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GPS Battery life: No way 13 hours!

Ramvivoactivehr
over 7 years ago
I just did a 22 km outdoor run over 3.5 hours with breaks & pauses over the weekend. I noticed that the battery life dropped by 50% exactly. I don't have the side swipe enabled & my brightness is at 10% but do have gesture lighting on for activities alone.

There is no way this watch is going to last 13 hours with GPS. I think it will barely last a 6 hour marathon forget a longer ultra or a hike. Wondering if anybody has had a different experience & may it is just my watch?

I am on a VA3 with v2.60 bought about 3 weeks ago.
  • 0 over 7 years ago


    i use chest strap, before each activity i turn off the wrist HR and connect the external strap ,when i am finished i turn OFF the external strap so it doesnt look for it. I also turned off side swap and gesture, which are both useless imo. backlight 30% is enough as well. Regarding the watch faces from IQ store, some of them do drain a lot of power tbh...But still i usually get 4 days now with 5-6h worth of activities without gps( mostly gym) or 6h in GPS mode that about it.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Real World Update with comparison:

    Ran a 50K race this past weekend and had a watch on each arm (630 Lft and VA3 Rt). Both were fully charged as of 4am that morning. Temps were 12 degrees and both watches seemed to function normally. By the end 4h15m run time the battery showed the following:

    VA3 (GPS/HRM)
    53% or 12.5% per hour

    FR630 (GPS)
    67% or 8% per hour

    That puts the theoretical battery life of the VA3 to be ~8.5hrs using GPS and HR.

    While somewhat pleased with the battery performance across the miles a new wrinkle surfaced. The accuracy of the GPS in the VA3 was less than stellar check point to check point. By the end, it was a full 1.2miles off.
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Hi All,

    I just got my VA3 for Christmas, so around 2 weeks use so far. I am getting pretty bad battery life and I am not sure if I have dud hardware or something under my control or my expectations are out. My VA3 is basically running out of the box settings except I have loaded the Garmin Titanium watch face. I used a garmin watch face as I figured it would be unlikely to effect battery life as much. If I do no activities and just wear it as a normal watch 24/7 (with minimal playing with smart features), I use about 30% per day meaning I have to charge after 3 days. I have not done many GPS acticities yet, but the few short activities I have done have taken a hit of around 10% on battery level in around 30 minutes.

    So should I change some settings, or is this normal or do I contact Garmin about swapping it over for a different unit. I would like to get at least 5 days out of it when used as a watch ideally.

    Appreciate any advice!!

    Cheers!
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Sometimes the VA3 looses 5%-10% per hour on idle, sometimes 1%.
    One day I doesn´t event recognize using GPS, the other day I charge before and after a 3h activity.

    Like other parts of the Firmware, I expect some bugs, which may drain the battery very hard. And from what I read here, the devices seem to differ on hardware side, as well.

    Last week I was Skiing, with the appropriate app activated for about 8 hours straight. And I lost 35% of power, which was great!
  • 0 over 7 years ago
    Real World Update with comparison:

    Ran a 50K race this past weekend and had a watch on each arm (630 Lft and VA3 Rt). Both were fully charged as of 4am that morning. Temps were 12 degrees and both watches seemed to function normally. By the end 4h15m run time the battery showed the following:

    VA3 (GPS/HRM)
    53% or 12.5% per hour

    FR630 (GPS)
    67% or 8% per hour

    That puts the theoretical battery life of the VA3 to be ~8.5hrs using GPS and HR.

    While somewhat pleased with the battery performance across the miles a new wrinkle surfaced. The accuracy of the GPS in the VA3 was less than stellar check point to check point. By the end, it was a full 1.2miles off.

    Same thing here, when using only GPS (no Glonass) the GPS cuts lot of corners on V3 i imagine that on 50k run it adds up.
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Consistently getting, 20% for every hour of bike activity. Using wahoo HR, Garmin speed and cadence sensors. This give me only 5 hours of GPS activity.
    i am checking with normal usage default Garmin face, and I am getting 3% for 7 hours.
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    I exchanged my VA3 for a new unit. The new unit has much better battery performance. Normal watch use (no GPS) is around 15% per day which is about half of before. A half hour ride to work this morning used about 3%. I should get 4-5 days with my normal usage patterns which is what I was hoping for. Admittedly I have not installed any IQ apps on yet. I will run it a few weeks as is and gauge battery performance and then add my preferred watch face to see the difference.
  • 0 over 5 years ago

    I know this thread is old... but I think it's still pertinent. After experiencing similar battery drain issues, I decided to do a definitive study on how much battery I could get out of the watch.

    So far, I've only tested a single battery cycle, but I was able  to get 207 hours on my VA3. That's over 8 days!

    Most everything was set to defaults. The only changes I made were limiting brightness and gestures. I also removed several widgets. (See notes in the picture below)

    Here's the data from this test.

    I think that the most important thing to note (aside from the battery life) is that the [%] readings on the watch are not always accurate. When it says you have 1% left, you may still have as much as 5%.

    I'm now working on similar tests to determine the effects of HR, bluetooth, and GPS on battery life. Will report back with findings in a week or so.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Ken

    Okay, I tried testing the battery with GPS and found very inconsistent results. I think it's because I was testing at home, in the office, and everywhere in between. GPS reception was spotty in some locations and good in others, and my 'activity level' changed daily. So, I had to get creative and devise a more controlled test. I couldn't just sit the watch in a window, since it detects a lack of motion and logs less data. And without being on my wrist, it detects that and stops measuring heart rate.  To counter that, I now have a jig that moves to keep it 'active' and a simulated heartbeat to keep the optical heart rate monitor enabled. I'm in the midst of more testing, but I can say for sure that the battery can in fact get 13 hours in GPS mode and it should get at least 7 days without GPS. More details to follow -  have a few more tests to run!

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Ken

    TLDR:
    * Each feature contributes to battery drain (see report at end)
    * Battery drain is irrevocably linked to your usage patterns.
    * A bad GPS signal expedites battery drain
    * HR uses less battery when Activity Monitor is enabled.
    ____________________

    In the first week, I had to charge the VA3 twice. I got about 4 days of watch mode, then recharged and got only 6 hours of GPS tracking. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

    I quickly determined that my short battery life was due to the way I used the watch. I was constantly interfacing with the watch, adding and removing several IQ watch faces and apps which seemed to expedite the battery drain.

    I considered returning the watch, but decided that I should first see if there was a way to lengthen its battery life.

    I'm really glad I stopped to do this study. I've learned a lot more about the watch - its capabilities and its limitations-which will help me maximize its use in the future.

    My original assumption was that each feature (activity monitoring, GPS, heart rate monitoring, and Bluetooth) would contribute its own fixed percentage to the battery drain. I wore the watch as normal for a few days, logging the battery drain each day. Most of these tests used GPS, but I could never get any consistency from day to day. Even with the same settings, battery life varied by 30 minutes to an hour, and it never approached the 13 hours I was expecting.

    It wasn't until I ran a few days of GPS tests that I realized a key piece of information: the GPS battery drain (in smart mode) is closely related to speed/distance the GPS reports. My day-to-day routine changed a lot. Some days, I sit in my office all morning. Some days I'm out walking around the office or shop floor. Most of the time, however, I was in poor GPS reception - and even when sitting still, I would 'accumulate' about a mile every half-hour. (That was rubbish, by the way - I had walked less than a mile all day!)

    After realizing this, I knew I needed to setup a controlled test. The test needed to do the following:
    1) Maintain good GPS reception, so as to reduce unwanted 'activity'.
    2) Simulate a heartbeat, so the HR sensor continues to read.
    3) Apply consistent motion, so the device doesn't assume it's sitting unused and 'sleep'.

    Luckily, I'm an engineer, and I quickly devised a test jig with LEGO sensors and servo motors to do all of the above. I set the jig in the window and, day after day, ran tests while it rocked back and forth, and blinked a fake heartbeat.

    Now that I had a consistent setup, I started to get consistent results. I knew I needed to test each feature for drain contributions:
    * Watch mode
    * Activity Monitoring
    * Heart Rate Monitoring
    * GPS
    * Bluetooth

    Using some matrix math (aka linear algebra), I knew I could make quick work of this with a limited number of tests. Luckily, I quickly found that most features contributed a fixed amount to the battery life. There was an interesting twist with Heart Rate, however. I found that Heart Rate uses ~0.5% by itself, but when you pair it with Activity Monitoring (~0.1%), you actually use less battery! That threw a wrench in the calculations at first, but I was able to add a couple more tests to verify and quantify this.

    The good news is that you CAN in fact get 7 days or 13 hours in GPS or watch modes, respectively.

    My tests and calculations resulted in the following numbers:

    1. Watch Mode: 0.34%/hr
    2. GPS: 7.14%/hr
    3. Heart Rate: 0.52%/hr (0.24%/hr if Activity Monitor is enabled)
    4. Activity Monitor: 0.10%/hr
    5. Bluetooth: 0.04%/hr

    I was unable to test the following features and their battery toll, since I don't have a method to consistently trigger their usage over a long period of time. The following will vary with device usage per user:

    6) IQ faces
    7) Backlight brightness and duration
    8) Side swipe
    9) Vibrations

    What does this mean?
    With all non-GPS features enabled, you should get a drain of 0.5%/hr or 200 hours / 8.3 days.
    With GPS enabled, you should get 7.87%/hr or 12.7 hours. You can increase this to 13.5 hours by turning off HR and AM, or 13.7 hours by additionally disabling bluetooth.

    Here are the notable changes that were made to get the reported results:
    * Returned to the factory defaults
    * uninstalled all IQ apps/widgets
    * disabled all widgets except Heart Rate, My Day, and Notifications
    * Set the watch face to stock Digital with 2 data fields - battery (%) and date
    * I disabled side-swipe. It was a nuisance to use. I don't expect it affects battery life, though.
    * backlight was set to 10% and shortest duration
    * gesture backlight was disabled
    * During GPS activities, all notifications were disabled, including default 1-mile 'laps'. (These take a huge hit on battery on long trips)
    * Activity app was reduced to 1 screen showing Time-of-Day, Timer, and Distance.
    * The watch wasn't worn for any GPS testing. It was on the 'watch bot' where it got good GPS and had consistent movements.
    * When not in GPS mode, the watch was worn 24/7 (except ~20 minutes per day in the shower)
    * Garmin Pay was set up, and used a few times (but never in GPS mode)

    And a couple additional findings:
    * Water sports can cut the battery life in half, since water 'touches' the screen often.
    * If you take the watch off, the HR monitor will stop, saving battery.

    Of course, your mileage will vary. Most notably, GPS reception, and GPS speed will effect this most. Your usage patterns (how often you interface with it) will also greatly affect this. In my real-world tests, I got between 10 and 12 hrs in GPS mode and 8 days in watch mode. (All modes enabled).

    So, there you have it. Go and make the most of this watch. It's really quite an impressive device!