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Battery consumption: initial observations?

i know it's probably way to early to start this discussion, but i figure crowd sourcing may yield some insights. in short, after very disappointing battery use, in particular smart watch mode endurance on my 945LTE, i have been hyperaware of how much battery use my 955 Solar is using. just overnight (8-9 hours), i was surprised to see it dropped 3-4%. it may be that the battery gauge is poorly calibrated, but so far, even though one would guess it has a larger battery than the 945LTE, i'm finding consumption not very different.

on the positive side, for my one activity so far, a 70 minute run with Multiband+All satellites, i used up 6% which right on target with spec. (basically zero sun since i ran before and just as the sun was coming up).

i'd love to hear other people's impressions and experiences as some of you have had the watch (just a bit ;) ) longer.

  • Shall do , Yip 10.10.  - 10 10 good buddy :-)

  • in my experience. you need to press the "light" button to power it back on after holding down the button 30 seconds. it's been my assumption that the 30 second hold do creates a full power down of the watch operating system so that it fully reboots when you power up.

  • keep us posted and hopefully consumption will come down for you.

    one side comment: some people on the 945LTE forum complained about one source of battery consumption was a ANT+ device failing to disconnect after an activity. i only had that happen once with a Chest HR monitor on an older firmware.

  • btw, i did out of curiosity look at the Titanium watch face. i saw one reviewer noting it was a battery hog, using 2x a factory watch face. so that may be a large explanation for the poor performance you are seeing. sad, especially considering its a Garmin watch face.

  • In my case (945lte), the consumption of the battery continue even after shutdown the watch and start it again some minutes before. The battery consumption is what it is, 8-10% per hour. Reading this topic, the 955 has the same problem. Very tired of Garmin I'm (Yoda says).

    Did you want more battery? shutdown OHR, Move IQ, activity monitor and so on... Then and only then, you obtained near 18-20 days. I'm thinking in brand change.

  • i didn't want to spam the other forum, but i'm wondering if Fenix 7 folks are seeing the battery life in smartwatch mode as specified by Garmin. as i said before, i don't have enough data yet on the 955. they clearly state what they used in their specification, so it surprising it can't be realized in real life. others on the 945TE have posted that they were told Garmin is working on a fix. but i'm not holding my breathe.

    for my 945LTE, with a good watch face (1hz HR and seconds) that goes into a lower powered mode overnight (slower updates), i was getting close to the specified 14 day smartwatch usage. factor watch face though was closer to 11-12 days.

    i'm a little more hopeful based on limited data with my 955 Solar, but again, i'll need to use it for a few more weeks to get reliable data. the 955 at least doesn't seem to plummet as fast for the first 10-12% like the 945LTE but we'll see how linear the battery depletion is as i use the watch more in the "lower range."

  • I tested the F7 basic, tired of garmin's mistreatment of the 945lte. The F7's battery works great, 4% per day. I mean:

    F7 battery from manual: 18 days. 24h drain = 3-4%

    945LTE battery from manual: 14 days. 24 drain = 8-10%

    These are my numbers. 10 months suffer this battery from 945lte.

    I've returned the F7 because is a joke that only 4 months after its release Garmin launch a 300€ watch with better hardware, more capacity and dual band than a disccounted F7 at 550€

    I'm going to undersell the 945lte and suffer the brand Polar for a season. Maybe with the  "F7 PRO" Garmin fixed something, or maybe not.

  • wow, that is striking to see the f7 numbers. is that for the same watch face as the 945LTE? if so, that shows some really poor engineering on Garmin's FR945LTE team because the hardware should be very similar and burn the same amount. the 4%/day is phenomenal and extrapolates to 25 days... i could get that on my old 935 without 1hz HR and seconds showing, but with 1hz HR and seconds, i found 6%/day very acceptable and what i would expect with both the 945LTE and 955. 

    again, the jury is still out on the 955 but i have cautious hope that i may be seeing close to 6%/day burn rate using the Coros Apex Like watch face which is 1hz refreshing seconds and HR, but also has a nifty low powered mode (reduces refresh rate) during sleeping hours. as i said before, stay tuned. i don't want to jump to conclusions so quickly. i probably won't test with stock watch faces because i like the third party ones i've found.

    (and the 945LTE made itself look much worse early on burning about 10-12% the first day of smartwatch usage, but tails down to an average of 8-9% after i'm down to about 20-30%  capacity left. (this is using the stock watch face with seconds and HR updating every second)