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Is the Forerunner 955 Solar worth it, or should I consider another model or brand? Update: 955 Solar purchased! Battery life impressions inside! :D

tiku
over 1 year ago

Hello everyone. I'm looking for a replacement for my old Forerunner 645 Music, and I'm looking for the Forerunner with the most autonomy that best suits my watch uses, both for daily use and for 2-3 hours of GPS with music per week.

And I have a candidate, the 955 Solar.

But I have doubts about the autonomy, and I would like to ask you.

I want to ask you two basic questions:

  1. I would like the battery in smartwatch mode to last about 20 days. This would mean a consumption of 5% per day.

    I don't want notifications or similar. Just clock, steps, and HR. That's enough for me.

    I have seen around here, in the "Battery consumption: initial observations?" thread, thanks to the contributions of mates like @derek87 or @FlipStone (thanks so much, dudes!), that there are even people who have only a drain of 3-4% per day. Or at least it was like that.

    Are there still people with that consumption? Do they really exist?

  2. The Battery Saver mode would help me a lot to not be aware of the battery for many more days, but in battery saver mode, are steps, FR, and sleep tracked?

    Because one option would be to leave the watch always in battery saver mode and, if this mode counts the metrics I want, remove it only for my 2-3 hours of weekly GPS.

  3. This more than a question is something I have almost decided. I think I will go for the 955 Solar since I live in a VERY sunny place, and as soon as there is a sale on the model I will surely appreciate the small battery boosts. And more so because my GPS runs are with music, which consumes more, and I would somehow try to balance that fact.

As you can see, my main concern is to see if there are people, as I have read here (but with other older firmwares), that, with a simple configuration of the 955, have a battery consumption of only 3-4% per day.

If so, because that's what I'm most interested in, I'll start looking for the watch soon.

But many times reading the forum, with all the battery problems, it's scary to invest so much money if it will not last long. And, furthermore, the 255 Music is another good option (although the GPS mode with music falls almost 4 hours compared with the 955)...

Many, MANY thanks to all in advance :)

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Forerunner 955 Solar received! :D :D

    Currently on firmware 12.29. First I will do the tests on this firmware, to see the consumption after the first 24 hours, and then I will value update if I see that it consumes more than I would like :)

    By the way, I was pretty surprised to see that few official watch faces allow hiding the seconds, as I did not want the screen to be updated frequently.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Well... I guess the "fault" was mine for connecting it to the PC for charging. But it seems to have transferred, "thanks" to Garmin Express, the latest 13.23 firmware.

    I've selected not to install it now, to install it "later", but I guess I won't be able to test the 12.xx firmware much :___(

    By the way, one of the first things I notice about this firmware is that I've turned off notifications... but I get them and they vibrate every time. And I'm getting EVERYTHING that comes into the mobile, it's crazy, hahaha. I have notifications disabled on the watch and Connect. I guess it's a bug that many suffered from a few months ago.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to tiku

    I have had all the FW versions (incl 14.08 Beta) and the battery life (Ok I have the non solar) have been largely similar through out. There was an issue with the BT / ALL at one stage but that was easily sorted in my case by forgetting the device , removing the app and redoing the pairing. I have SPO2 at night, gesture backlight at 40% during day and 5% at night , notifications on and do approx 1 hour of full GPS activity daily and I average around 0.5% per hour over a 24 hour period. Full GPS consumes approx 6% per hour in my use case.

    Also have you done the "hold light button in until the watch powers down fully , then after say 20s restart it".

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to tiku

    I tried it on 14.08 just now to see and I dont get any notifications if smart notification in General use are off. Ive had it on on all other FW versions so cant comment on those.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to S.M.R.

    I think I solved it :-)

    I deleted the widget and even then the notifications still came through. I went back to settings, notifications, turned them back on, and then went into each sub-menu and turned them off one by one. After that, they stopped coming :)

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    First battery impressions (firmware 12.29)

    Short summary: Happy. Very happy :-)

    Detailed summary: Consumption is extremely low. Even lower than expected. At least so far.

    First of all, I have blocked the installation of any other firmware with a dummy file, so that I can test this firmware with no rush.

    I went for a run yesterday with 99% battery. Approx. 50 minutes run, where the backlight turned on a lot because the gesture is much better (more sensitive) than on my beloved 645 Music.

    I got home with 95%. I think it's a good consumption.

    95% -> at 19:12, when I finished the run (full GPS, no multiband)

    94% -> At 23:35

    93% -> Right now. It's 10:14 here in Europe

    So from 23:35 to 10:14, almost 11 hours, the battery is down only 1%. I think that's really amazing.

    I have notifications turned off, pulseox, bluetooth is turned ON (on the mobile I usually "kill" Garmin Connect when I have consulted the data I want), Heart Rate is always ON, and touchscreen off.

    So at a glance, I get almost 11 hours with 1% consumption. The estimate is really good.

    I'll keep you posted! :D

    By the way, I don't know if the Sleep Mode also affects consumption, for the better?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to tiku

    And how do you feel about using the FR955? I'm still thinking about to buy it, but after reading this forum, I'm more and more reluctant to buy it. I have not been able to damage my watch for almost 7 years (Polar M400), but I need something new to analyze my health and training recovery. There was nothing to break in this watch and the software was quite simple without errors and I wonder what to expect here with FR955. Will it be a purchase for years or just for a while?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 6770200

    I've had the FR955S since the week it was released. I put a screen protector on the face of the watch. That's received a few little scratches but has done its job. The body of the watch is unmarked so far.

    Garmin tend to support their watches for a few years after release. For instance, the 245 and 945 are still getting updates.

    I had a vivoactive3 for two years and initially it had buggy software and would crash and reboot in the middle of an activity. It had already been out on the market for a year or more by the time I bought it. This problem was fixed in an update after a few months. The 955 will be the same. Bugs will (eventually) get fixed.

    I've never had the FR955 crash during an activity. I've been very lucky in that the problems that have occurred on mine have only been minor ones.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to tiku

    Glad you're enjoying the watch! Sleep mode should lower consumption because it's the most minimal screen you can have (static unless the minute is changing as there's nothing else that can be updated dynamically). In reality it's not a huge difference if you're already using a stock Garmin digital watchface with no seconds update and no fields that update rapidly like HR. The main use for sleep mode is to give additional guidance to the watch that you're sleeping. The watch can only detect one block of sleep per day, and I think a large part of the detection is based on the watch being in sleep mode. The watch will detect sleep near your user-defined sleep window even if the watch isn't in sleep mode (about an hour I think). You might confuse the watch if you have it in sleep mode all day (though I haven't personally tried this).

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    i'm glad to hear you are pleased with your purchase. i do think with our usage patterns, you should see reasonable battery drain (1% is probably a bit on the low side for 11 hours, but time will tell, but having no seconds or other data fields on your watch face should bode well for battery conservation)

    i'm surprised at your 12.29 firmware because at least for the rest of us, that version never existed. the last 12.XX version i recall was 12.25