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945 Battery Life - Return Material Authorization (RMA)

FYI for anyone struggling with battery life on their 945.

My 945 battery was lasting 3 days with normal usage  (OHR, no SPO2, no music, activity tracking, 60 minute workout per day, default watch face, no phone notifications, brightness 5% with no gesture). Overnight it would lose 12% to 15% and the battery widget showed it was consistently losing 1.4%+ per hour regardless of how I set it up or how many times I would restart it. 

I used the Garmin Support "chat" feature to talk with an employee who told me that there is a known issue with the 945 battery. They sent me an email with several steps to try to improve battery life (deleting certain files, hard resets, factory resets). None of these suggestions seemed to help so they started a return material authorization case (RMA). The nice thing here is that they sent the replacement 945 prior to shipping them my current one. No lost days! They also had me pull the .garmin file off the watch and email it in so their engineers could try to figure out what it happening.

New watch arrived yesterday - I charged to 100% and set it up with the exact same setup I was running before. I'm currently at 95.6% after 16 hours of use and a 45 minute workout. Battery widget now shows the watch is losing .1% to .25% per hour rather than the 1.4%+ mentioned above.

My point is if you think there's something wrong with your battery, you're probably right and it's worth letting Garmin know. Good luck!

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago

    I have a strange issue with my forerunner 945.  The one I currently have is a replacement from the "mushy buttons" fyi, so it is a newer model.  However, I've noticed that in day to day use, while not as ridiculous as your battery loss, I am still losing roughly 0.5% per hour with no notifications, no SpO2, only wrist HR as well as a stock watch face with no "every second" update.  This allows the watch to last roughly 6-7 days if I was not using it for GPS activity.  

    HOWEVER, this is where it gets weird.  When I am using the GPS, the battery seems to lose noticeably less than my original FR 945, having only lost roughly 7 percent after a 10 mile run as opposed to a 1:1 ratio.  (10% for 10 miles would be normal on the first model I had).  

    Is there a known bug or issue where normal every day use is draining faster than it should, or is mine possibly having internal problems?

  • Thanks for sharing your experience with Garmin support. I have very similar usage to you and also suffering similar battery life, despite trying all the suggestions on this forum. Mine is revision A according to the packaging. I will continue to monitor the discharge rate for the next few charge cycles. If things don't improve I think I will contact Garmin to arrange a replacement. Not sure if they will send a replacement upfront though being in Australia.

  • Did they describe what the issue is with the battery? A dodgy batch in the early builds?

  • No details on what the issue is other than stating they know one exists. 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago
    an employee who told me that there is a known issue with the 945 battery. They sent me an email with several steps to try to improve battery life (deleting certain files, hard resets, factory resets)

    This seems a little odd.  If they acknowledged a known issue with the battery that requires a RMA, what was the point of needlessly emailing you steps to improve battery life?  Why wouldn't they just say there's a known issue and the watch needs to be replaced if this is the case? By having you try different steps suggest you had an unknown battery issue and they weren't sure what the problem was with your watch.  I'm not debating that you didn't have a problem. Because of the actions support took, I'm debating there's a known battery problem as you say you were told. 

  • My wording might have you hung up... they know there is an issue but don't know what the issue is. The three suggested steps were an attempt to solve whatever is going on. 

    I'm on day 5 with the RMA watch - still at 39%. Five workouts logged ranging from 30 to 90 minutes. 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to 9748121

    I think the support rep you had contact with spoke out of turn. If there's no known issue, then it's obvious they shouldn't have said that. If there is a known issue that can't be resolved without a RMA, I'm quite certain there are plenty of shareholders who would like to know since there's no official release from Garmin. Glad to hear the new watch is working out for you. 

  • Wow .. that's pretty impressive ...

  • This is really strange since the typical rma process is to send the defective unit to Garmin before they send a new one  

  • With 3.08 0,063%, this is my record;). With BT&OHR on. No gps activity so far.