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Excessive Battery Drain vivoactive3 music

Former Member over 6 years ago

On SW 2.5 I went from 3-4 days with activities using HR & GPS to a full drain from 100% down to flat lined in 18 hours with no activity. Reading other forums on the vivoactive3 (non music) there was a battery drain issue in V2.5 resolved in 2.6.

I saw on 4/4/18 SW 2.7 was available. Recieved it 4/5/18. Doing a full power cycle I'm currently tracking about 10% per hour with no activity tracking or GPS. SW 2.7 doesn't appear to be a battery drain fix.

I've removed all watch faces except the active (VSWF) and haven't loaded any music on yet.

Looking to hear of others results and possible solutions.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I get about 4 days, with no music, no GPS. Thats pretty disappointing since I got around 6 or 7 with my VAHR.

I have an iPhone SE thats always connected.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

**Update**

On my VA3M I ended up calling support and with the VA3M being so new, there was 1 other case open with a similar problem. They sent me an RMA, I sent mine in to Garmin, about 7-10 days later (it was at my house when I got home last night). My replacement has been going strong so far. I'm at 79% after 14 hours with a 45 minute activity tracking in there as well. Much better than 10% per hour.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I bought a Vivoactive3 Music after a fair amount of research. Experienced the same battery drain issues, about 10% per hour without GPS or music. Upgraded to fw2.7 with no change, refused to stop using 1 custom watch face or bluetooth because the thing is supposed to work as an activity tracker and a smartwatch, in addition to a GPS. I contacted Garmin support via chat on the website, and they offered to send me an RMA. But they also more or less said that expecting a watch to get bluetooth notifications all day while using a watch face that would display more information than the time was a lot to ask from a "smart" watch, and they weren't sure if the unit was defective. I returned it to the store and borrowed a friend's FR235, which is doing all of the things that the VA3M said it would do, at the rate of about 15% battery use per day. (though the HR is laughable, and said that I got about 200 bmp 4x while sleeping)

This is pretty common with my 15 year long experience trying to use Garmin products - they race to create a new thing, do it very badly but send it to market anyway, and then spend years trying to iron out all of the wrinkles. About the time it is working as advertised, they move on to a new product. And we're not just talking hardware, I've had the same experience trying to use the social aspects of the connect app, the IQ store, but the hardware thing is HUGE. Of the 6 garmin watches I've owned, the only one I didn't have to return as a faulty product at least once within a few days of purchase was my FR205. Every now and then, I think that I'd like to buy something more high end, like a Fenix, but I don't trust the company to deliver a product worth the price tag.

0 ToniSilva over 6 years ago

Maybe price means something.
I bought a FR935 two months ago, and two weeks with no charging, even with GPS activities.