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What's your typical battery life?

I posted about 10 days ago that I got a new 645 music and found the battery less than desirable. I had an instance of losing approximately 40% battery in a few hours. Subsequent to that I was losing around 20% per day with minimal use. I contacted Garmin and they suggested I send the unit back as it may not be working properly. I hate to do that if it's not necessary. Since battery sometimes improves with time, I decided to stick with it for a bit before making my decision to send back or not.

Here's what I am experiencing. I fully charged my watch Thursday morning at 10am. Today is Sunday 2pm. I am at 33%. For reference I have completed a 2 hour bike ride, 1 hour yoga, and 2 30 minute runs during that time. I have only intermittently been wearing the watch as I have another activity tracker I wear regularly. I am planning a long run today and would bet that it's very close to needing to charge by tonight. So basically I am getting about 3.5-4 days per charge. This seems pretty poor to me.

So how many days between charges are others getting?

0 ares952 over 6 years ago

dominicshields I'm talking about battery drain in non-activity mode. I'm looking at about 22-30% per 24 hours, meaning the watch lasts about 3-4 days without any GPS activity.
I have Bluetooth on, 24H HR, step tracking.

This wasn't the case before, and happened recently within one day and not gradually. Before that I would lose around 10-12% per 24 hours.

As you mentioned, normal is about 0,5%/hour without an activity. I had similar issue probably caused by some of used widgets or the number of used widgets. Since I am using only 3 widgets and no connect IQ apps, I have no such problem. Yes, the watch froze few times, but I can live with it.

Just create a ticket on the support. They need to know about it, otherwise they will not fix it in the future.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

dominicshields I'm talking about battery drain in non-activity mode. I'm looking at about 22-30% per 24 hours, meaning the watch lasts about 3-4 days without any GPS activity.
I have Bluetooth on, 24H HR, step tracking.

This wasn't the case before, and happened recently within one day and not gradually. Before that I would lose around 10-12% per 24 hours.

I'm talking about what I experience how I use it (switched on the whole time) as that is more realistic in terms of real-world use.

0 CoffeeU over 6 years ago

The battery life tracks the specs for me. But one needs to read carefully what that is. The 7 days is with activity tracking (I believe that they mean specifically non-gps activity tracking since they specify gps life elsewhere) and notifications and HR. I actually find this conservative. 7 days, means one should lose about 14% per day of non-gps non-music. On my 645 (not M) see 9-11% disappear for me on a typical day, meaning if I did not gps tracking I could probably get 10 days. During this winter, where I did a lot of indoor biking via zwift, charging weekly wasn't a problem.

For GPS+wrist activity mode, they say up to 14 hours. That means a bit over 7% per hour. I suspect that's with smart tracking turned on instead of every second recording. With every second recording turned on, I lose 10-12% battery per hour (I have gps+galileo configured). With smart recording turned on, I lose 6-8% per hour, which is in line with what they say.

Music? They say up to 5 hours for gps+music, meaning expect to lose 20% per hour. so 40% in "hours" (plural) seems quite likely. non-gps music is up to 8 hours, so expect 12-13% per hour for just playing music. A bit over 3 hours of music should lose 40% of battery. I don't have the music version, so I can't comment on actual life.

Because I usually have a minimum of 1 hour activity tracking, per day, that means I'm losing at least 9-11% + 10-12% per day. That's 19-23% of battery. And I try to not charge past 80%, and charge before I'm under 20%. So I charge every 2-3 days. On weekends, I tend to have 4-6 hours of tracking, so given how I try to keep my watch charge level I'm often charging daily.

So yes, I usually don't get anywhere near "7 days" , but all of my actual battery life tracks with what the specs are, given that I do gps tracked events which is higher battery. Pay attention to your hourly usage, compared with what you're doing, instead of thinking about days without considering what one did.

0 Olhado22 over 6 years ago

Aside from the obvious (music and GPS), I found the biggest battery hog was phone alerts. This is in no doubt due to me having an iPhone and also using things like Slack heavily at work. Without alerts, I am at 94% right now, having worn my watch fo ~9-10 hours today.

0 R_Tellis over 6 years ago

Recording mode (smart vs 1 second) doesn’t affect battery life. Smart recording saves info at 3-5 second intervals but the GPS radio is still operating at 1Hz which is where the battery drain comes from. Writing to the file has minimal energy requirements so how often it saves doesn’t impact battery life.

0 jorrupi over 6 years ago

My experience,

Mountain marathon, 6h 33min and only 49% consumed (51% available) - my trick: GPS only, no light, no vibration, no automatic-lap, no changing screen. It predicts almost 13h which is a good value for running small ultratrails and most of the mountain marathons.

Link to activity: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3512954204

0 Labronico over 6 years ago

I get my stats from "MyBattery", which is super useful. On idle (notifications ON all the time and custom watch face) i get approx 0.33%/hour.
When running (GPS+Galileo and 1-sec chest strap reading) I loose 8-9%/hour.
When hiking with dwmaps the battery drain is closer to 8%/hour as well.

So definitely more than satisfied with my 645 battery life.
One thing I quickly realized is that if you unplug the watch as soon as it reaches 100% of charge you get super fast draining in the first hours of usage, as if the original percentage was in fact a lie.
I usually leave the watch in charge for 20-30' after the 100% threshold to keep a more predictive trend on battery draining.

0 Argael over 6 years ago

I get my stats from "MyBattery", which is super useful. On idle (notifications ON all the time and custom watch face) i get approx 0.33%/hour.
When running (GPS+Galileo and 1-sec chest strap reading) I loose 8-9%/hour.
When hiking with dwmaps the battery drain is closer to 8%/hour as well.

So definitely more than satisfied with my 645 battery life.
One thing I quickly realized is that if you unplug the watch as soon as it reaches 100% of charge you get super fast draining in the first hours of usage, as if the original percentage was in fact a lie.
I usually leave the watch in charge for 20-30' after the 100% threshold to keep a more predictive trend on battery draining.

Could we have a link to "My Battery" app?
I cannot find it in the store.
Thanks!

0 Labronico over 6 years ago

Could we have a link to "My Battery" app?
I cannot find it in the store.
Thanks!

I sorry: when moving to the widget it quickly shows a "MyBattery" label, buy the actual name is "Battery Widget" on the store.
https://apps.garmin.com/it-IT/apps/a9c9b981-1f4c-4399-a270-7d6c7317893e

0 jkissane_ over 6 years ago

I fully charged the watch on Fri night, was wearing it overnight & then ran a marathon on Sat (3:38 was the time) using a HR strap & Stryd footpod. Wore it again overnight on Sat & checked this morning & it was at 57% charge.