New VA3 lasted 2 days and 23 hrs on original 100% charge

With GPS on the battery will last around 10-11 hours. around 3h GPS used about 30% of the battery alone. So I would say it is totally normal as 7 days is a bit optimistic as well

my rule of thumb (at least for my watch and my settings) is:
10-12% battery drain per day with normal (non-gps) use
10% battery drain per hour of gps activity use (bike/run)
6-8% battery drain per hour of pool swim (it would be better if i remember to turn off my backlight beforehand)

my settings are: gesture off/ backlight 20% brightness/ short backlight mode/ 1 second gps/glonass recording/ no frills watchface

runnerguy101: were you down to 0% after those 3 days? If so, that's pretty bad. if you were down to about 40%, i'd say that's not too bad

Hi all. I am finally re-charging my VA3 after its 1st full 100% charge from Friday night. I used GPS for 2hr 45 min and mostly kept the screen at 30%. Is this normal for a new VA3 which is supposed to get 7 days of battery life? Should I contact support? Thoughts?
Thanks
Larry

Hi.. Many things are to be taken into consideration reg battery life.. Screen brightness does affect battery life hugely.. i personally dont use backlight at all.. And the GPS you have used is just GPS or GPS+GLONASS. the advertised 10-12 hours is only for GPS. With GLONASS its gonna consume more juice..

Give it a few more charge cycles and look into it.. Btw what firmware are you on?? 5.4 or 5.5??

Turn off phone connections when you are not syncing, i dont need notifications on my watch, for me its a sportswatch and not a smartwatch. You might want to turn off Auto Activity start in ACTIVITY TRAINING..

My personal settings are:
No Backlight, GPS for running and GPS+GLONASS for cycling, Watch face has Seconds on it, sync every alternate day(sometimes daily), auto activity start OFF. With those settings i get about 5-7 days easily...

I'm at over 7 days on a single charge and I still have %11 battery left. That's with no GPS use at all. Sideswipe disabled. No backlight with gesture. Shortest timeout for the light. And a good amount of notifications all week. Using the default analog watchface with the seconds and 3 modifiable fields. Going to see if I can make it to the full 8.

I took this today. Due to time constraints, only one 50 minute GPS + Glonass activity, Bluetooth, HR all day and wearing the VA3 around the clock.ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1405404.jpg

I'm also seeing really poor battery life since the 5.40 update. My watch lasts 2 days max with zero GPS usage. Hope they fix this in the next update or I'll be returning mine.

I'm at 48 hours and a few minutes with 61% remaining. I have gesture turned off, but other than that, haven't changed anything. 24/7 heart rate monitoring is on. That being said I haven't recorded any workouts or used GPS for the past 2 days. I'm using the DigitStorm watchface. I have played around with some watchface settings, and different watchfaces. So if I were to use the watch this way all the time it looks like I would easily get 4 full days, maybe 5. But this won't be the norm as I will be using it again for workouts after I kick the flu bug!!

GC

GC: 20% per day is not good.

some things to look for
-what is backlight brightness set to?
-my VA3 had the backlight popping on for no reason and I think that was causing abnormal battery drain
- do you have phone bluetooth on and phone is out of range?
- you turned off side swipe?

Since I last wrote (above) I have been currently experiencing higher battery drain, first on my VA3 and now on my VA3M.
I am trying to figure out why and have a call into Garmin who I KNOW will tell me to do a factory reset. grrrrr...
I am wondering if the "no frills" watch face I use may be the cause. I've been using it for some time but maybe something changed...

GC: 20% per day is not good.

some things to look for
-what is backlight brightness set to?
-my VA3 had the backlight popping on for no reason and I think that was causing abnormal battery drain
- do you have phone bluetooth on and phone is out of range?
- you turned off side swipe?

Since I last wrote (above) I have been currently experiencing higher battery drain, first on my VA3 and now on my VA3M.
I am trying to figure out why and have a call into Garmin who I KNOW will tell me to do a factory reset. grrrrr...
I am wondering if the "no frills" watch face I use may be the cause. I've been using it for some time but maybe something changed...

Brightness is set to 60%. That's what I like it at.
And yes I often lose Bluetooth connection when I leave my phone on my desk and walk throughout my building at work.
Sideswipe is on.

Yes, I can get longer, but that would require me to change settings that I don't want to change. I don't believe in that approach. I set up a watch the way I want, and if battery life is too short for my liking, then I need a different watch, not different settings. I am satisfied with 20% per day. I am not going to change my settings to get 16% per day. And yes I realize that it will be more than 20% while recording activities or using GPS. But it falls in a range I'm happy with.

I have a friend who has the same phone as me (Essential PH-1). I get anywhere from 4 to 6 hours screen on time per charge. He brags about getting 8 hours and more. And he does. But he turns off his wifi when we are out of wifi range. Turns off Bluetooth if he doesn't have a device attached. Screen brightness annoyingly Dim. Battery saver mode permanently on. Push notifications off. And so on. He spends half his day turning wifi and Bluetooth off and on dependent on where we are. I putter around not worried about squeezing every minute I can out of my battery. If he hears of someone who gets longer battery life than him, it bugs him to no end. My phone gets me through 2 days easily, and that's enough for me. I feel the same about my watch. I was considering getting a Samsung Galaxy watch, but it looks like you need to turn everything off to get 3 days out of it. I don't see the point. But, to each his own!

GC