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Vivoactive 3 terrible battery life

Former Member
Former Member

Since last update, the battery life has been terrible.

I charged the watch to 97% this morning (I rarely go to 100% in an effort to reduce lifetime stress on the battery) and within 25 mins it was at 87%.  This is typical behaviour in the last few days having previously been around a 25% points drop over 24 hours. I've gone to look at the watch and been surprised to find it in single figures or off on several occasions having suffered from unexpected rapid depletion in the last few days.

I do concede that performance will degrade over time but I am highly suspicious of a sudden degredation following an update. 

We can discuss dendritic formation from ion nucleation and other failure modes of lithium type batteries in another discussion thread - what I'd like to discuss here is whether this is a common issue and if there's a reasonable workaround.  That said, if this is likely a battery issue, please shut me up and educate me.  Happy to be shot down in flames here. :-) 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago

    Same issue here, past week has been a nightmare charge every morning, wake up the next day with it dying and only using to run 5 miles and have all features and BT turned off.  

  • Same issue here, after firmware 7.4 update. I think the only solution is a bug fix/new firmware form Garmin. I did a soft reset as well as a hard reset, completely set it up from scratch but the problem stays :( Contacted Garmin support, the only solution they are offering is to send me a refurbished model, but i suspect that the problem is not resolved with that..

    I've never had any battery drain issues before with any of the previous firmware.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to newcourt14

    Just reset it all today we will see how that turns out. 

  • Try this (from Garmin Customer service)

    FIXING GARMIN VIVOACTIVE 3 BATTERY DRAIN

    Mac laptop running OS CATALINA - 10.15.5

    1. Navigate to Desktop
    2. Double-click Garmin device drive
    3. Click Garmin folder
    4. Drag the Folders listed below to trash
      • ActivityMonitorNewFilesRemoteSW, and Settings and if you see a folder that starts with SNS_ or TEXT please delete as well
    5. Click on Trash
    6. Click Finder
    7. Click Empty Trash
    8. Confirm you wish to permanently delete these items
    9. Drag Garmin device drive to Trash
    10. Unplug device from computer
    11. then eject device and do a soft reset
    • Press and hold the side button for 45+ seconds until the screen goes completely blank
    • Release the button and press again to power back on
      • You may need to enter in Time Format preferences again before returning to your main Time/Date screen
    1. leave the device plugged into computer for about an hour then keep an eye on it to see if battery has improve