Forerunner 970 battery drain overnight

Hi all,

I bought a new FR970 yesterday afternoon, upgrading from a FR945LTE that served me well for more than three years.

When I switched on the watch for the first time I remember that battery was at 68% (even if I'm not sure about the exact value).

I spent the evening pairing and setting up the watch, I played a bit with it and went to bed around 23:30 with the battery level still well above 50% (I didn't pay attention to the exact value).

This morning when I woke up around 6:00 the watch was dead. After connecting the charger and starting it, I got the morning report indicating a sleep time until 5:00, which I guess is the time when it went off.

I'm now charging it to 100% and I will pay attention to the battery drain during the day.

I'm a bit worried as I can't imagine any setting that can drain more than 50% battery in less than 6hrs overnight.

Any idea? Should I already contact the support?

  • Nice , where did you get it?

    Give it time it takes a while for a watch and battery to settle see what happens over the next day. In fact I seem to recall it suggest to charge fully somewhere when you receive the device.

    Did you do a soft reset after all the fiddling?  Hold in light button until watch shuts off completely by itself then restart after say 15 sec

  • Garmin Shop in Munich :-)

    This morning after charging to 100% I received software update 6.16. I installed it and rebooted. Now it shows 98%.

    I have very weak wifi signal in the bedroom, maybe the watch was trying to download the data the whole night, I wonder if this might explain the issue.

    Apart this issue the watch is really nice, a huge improvement compared to the 945LTE

  • The battery drain during the second night was 2%. I think it's a reasonable value, consistent with the 15 days of autonomy in smartwatch mode.

  • This happened to me last night. Took my watch off the charger at 6pm with 93% battery. Woke up at 5.30am the next morning and it had dropped to 54%, so almost 40% lost in less than 12 hours. 

  • I confirm that in my case the issue happened only the first night.

    Last full charge Saturday evening and this morning (Wednesday) the battery level is 61%.

    39% battery consumption in 3 and half days including two runs (about 1hr each, with automatic GPS settings and music streaming).

    I think it's in line with specs.