[overfeed]

> The Coros watches are less than half the price, have 22 days of battery life in smartwatch mode

Garmin gets almost 30% more battery life in exchange of not being as fast (30 days)

> I think you can only reach Garmin's stated time if you disable a lot of functionality.

Turning off always-on Pulse ox gets you there. Turning everything off except telling time gets you 2.5x the battery life (69-71 days)

[CWuestefeld]

My Instinct 3 Solar shows 34 days remaining in the battery. I charged it sometime last week, so we're talking about upper 30s at least.

That's with running activity tracking including GPS for about an hour a day, and continuous heart rate monitoring.

At least on my device (and my body) the spo2 sensor is very finicky, requiring absolution stillness, and even at that I don't think it's accurate. So I don't use that.

I also discovered recently that simply using a custom watchface - even one built with an eye toward efficiency - lowers my battery life to about 2 weeks. The native faces enjoy privileged operations and are thus highly efficient. But custom-coded stuff apparently runs in a sandbox that has the effect of costing much more power. That's unfortunate, because my custom face used custom high-legibility fonts (derived from what's on interstate signage), making it noticeably easier on my aging eyes. The built-in fonts aren't great for this.

[microtonal]

My Fenix 8 only gets two weeks at most with pulse ox off. Yes, it's the AMOLED version, but I have the screen off by default (which should be similar to MIP). I got similar runtimes on my 7 Pro Solar without pulse ox.

[gnabgib]

Err.. my 2yo Fenix 7 Solar definitely lasts 3-4 weeks. Not AMOLED (because.. that's why), but MiP. In summer.. it can last >month. Pulse on, GPS is generally only on in solar. Screen is never off. I can obviously make it a worse UX/last longer, but I'm not sure I see the need.. even when I'm back country.

[microtonal]

I wish my 7 Solar had battery times like that. It's possibly because I frequently use mapping on longer bikes.

[gnabgib]

In retrospect, the difference between the batteries on 42mm/47mm/51mm are probably relevant (I'm using the X/51mm). Longer rides is my highest usage :D Next you're in Canada, let's ride (mine's an FSR)