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Vivoactive 3 battery drain compared to original Vivoactive

G.Karagiannis
over 4 years ago

Hi!

I had the original Vivoactive before and it had amazing battery life with bluetooth always on. Battery lasted from 10 to 20 days depending on use and it still is holding strong after more than 5 years of use!

I upgraded to Vivoactive 3 and battery life compared to original sucks. I am getting 3-5 days no matter what I do. I tried to disable HR, bluetooth, turn backlight intensity and duration to min and turn off every sensor I could and I still can't get more than 6 days of battery life. I even turned off the watch and let it off my had for a week and today I found the battery empty!

I am still happy with the watch but I was happier with the first vivoactive so I consider selling the newer watch and keep using its predecessor.

I was expecting the newer watch to have bigger battery capacity and be more efficient with energy usage, at least when additional features are turn off, and I find it strange that it is not.

I would love to hear your opinion on the matter

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Hi. I have VA3 for three years now and got originally 6-7days with activities and oHR. Now, suddenly, since 4weeks I have 1-1.5days with no activity (because I use good old VA1). Is it possible that they messed up software with an update recently and you just picked a bad moment to buy and update it? On the other hand, not everyone seems to have this problem.

    I liked Vivoactive1, but after having VA3 it seemed that VA1 looks more like a toy and has less functions - VA1 battery after 5 years still >10days with activities. But reliable!

    VA3 is now "under arrest" and is used for transmitting HR only , until issue is solved - hopefully.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to joen2021

    There have been firmware updates for the watch that are known to cause problems with battery life. Make sure you are running the latest version of the software on the watch. Also try to never let battery level drop bellow 15% especially for long periods of time or while you are not wearing it, let the watch overheat under direct sunlight. You can permanently damage the battery that way very very easily. Applies to every device running on li-ion or li-po batteries. Try to reset your watch to factory defaults to see if you have a setting, like backlight duration that drains your battery so fast

    As for my VA3, I am not saying that the device is malfunctioning. Battery life is within Garmin specifications and other users are experiencing similar battery run times. What is bugging me is that I can't increase battery life by turning off features and how can an older watch outperform the newer watch by so much no matter what I do. Its pure curiosity and I would love to hear an answer from an electronic specialist's/programmer's/engineer's perspective