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Battery life

Hello

I have done my first ultratrail of 110km with 7000+ meters and I'm pretty dissapointed with the watch. When using the track on navigation, this watch does not last enough for these kind of courses. I'im my case the battery lasted about 12 hours (of the 20 hours I was running). Now I'm thinking of doing a 100 mile course (170km) and I need to think in something to have the track all the time.

I have seen that the watch can be charged during the race but putting the charging cable while you are wearing the watch is very unconfortable. Why the *** someone decided to put the connector in that place?

I can say that I have 2 friends with the Suunto 9 doing extremely long races races without anyking of problem. I understand that Suunto's is a newer watch designed specially for ultra endurance, but I expected more from my Garmin. I have the watch for more than one year. Everything is perfect if you don't run ultra distance.

0 Striff... over 6 years ago

I hear you, the Fenix 3 I had before going to the 935, used a charge plate so you could at least wear the watch and charge at the same time.

I've got a 50km trail run coming and I intend to do the following.
Wear it as normal until 10% battery, and also wearing the HRM Tri strap.
Then attached a small battery brick with extension USB to the Garmin Charge cable.
Attach watch to somewhere on the running vest, where I can tilt it upwards to still read the watch when needed.

0 mcalista over 6 years ago

Certainly my experience has been that battery life is pretty close to spec.

But the settings you use can have a big impact on battery run times:

* Backlight. Each 10% of backlight uses about 1.5% of battery per hour. So use the minimum backlight you can (10-20% is normally fine), shorten the timeout, and set buttons and gesture to After Sunset.
* GPS+GLONASS or GPS+Gallileo use significantly more than GPS alone.
* Re-rendering the map screen takes processor power, so by all means flick to that screen when at a trail junction, but don't use the map display as your main screen. If you want casual confirmation that you are on track, try the Heading Bug.
* Using an external HR strap will save reduce the power required for the OHR LED's (although I understand how some people prefer not to use this).
* Disconnect your phone and other non-essential sensors.

But a 20 hour event is going to come uncomfortably close to spec (especially as an event this length is almost guaranteed to require some backlight), and likely some charging will be required. But I disagree with the suggestion of waiting until it gets to 10% - a better approach is to give it 5-10 minutes charge at each aid station (when you don't need the HR/navigation data anyway).

0 FlipStone over 6 years ago

Without context (other settings such as brightness, etc) there's not much to be concluded, but if I understand correctly you were using navigation on the watch? As in, displayed a track to follow and used it (almost) all the time? That would impact battery life pretty hard yeah I'd say.

For me it lasts about 20 hrs on GPS, this is with simple running, smart recording, gps only, backligth only when flipping wrist (and not even during daytime I think). The 24 hrs from the specs are the 'in an ideal situation' which it never is.

About the Suunto, are they using it in 'normal' mode? Or ultra, as that is kind of comparable to the garmin ultratac... Though perhaps better usable. But if accurate tracking isn't a big issue for you you could try ultratac.

And to add to that:

The suunto 9 is released about half a year ago, the fr935 about 2 yrs
The suunto 9 is 50x50x17mm, the fr935 47x47x14mm

This all also explains (part) of it...