Race S: Extremely high battery use rate

sindavide

@elbee
Still, before the latest upgrade battery lasted substantially longer with sleep tracking enabled

dreamer_

I have been reading this as I’m somehow very interested in the Race S. If I understand you, with the Q1, HR accuracy is somehow fixed but at the cost of very high battery life consumption.

With the new firmware, what is the estimation of battery life using dual band GNSS in activity?

I do ultra trail races but I’m thin with small wrists and the thing is I have tried my wife’s Run and I find that watch super comfortable. At the end, in the longest races I can somehow play a bit with powerbanks at aid stations when needed.

elbee

@dreamer_

I can only share my experiences with my race s.

Heartrate sensor isn’t great before or after the update. But I haven’t had any watch with great heartrate sensor. If the sensor in your current watch works for you, the one in the race s will probably do also. If your current watch doesn’t work for you, don’t have your hopes on an other watch. My experience is that it is more person related than watch.

Battery life is doable for a modern watch. During activities (with highest gnss settings, because I use maps during navigation) I use about 5% battery per hour. With my typical usage of 7 - 10 hours of running a week, I have to charge every 4 or 5 days. A bit better battery life than my previous garmin forerunner 965 but a lot worse than my watch before that, a forerunner 935 (well, before garmin added a nasty bug to it, and of course the 935 doesn’t have dual frequency gnss, which you don’t really need, no maps which is a nice to have, and mips which is the better choice for a sport watch)

dreamer_

@elbee thank you so much for the very detailed answer. That 5% per hour with dual band and using maps is not that bad. It seems better than I thought. I understand that before the update battery life was more similar to the numbers Suunto says.

sindavide

@sky-runner
It seems we all have the same problem.
One night sleep with sleep monitoring uses ove 10% battery.

sindavide

@elbee
Wrist HR has greatly improved since last update. However, in general i agree that wrist HR is not great. Previously, though, it was really horrible.
I don’t think that battery, as it is after last update, is acceptable, especially considered that previously tomthe firmware update it laster substantially longer.

sindavide

@Tieutieu
How and when?
It doesn’t look like at all

Tieutieu

@sindavide said:

@Tieutieu
How and when?
It doesn’t look like at all

Could you quote or specify ?

Adrian.S

I can only confirm (Vertical 1) that some watch faces are more “batter-usage” than others.

Therefore I avoid watch-faces with animations like moon-phases, earth-animations, north-arrow, classic seconds-arrow etc.

snow*

@sindavide said:

I don’t think that battery, as it is after last update, is acceptable,

A few days ago I run a ~3h trail with maps always on and battery barely drops 12%. For sure issue depends on the config/features used, but in my use cases, everything is working fine now after last update.

dreamer_

@snow that means that the watch is valid for a 100k run without charging it. Not bad.
I’m thinking in pushing an order.
It has a very good price now, but I’m afraid Suunto is replacing this watch for the Race 2 S very soon.

elbee

@sindavide said:

@sky-runner
It seems we all have the same problem.
One night sleep with sleep monitoring uses ove 10% battery.

I’ve disabled sleep monitoring. It’s neither accurate nor useful. You’re better off asking yourself in the morning if you feel refreshed or still sleepy. A much better indicator how you slept.
If you disable sleep tracking you also disable hrv. But from properly tests (not some youtube gadget influencer) hrv measuring on garmin watches isn’t that accurate and I have no reason to believe others brands are better. And, again, the useful of hrv is questionable.

But some people love collecting data, so I understand disabling data collection isn’t an option for everyone.