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HR Sensor off - more battery life when mounted on bike handlebar?

More and more often I leave my Garmin Dakota at home when biking and just mount my small vivoactive 3 on the handlebar. dwMap app does a great job navigating preplanned tracks. Only thing is that battery life of vivoactive 3 is quite limited for longer bike turns. Does it bring noticeable more battery life if I turn the wrist HR sensor off?

Thanks and enjoy your weekend!
Heiko

0 jamesn over 7 years ago

No, after a short period of no pulse detected the OHRM will turn off automatically anyway.

0 SAHO over 7 years ago

jamesn: Yes that’s true, but are you sure it won’t turn back on as soon as there’s some movement involved?

When I put my watch down on the table the green lights turns off after a few seconds, but as soon as I move the watch it turns back on.

0 schlezifish over 7 years ago

That's exactly why I am asking: As soon as the watch detects movement the HR sensor reactivates. And since on the handlebar it's always moving I wonder whether I could noticeably extend battery life by switching the HR sensor off. But I don't know whether it's worth the mess...

0 jamesn over 7 years ago

Ah, yes I'm with you now. You could disable it, although it is questionable if it's worth the effort because I don't see there being any real measurable gain. These things are designed to run for almost a week with OHRM sensor running full time, so to disable it for a few hours or so the power saving has to be negligible but may have benefit if it were an all day ride.

0 j.vdheiden over 7 years ago

In the garmin manual it says that you can save battery life by turning off Optical HRM and also activity tracking.

0 jim_m_58 over 7 years ago

If you have the va3 mounted on your bike, you can also use the charging cable and a battery based cellphone battery charger. Set the USB mode on the watch to be "Garmin".

"charge on the go".

0 SvenvdMeer over 7 years ago

I don't know how you would mount the watch to you handlebar with the charging cable attached. Maybe if they make something like this for the VA3 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072JC7JWF/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_c_x_15_w