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Battery lasting <24 hours

Former Member
Former Member
Yesterday, I charged my VA3 to 100% at 1pm. By 7pm, it turned off at 0%. I had done a 30 minute trail run, the rest of the time GPS was disabled, and it was connected to my phone the entire time, which was in my pocket or on my desk.

I read through the forums and did both a soft and hard reset to the VA3, including unpairing and repairing to my phone.

I charged it back to 100% last night, disconnected it from my phone, and went to sleep. I went to the gym this morning and used it for a 10 minute indoor row (no GPS) plus an hour long strength session.

It's now 12pm and the battery is down to 65%. Is this the expected battery life of the VA3?
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    I have been testing this for about 2 weeks now and am completely convinced it's watchfaces, which Garmin support also agrees with.

    I can literally give examples of faces that are guaranteed to cause your watch to freeze, drain battery, and turn GPS on when indoors.

    Interestingly enough, my favorite face was updated by the developer and works great without any issues. Tried swapping back to the other faces and boom, instant issues. The Garmin stock faces also have zero issues from my use so... I even tried jim_m_58's faces with no issues as credit to him (which is likely why he always chimes in saying there is no way the face is causing an issue.)

    Folks are free to disagree, but I feel it's definitive at this point. You can also read the reviews on CIQ and see the problems people are reporting on the ones that I had issues with lol.


    Which watch faces do you recommend?
  • My battery use is sporadic, from the next charge onwards I'm going to track the usage. Losing 10% battery for a gym workout seems wrong. I don't use rep counting and just leave the app alone. It uses more power than GPS though.

    It will be interesting to see some hard and fast numbers that I'm getting. I will then decide if I'm keeping it or not. The only issue being that I sold my vivoactive hr. That thing had great battery life. Let's hope the next update sorts it out.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    This has just started happening to me. Not changed anything recently and always use the default watch face, but twice now in the last week, the watch has lost its charge in less than a day. Previously it would last a week or more...

    EDIT: And it's just recharged from 0-100% in an hour or so. Is this typical (I usually charge it overnight) or might it be that the VA3 only *thinks* the battery is low, when in fact it has plenty of juice remaining?
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    I always have BT on, and usually I don't see unusual battery drain. However, it seems like if I do an activity (ie cycle or use the broadcast HR) then after the next charge it will see the higher battery usage rate. Unless I do a full reboot (hold the button down) then it will be the &amp;lt;1% usual rate.

    my basic set up is
    default watch face
    BT on
    back light 0%
    gestures/sideswipe off
    HR is on
    smart recording

    but yesterday was weird while I was at work, charged to full at 7 am, at noon was 94%, but at 4pm got a low battery buzz, and looked and it was down to 13% and by the time i got home just after 5pm it was 6%. I didn't do anything, except sit at a desk all day (didn't even come close on my step goal!)

    edit: anyone else notice that the 2.90 Download page isn't linking anymore? i get no software found today??
    http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=12527
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    I've been using the VA3 for the past 2.5 months and the battery life is extremely finicky. It once dropped 50% in 4 hours and I had a dead watch around my wrist for the entire day at work. The best battery life I've been able to squeeze is 5 days during the second week of usage, these days I average around 2.5 days. It has the latest software update. I use the "no frills" watch face and I don't have any other watch face or widget installed. I also contacted Garmin support and opened a case 6 weeks ago and provided all sorts of logs off the watch. Called them last week and was told, the engineers are still looking. The customer service rep did confirm that some VA3 customers are having battery life issues with the VA3 and they haven't been able to figure out if this is a software or hardware issue.

    For comparison purposes, a month ago I bought a Fenix5, the battery life is amazing. I have the same "No frills" watchface and I got 17 days out of it!.. it is even better than advertised. The only downside is that it is 3x more expensive. Incoming whatsapp message behaviour on Fenix5 is weird as it sometimes shows the real message but most of the time just displays the generic message "1 new message", this never happens on the VA3. Lastly, still getting used to the lack of touchscreen, I find the buttons a bit odd.

    I wish they had a VA3 with Fenix5 form factor and battery life + touchscreen... but for now the Fenix5 stays and VA3 goes back to Costco.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    How is the Fenix5 as a watch? Can you wear it in the boardroom (if you have a boardroom) or does it attract "Action Man" comments? One of the main reasons I bought the VA3 was that it could pass as an ordinary watch.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago

    I got the 47MM slate grey with black band Fenix5 and to be honest it doesn't look much bigger than a VA3. My wife didn't notice it for an entire day!. After I told her that this is a new watch, she commented that yes she thought it looked a bit dull (my VA3 is steel). The 51MM Fenix5x or my friend's Fenix3HR would definitely give an "Action Man" look :)
  • Trust me, your wife may not have noticed it on your wrist but she would have found out when she saw the extra $$ spent on the credit card! ;)

    To the point, I tried a Suunto sport wrist trainer -- which I'm pretty sure is less weight and size than F5 -- and I definitely noticed this. For me, VA3 is as big a watch without the "action man" look. But that's all subjective and you should just test/try for yourself. (I will also say I returned the Suunto b/c screen visibility was horrible).
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    Thanks. To be fair, my wife is cool about stuff like this, but I'm not so sure about my clients. The VA3 fits under shirt-cuffs (just) and doesn't look at all macho.

    The problem I have have with the Fenix range is that they are specialty items, while the VA3 I was able to try on in a High Street shop. I really want to make sure this technology really works for me in the long term, before committing more money to it.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 7 years ago
    What kind of co-workers or clients do you people have that would make comments such as action man or macho and more importantly, why would you care? Is this some kind of corporate dress code?