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Stranger Things with my Forerunner 255 Music: Battery Issues, Dead Speaker, Connect Errors and even Burn-In Screen

In the past few days, something strange has been happening with my Forerunner 255 Music. One day, with a decent amount of battery left, the watch suddenly turned off. I was only able to restart it by holding one of the buttons for 30 seconds.

After that, the watch started rapidly draining its battery (about 40% in 10 hours) and occasionally shutting down without any low battery warning, which it normally gives. I also noticed that the speaker seemed to have stopped working — it was barely audible behind the vibration. These issues seem unrelated, but at this point, I’m not sure about anything. Sometimes the HR sensor stops working, but I can get it running again by rebooting the watch. And sometimes the watch just freezes, like getting stuck on the stopwatch screen. There are probably more strange behaviors that I’ve forgotten.

Sometimes the unexplainable happens: when switched off, I can see parts of my dial as if the screen had burnt out!

When I try connecting the watch to Garmin Express on my computer, I get a synchronization error with Connect. Oh, and one time, right before another sudden shutdown, I saw the Connect logo with an exclamation mark on the watch screen.

As a result, I decided to completely reset the watch by holding the buttons while it was off, then restored it from a backup. But the chaos continued. After yet another reboot to fix the HR sensor, I was greeted with… the initial setup screen. I had to remove the watch from Garmin Connect and restore it from the backup again.

The watch is currently running software version 20.32. The problems started on the previous version, and I installed the latest one in the middle of these issues.

Unfortunately, there’s no Garmin service center in my country, so I can’t send the watch in for diagnostics.

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  • you need to do a hard reset from the configurarion menu in the watch, reset to defaults and delete all data. it will solve everything, if you feel the watch unstable do it again, until it reboot fine

  • A full reset did not help. The watch sometimes just freezes until you reboot it.

  • so maybe the unit is defected, try to use the warranty

  • The Garmin Forerunner 255 Music doesn't have a speaker, does it?

  • The Garmin Forerunner 255 Music doesn't have a speaker, does it?

    OP means the piezo buzzer (that can only play beeps) that most Garmins have, not a fully-fledged speaker (that can play any audio) like the one on your phone.

  • Update: Many of the issues I previously described have suddenly disappeared. In everyday use, the watch is generally stable, though occasionally there are sudden battery drops (for example, losing 60% in a day).

    However, when it comes to tracking workouts… The watch sometimes freezes during a session, stopping GPS tracking and other metrics. Restarting it by holding the Light button doesn’t always work: sometimes it’s unresponsive for three minutes after shutting down, and other times for as long as 30 minutes. I can usually bring it back to life by connecting it to a charger.

    Sometimes after a reboot, the watch face and other apps from Connect IQ disappear from the watch. A couple of times, I’ve also seen the Connect logo with an exclamation mark instead of the watch face. I’m starting to think these issues might be related to Connect IQ, since syncing with the main Garmin Connect app works just fine.