Suunto Race – Is ~17–18% battery drain per day normal?

Anthony Guillemette

Hi everyone,

I’ve been monitoring the battery consumption of my Suunto Race over the last few days because the battery life seems much shorter than I would expect.

I’m curious to know what kind of real-world battery life other Race users are getting, and especially what your typical battery drain per day is outside of activities.

During my first test, I was using the watch normally with 24/7 heart rate and sleep tracking enabled:

Medium display brightness
Always-on display OFF
Raise to wake: Full wake mode
Phone notifications enabled
24/7 HR enabled
Sleep tracking enabled

From October 17 at 19:30 (100%) to October 22 at 08:30 (18%), the watch consumed 82% in about 109 hours.

That works out to roughly 18% per day, or around 5.5 days of theoretical battery life.

During that period I recorded:

One 2h40 run
One 1h run

I then wanted to see how much 24/7 HR and sleep tracking were contributing to the drain, so I disabled both.

From October 22 at 09:30 (74%) to October 25 at 12:45 (20%), it consumed 54% in about 75 hours.

That is still roughly 17% per day, or about 5.8 days of theoretical battery life.

I only recorded one 1-hour run during this second period.

So surprisingly, disabling 24/7 HR and sleep tracking made almost no difference. What concerns me most is the fairly consistent background drain even when I’m not recording any activity.

I’ve attached two graphs showing the battery measurements for both periods.

Does ~17–18% battery drain per day seem normal for a Suunto Race in real-world use?

What kind of daily battery consumption are you seeing on yours?

For my next test, I’ve re-enabled 24/7 HR and sleep tracking, performed a soft reset, disabled discovery mode, and put the watch in airplane mode. I’ll only briefly disable airplane mode when I need to sync an activity. This should help determine whether the phone/Bluetooth connection or notifications are contributing to the drain.

Thanks for any comparisons or feedback.

elbee

@Anthony-Guillemette

I sometimes see 15% battery usage per night on my race s.
Last summer 48% battery left wasn’t enough to finish a 7 hour hike.
Last week, I woke up with an unexpected 7% battery left. Quickly charged it to 26% (it does charge fast!) Went for an hour run. Came back with 36% battery left.

Battery management on suunto is a mess. I reported it multiple times to suunto support, but that’s a bit useless (to say it kindly)

What does help, for some time. Completely drain your battery unit your watch dies. Then charge it to 100% (this could take longer than expected). For me this helps for a couple of months to loose only 5% or less during the night and during activities I see a normal 5% usage per hour.

See https://forum.suunto.com/post/200293 where I post typical battery usage I experience.

Tami999

I don’t have Race1 anymore (Race2) but if I good remember with and, all notification, and everything ON and 3x gym 1h and like 3x running a week +/- 1h I had something like 10% per day, sometimes maybe 8 (when no gym). After full week I still had some percents. Now on Race 2 while writing this post I have 19% battery left. If I good remember I charged it last Sunday (7days ago).