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Use case: 10+ days (incl 5+ hrs of running activities) battery life

FlipStone
over 6 years ago

As there seems a lot of complaining to go around I thought I'd give some positive sounds... Kept track of my battery usage this charge (99.5% to 5%) and all in all it's just pretty good, I think comparable to the 935.

In the end I had over 10 days of battery life (20th june 9:00 to 30th of june, 14:00) and this was from 99.5% to 5% (so had maybe about a day of watch-use left) and this was with about 5 hours and 30 minutes of activities (of which 30 minutes including maps). Activities being simple running, GPS only. All the time with 24/7 OHR, no Ox stuff, backlight after sunset on wrist-flick at 5%. All this with a custom watchface, lightweight though.

DIscharge rate isn't linear though, the first few percentages go very slowly... then it goes faster, slows down again and the last few percentages seem to go faster again.

Anyway, just wanted to clear up that where usually people having issues are more vocal (and logically so) it doesn;t mean it's really that bad. Going to do the same for my second charge...

  • 0 over 6 years ago

    I had similar.  I went from 100% to 13% in seven days, I had about 7 hours of activities - mostly with GPS+Galileo, but includes an hour of pool swim and 50 minutes cycling on the trainer (so no GPS but connected to power meter, etc.).  Also on a 40 minute run I used music just to try it out.  I wear it 24/7 with the OHR, sleep pulse ox, backlight on keypress only and in activity only after sunset on gesture.  Standard watch face.  Running 2.50 and the beta GPS firmware.

    Since I got it down to 13%, I just left the GPS on an activity for a couple hours today to drain it all the way to self-shutdown and recharged it completely just to see if a battery meter calibration makes things look a bit better.  Took it off the charger about 4 hours ago, haven't done much with the watch since and it just moved from 100% to 99%.

    For comparison, with my 935 I had similar settings (in activity backlight was on all the time at 5%), but I also did not usually use the watch for my bike rides. After a week of normal usage, my 935 was usually down between 35-45% battery.  Considering the extra usage this past week, the fact that I used the music as well for one run, and the sleep pulse ox, I would say the 945 battery was pretty close to the way my 935 was.

  • 0 over 6 years ago

    Good info :)  But I expect the performance to be better than the 935.  That's one of the selling points - specification 945 up to 36hrs with GPS vs up to 24hrs for a 935.  These are very loose specifications.   My experience - did a 100km running race yesterday, time 11hrs45min (slowish because I'm 65yo), battery 99% at start and battery 64% at finish (GPS only), so expect 11.75/0.35 = 33.5hrs if linear power consumption.  

  • 0 over 6 years ago in reply to bill-d-b

    First, respect for that 100k! Sheesh..

    Well, activity wise it IS better and 'standby' wise it seems about the same. Thing is I've read so many ppl complaining about battery and claiming the 935 was way better. Perhaps they were all on an older firmware and perhaps something was corrupted (hence the tip to hard reset by garmin blake I believe) but I thought it would be nice for ppl to also see real life experiences that are actualyl positive and live up to expectations ;)

    Otherwise people browse the forum, see negative experiences and think the watch is crap..

  • 0 over 6 years ago in reply to FlipStone

    Hi FlipStone :)   Yep I agree - activity power usage seems better and standby about the same.  I purchased the watch 2 days after release in Australia and did initially suffer some strange battery usage patterns.  But as you say after loading 2.50 and doing a hard reset, I've been much happier.  I'm doing a tough 100-mile trail run in a few weeks so will see if I get 24+ hours with GPS only.  Thanks for sharing from a positive perspective.

  • 0 over 6 years ago in reply to bill-d-b

    Thanks. Great info - what I was looking for. Thinking of getting this for my wife who does ultras and multi stage  races so looking for something with good battery life.  I assume your results were with 1 sec recording.  

  • 0 over 6 years ago in reply to razmichael

    Hi razmichael  -  standard GPS + Galileo :) 

  • 0 over 6 years ago

    I did a 45Km/13.5hrs run-hike this weekend and the battery lost an average of 3.33% per hour with GPS only, 1sec recording and Garmin TRI HRM so, it should last about 30 hours, 50% more than my 935, not too bad. I too have seen some variation in the discharge rate with no apparent reason.

  • 0 over 6 years ago

    I've posted a few use cases in this thread

     https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-945/163477/battery-life

    There's also some other info for good and bad. I think battery life is good from what I can see. Probably won't see 36 hours but no problem getting over 30 even with GPS glonass and HRMtri connected with 1 second recording. I've also got a quad marathon (104.8 mile) race coming up in October. So that's where I'll really put it to the test for sure. I'll also be sure report back with my findings.