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Battery drain problem poll

Former Member over 6 years ago

Ive had a VA3 since June 2018, initially all was well, I then experienced the same horrible battery drain that some of you have also. Since around the v5.4 firmware update, I've struggled to get 2 days out of it... I tried everything I could think of and that had been mentioned in this forum to improved the battery life and thought maybe v5.5 firmware update may solve the issue. Unfortunately nothing did.

I have since raised an RMA with Garmin support and have now received a replacement VA3 that had firmware v5.4 on it and I updated to v5.5 and over the past few days have been using/testing its battery life and all seems back to normal 6-7 days with my usage pattern, over the last 5 days 30-40 minutes running a couple of days (HR and GPS tracking), 30 minutes cardio activity (only HR tracking) a couple of days.

My original VA3 serial no was in the range 5EC0xxxxx, my replacement VA3 serial no. is in the range 5EC7xxxxx so much newer production date.

So I wonder if everyone with a battery drain issue check your serial number and post the beginning 4 characters, maybe there's a pattern to the battery drain issue due to newer firmware versions and earlier hardware???

Either way and albeit with limited testing over less than a week, my personal recommendation to anyone having horrible battery drain is to RMA your VA3 with Garmin and get it fixed/replaced under warranty.

0 808mel over 6 years ago

What's the Smartwatch Mode some members are mentioning?

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

For about a week now batter life has bee a disaster, draining from 85+% to less than 30% overnight - some days even discharging totally, so 80% usage in 7 hrs or sleep! I will contact Garmin direct, but im over it. First & last Garmin smart watch i will be buying

0 HerrRiebmann over 6 years ago

Just hang in here:
The watch more or less instantly went down from 100% to 95% after charging (and leave it on the plug for several further minutes).

This leads me to a confused battery state from software perspective. Smartphones and all other chargeable devices does have the same behaviour. Mostly it can be solved by loading the device, powering off, still loading for ~15 minutes. Unplug -> Powering.
But it didn´t work well in this one.

Yesterday at about 3pm, it again dropped to ~95% 5-6 minutes after charging. Today (9:30am) it still has 88%. Which is quite well!
I got the watch from the very start (November 2017).

So it seems, it is not directly related to 6.10. What I´ve experienced: The battery consumption is higher on activities. Since I´m using a HRM strap again, I could run 6-7 days in a row. Nowadays I charge after 4-5 days.