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Getting a handle on Battery Impacts

So I know there are a bunch of battery threads already but the point of this one is to try to understand the impact of certain known features on battery life cycles.

For example, Garmin states that the 945 should get about 10 hours of life with both GPS and Music playing through a Bluetooth connection.  I've pretty well corroborated that assertion on my own over countless runs with music where I use battery at a rate of about 10% per hour.

Has anyone been able to substantiate battery drain standards for any of these other scenarios?

- Carrying a phone thus a constant Bluetooth connection

- 1 sec recording vs "Smart" recording

- Navigating a course with a map field included in available data fields.

- Navigating a course withOUT a map field included in available data fields.

- Using a Map field as an available data field but NOT Navigating a course.

- Climbpro?

- Autoclimb?

- Certain CIQ data fields?  Such as:  Stryd power?  The many multifield datafields like Datarun etc.

adding a few others after the original post:

- GPS vs GPS+Glonass or GPS+Galileo

- On board HRM vs External HRM

- Using a CIQ Watchface (but not having it displayed in the activity - strange I know, but I suspect it has an impact)

  • also intersted in this....

  • Looking forward to the results from your testing.

  • You run with music and get through 10% an hour. Why are you worried about the difference between smart and 1 sec recording, which is unlikely to have a measurable impact on battery life? And even if it does have an impact, it will be nothing compared to listening to music.

    If you want to investigate however you could use my battery monitor datafield which writes battery data to the FIT file. The problem is of course that I do not know how much extra battery it uses to monitor battery usage.

    https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/84104c99-6ad2-4bcb-8537-8bfb6d141089

    However, I think the best thing to do is to establish a ballpark figure for the particular configurations you regularly use and then see how that compares to your maximum length activities. If running with music gets through 10% an hour but you never run longer than an hour and a half (or eight hours for that matter) then it is never going to be an issue. Isn't that all you need to know?

  • i use data fields All In One and FIT battery

    GPS every second - GPS + GLONASS

    occasionally i view a map as i run (not in a data field)

    occasionally i use watch to control music on phone - headphones BT to phone, not watch

    watch BT connected to phone all the time with the occasional notification / sms received

    i get between 4% - 7% per hour - normally around 6%

  • Hi,in my case smart GPS, systems GPS and Glonass. Also if full screen map with navigation on prepared track for the most time was used,the consumption was the same - close to 4-5% per hour. Observated on 6hours mtb ride.

  • Using the Power Manager on my Fenix 6 Pro (similar battery life specs to the 945), it estimates turning off phone with BT as adding 2 hours over the baseline 36 hours.

    Smart v 1 sec is really about file size, not power consumption (definitely an issue with earlier watches with limited memory).

    Constantly re-rendering the map screen as you go along is very processor and battery intensive. I don't have exact numbers, but leaving the map as your main display could reduce battery life by 1/3. If you have it as a secondary datapage, and just scroll to it when you want to do a navigation check (eg. at a trail junction), it will use far less power.

    Autoclimb shouldn't use any more power, it just changes which datafields are displayed while climbing.

    CIQ datafields vary significantly. Depends on the complexity of the display. Graphical displays, complex layout, complicated equations will all use more battery than a simple single CIQ datafield.

  • Why are you worried about the difference between smart and 1 sec recording, which is unlikely to have a measurable impact on battery life?

    Well I wouldn't say I was "worried" about it, I just listed it as a scenario that I'd like to know about.  Sounds like you already know, thanks for the info.

  • Using the Power Manager on my Fenix 6 Pro (similar battery life specs to the 945), it estimates turning off phone with BT as adding 2 hours over the baseline 36 hours.

    Very helpful post, thanks.  Power Manager would make judging some of these scenarios much easier.

  • Wasn't there some talk of the power manager coming to the 945 as an update? I think that would be an interesting addition. Anyone know more about this?

    FWIW, running with podcasts/music costs about 10% battery per hour, so I'm glad to see that this is normal (my first watch with on-board music capability)

  • There were rumors but not from a valid source unfortunately.  I don't think DC Rainmaker ever committed that actual feature when he posted/tweeted about Fenix 6 features coming to the 945 some months ago.