When are you going to fix the battery issue in for VA3 6.20? I'm now lucky if it lasts for 3 days!

No, I didn’t bring it down to Garmin as my Va3 is out of warranty. They will likely charge me an arm for servicing or ask me to buy a new one. The sw was updated to 6.3 last week but the battery drain continued. I decided that there’s no point struggling with it anymore. I happen to have a vivosport lying around at home and switched to using that instead. Battery life on that is great 6-7 days without having to charge. Can’t help but wonder if dodgy software updates is Garmin’s way of making a good watch obsolete so that consumers will be forced to buy a new one.

Garmin really should monitor their own forums don't you think?

I raised a complaint ticket, and their "support operators" obviously couldn't be bothered to read it correctly and kept telling me I had a faulty unit.  Given their level of response I'd be surprised if even sending complaints to support would even get the issue escalated

yes it is indeed absurd that they don't monitor their own forum. 

in fact, DC Rainmaker pointed out that Garmin's biggest competitor is not Suunto, Fitbit or even Apple, but their own crappy software/firmware updates.... 

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-instability.html

how Garmin handles the fiasco on rapid battery rain, to crappy altimeter data on VA3 reflects on that...

Mine currently burning 0.6%/hour on wrist, v6.3, new watch May 2019

There's a post somewhere in here about me smashing my Fenix 5 to pieces with a framing hammer a few months back due to its incessant glitches, mostly with pairing on both Android and iOS. I went and bought an Apple watch 4 to see how that would work out (I use Sporttracks mostly, with Garmin Connect as backup). The Apple solution was workable (it's an amazing piece of tech and I generally hate Apple) but requires manual exporting to GC since only Garmin products can write live data to the GC platform. OK, I lived with that for a bit but when bike season started and I went back to my 520 I remembered how damned convenient it is to have one device write automatically to my 2 platforms (ST connects to the GC backbone). So I bought a VA3 to see if anything had changed since my Fenix experience...turns out it has, VA3 works perfectly (so far, only been a month!). Anyway I'm satisfied with the VA3 at this point so I just sold the Apple watch. Nothing against the Apple product but I have too much invested in GC and the manual export issue is just too clunky at this stage, though this may change in the future.

My VA3 battery lasts safely between two weekends between charge.

but

Analog Switch watchface without seconds leg and black background no high contrast collors, BT ON and nothing else working (chewing the battery) in the background.

All set for activity tracking, not a looker, if I would want to have a good looking watchface with smartwatch features I would be looking for apple or similar.

I can do (I tried and working) two 50 Km rides with a single charge with GPS recording in "smart" and seven pages data screen, if I go one 50 plus one 100 KM (with a same single charge) that battery life was cut somewhere at the end, the screen went blank but I could stil wake it to save the data. I can also confirm that without any sport activity (just keep going with a life and counting steps/stairs) a very last 5% if battery life lasts a whole day.

So again, a minimalist display can help extending the battery life a big time.

It is advertised as a "Smart Watch" and in "Smart mode" it's supposed to last "Up to 7 days".   And yes, I suppose if it lasts even 1 hours in smart mode it's still lasting "up to" 7 days, but I would suggest that with only 3 days use that would be false advertising.

And note that this was working before the recent updates

Today's drain now 0.558 % / hour, ETD 8.1 days (a bit better than yesterday's 0.6), running a new analog face with ticking second hand (Omega watch simulator), wrist HR, black bg.

sitting in front of a PC, just checked 0.163% averaging per hour

btw where did you saw that is advertised as a "Smart Watch" ? Garmin Canada selling it as "fitness tracker".

My son have a smart watch, this is he's 3rd I believe - or 4th? Those definitely looking fantastic, and also I remember back in time that he was complaining about apple he had to charge every night so he swap it to samsung, then he swap it again to huawei, but I noticed he have again something new.

My standpoint is, smart watch vs fitness tracker is like comparing apples with oranges, two different purpose.

https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/p/571520

GPS Smartwatch with built-in Sports Apps and Wrist-based Heart Rate

• Personalise your watch with thousands of free watch faces, apps and widgets from our Connect IQ store
• More than 15 preloaded GPS and indoor sports apps, including yoga, running, swimming and more
• Monitor your fitness level with VO2 max and fitness age estimates, plus keep an eye on how you handle stress²
• First Garmin wearable that is Garmin Pay ready, so customers can pay for purchases with their watch¹
• Get connected features³ such as smart notifications, automatic uploads to Garmin Connect, LiveTrack and more
• Battery life⁴: up to 7 days in smartwatch mode; 13 hours in GPS mode