought surely this must be a hardware issue with the watch. I was ready to ditch Garmin products for the Apple Watch, despite being a loyal Garmin watch customer for a long time.

Even though my watch was out of warranty, I gave Garmin Support a call. They had me take a photo of the charging cable. They immediately diagnosed it as the problem.

All 4 of the pins in the charging cable are supposed to be of equal length. 2 of my pins (one outer, one middle) were ground down or stuck. They replaced the charging cable out of courtesy and now it works!

I'm a very happy customer now. I don't know how the charging pins got worn down but this is something to rule out if you have charging issues.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

     

    Here is a photo comparing the charging pins from the new and old cable.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Vivoactive4

    I think it is more likely that the pins are stuck than worn down. It seems to me that they are supposed to be spring loaded, and can be pushed in, but are supposed to pop out again. If the mechanism collects dirt or corrosion or something, this can stop working. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I bought the 4S yesterday, surprised it did not have any charge at all when I opened it, charged it and it seemed ok upto 8% and then the screen displayed the triangle and started to vibrate continuously. After reading your post I noticed there are also two pins in the cable that are inverted. Annoyed to find this is a common issue as I researched the best watch for me and read reviews. Will contact them re getting a new cable. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 7889593

    That's unfortunate you had the same problems with a new watch cable. Don't get me wrong, I still really like the watch despite a few quirks like this.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 7889593

    I have the same problem today with my new vivoactive 4.  Plugged it in using my vivomusic3 cable which has always worked and the watch vibrates off and on and essentially discharged while on the charger have tried different charging blocks even a computer but still will not charge.  Need a solution as I do not have access to the vivoactive 4 cable that came with it.  The 3 cable should work right?