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Real battery life

Cuba1hr
over 1 year ago

How much battery does your FR955 loses per hour during an outside activity?

FR955 Solar With All systems or Auto-Select I am just over 6% (previous watch) and now with the new one (4 times charged total) in GPS only it looses about 5-6% per hour running with BT HRM,  light off, FW 14.20.

Bike - GPS only, 6% per hour with BT HRM, cadence sensor and varia radar connected and with 80-90% solar intensity...and about 10 cars detected/alerts total. No map or navigation. That is way off from the official claims - that would be 16-17 hours total in GPS only (OK, with 3 sensors) with full battery. GPS with OHR is claimed up to 42 hours for ordinary 955...What I get is about 2.5 times less than claimed...

Without activity I could get 2 (or just over) weeks...if no drains, but I wasn't inactive that long since the new watch arrived. I have a feeling that a previous 9 months old watch had a bit better battery life.

Is my way off or you get the similar results?

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Also this - no way:

    https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/garmin-forerunner-955-solar-review/

    "My experience testing for the better part of two months has met or beat Garmin’s estimates above; I typically saw around 2% battery usage per hour of multi-band GPS tracking."

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    No problems meeting the estimations of Garmin. I had two times a week of exact monitoring with normal use/sleep/running with Music/running without music. The results were just slightly different than the Garmin estimates during a whole week. Be aware of 3rd party connect apps and some watch faces. 

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to DaKo

    I use 2 CIQ things - for Run:

    Run Multi (https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/698dda7d-ebf9-4750-a065-8b876a3dd6c6) and Flipstone's Battery Info Field

    For Bike/MTB:

    No-Signal AK MTB (https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/48980675-1252-42cc-8737-1a6141709d80) and Flipstone's Battery Info Field.

    Watchface is Quatro, but it shouldn't matter during the activity and it has low refresh rate, none of the fields refresh under 1 minute.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Cuba1hr

    Running without music for me is 6-8%, with music playback it is 11-12% per hour. I would say it meets your experience of 6% per hour. Your cycling experience is probably way of because of the BT connections. Probably more comparable to "Activity mode with GPS Only mode, wrist-based heart rate, and music playback" which has 10,5 hours battery life. You could figure it out by unselecting the external devices and measure battery life again.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    i haven't done plain GPS in a while, but it was under 3%/hour. i typically use All Satellites and it burns a smidge over 3% per hour. on the few occasions i used Multiband, it was 5-6%/hour.

    i'm using an ANT+ HRM and nothing else.

    this is consistent throughout the different firmwares. i find Auto-Select uses more than All Satellites, so i've stuck to All Satellites and been very happy with instantaneous pace and tracking.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Typically my FR955 solar uses about 5% per hour (maybe a tiny bit less than that when it's sunny out) which is pretty much in line with Garmin's estimates. No backlight, no music, multiband GPS, with a Polar H10 connected via ANT+. It's been pretty consistent for the past 5 months.

    I used SatIQ for the first few runs, but switched because I didn't notice a significant improvement in battery life, but mainly because the SatIQ tracks are noticeably coarser than the multiband tracks.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to derek87

    I don't have ANT+ HRM, but I guess bluetooth should consume less than wrist HR. Most of my run/bike activities are in not dense forest/open, clear sky roads. I will do the test in next couple of days/weeks like they stated/tested in the manual, maybe with new firmware.

    Does anyone know if Flipstone Battery Info field has significant impact on battery life?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Cuba1hr

    It shouldn't but actually never measured/checked... There;s hardly any redrawing, only thing is writing to the fit file but that also should be minimal.

    Best is to put it on a screen which is not displayed all the time btw (saves battery wrt redrawing).

    But I'll actually look at the code to check if it might be easily optimizable somehow ;)

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to FlipStone

    Got back from biking. Wasn't sure if I will end up somewhere in the forest so I used Auto Select (All systems or GPS would also be fine)...so 19% in 2:30 (in fact 3:37 total with pauses) + battery drain after the activity (turned off sensors and put it in the airplane mode...activity not synced then). Had to do a "long press".

    Must try All systems AND GPS only next time and without sensors and no pauses.

    I am not sure why it had quite enough time with over 7% and then it stabilized at about 5,5%.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I did a marathon back in October so with FW version 13 I think? Including the warm up run I used 23% of battery in 4hrs including Multiband, Ant+ HRM Pro, live track and navigation and still connected to my phone and displaying a few messages. 

    Yesterday I did a 4hr ride and with SatIQ, HRM and power meter ist used about 20% w/o navigation or live in track