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Battery Life in Smartwatch Mode

Former Member over 6 years ago

Hi, I just bought the Forerunner 945 and used it over the last couple of days. While it is a great watch, I am a bit underwhelmed about the battery life. It should last up to two weeks in Smartwatch Mode but it seems to use 12-14% per day with little usage which would just give me half of that (this is without doing exercises...as said, minimal usage, which is checking pulse from time to time or reading an incoming msg). I have mostly just factory settings on. I also already checked the tipps on the garmin side of how to optimize battery life (but not going to switch off pulse measurement as this should be part of a Smartwatch Mode). I have it paired with an iPhone Xr. Any views or similar experiences?

Many thanks,
Marc

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0 Former Member over 6 years ago in reply to Tangmu

I hope you enjoy it. Please post your experience with the battery life as I’m really disappointed with my first charge lasting only 5 days.

0 kaz911 over 6 years ago in reply to Former Member

I’m averaging about 0.4-0.6% / hour - so total run time around 6-7 days with POX on.

Watch is pretty consistent in power consumption - so it does not seems like much power optimisation is happening. My F5x+ would have much greater variation in power consumption.

So I do think some firmware improvements will help power consumption.

Firmware : latest 2.4 I think it is.

0 Chucky_1977 over 6 years ago

In terms of battery drain during activities I gave my 945 a good workout last weekend and can give a comparison to the Fenix 5x plus.

Along with a friend I ran a 28 mile trail marathon, me wearing my 945, him his Fenix 5X plus (approx 3 months old, so a few full charge / discharge cycles). Both watches were fully charged at the start, both of us using mapping, climbpro, same sensors etc. We ran together and finished in 6hrs 30. My battery had drained by 31%, his by 33% (we also recorded almost identical distance and elevation).

0 Former Member over 6 years ago in reply to kaz911

How are you measuring this? With the battery widget?

0 smdavies1979 over 6 years ago

I had the same problem and a few emails back and for with Garmin.

This has been reported to them by several users in US and EU but doesn’t appear to be affecting all users.

The last email I received stated they didn’t know yet whether it was a software or hardware issue

0 Dr Phil over 6 years ago in reply to smdavies1979

If you're having battery issues first thing to check is that Pulse Ox is off.

0 jmto over 6 years ago

First day of using the new 945. I'm really disappointed to the battery life.

If I compare this my old 935 this is using battery about 10% more per day.

About one day and
945: 100% -> 77%
935: 100% -> 88%.

So makes me hope that the firmware has some debugging things still on?!

No I don't have Pulse OX on. Settings are as close as they can be to old 935. So what is draining the battery? Body battery? :D

0 Chucky_1977 over 6 years ago

I fully charged mine 9 days ago, and only needed to charge again today (it was down at 10%). Pulse Ox off, notifications from my phone off, but pretty much everything else on. One 40 minute run with GPS, 4 more runs on treadmill in that time. 24hr heart rate readings. Pretty happy with that.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago in reply to jmto

Me too. 935 battery life is much better.

0 biondi27 over 6 years ago in reply to jmto

This is very disappointing, I was looking forward to upgrade from 935 only because of the better battery life but, it seem that the this is not the case, I will keep my 935…..