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"all-day battery life" Ugh, Apple really has lowered expectations. In order to switch from my Garmin, I'd want at least a week.. Even my MS Band from 10 yea

"all-day battery life" Ugh, Apple really has lowered expectations. In order to switch from my Garmin, I'd want at least a week.. Even my MS Band from 10 years ago had 48hrs of battery life.

maxglute 2y ago
Was hoping needle move to all-week within a few iterations but not even close. Still enjoying my glorified fitness band watch with 2-3 week battery life.
nickthegreek 2y ago
At least it has this: >Plus, a new better Battery Saver Mode extends battery life to up to 36 hours across both sizes, without compromising any of your health and fitness tracking or safety features. I don't know if 48 hr battery is that much better. Charging it everyday is easier than remembering every other day. You basically have to jump from 24hr to a week battery for people to truly care.
- drewg123 2y ago
  That's what I've gotten used to from my Garmin. It has a claimed 2 weeks of life, and I charge it once a week. I pointed out the 48hr life because I loved the MS Band, and I can't think of anything it didn't do that any modern smart watch does for me that I actually care about. And it got the same or better battery life as is typical in the market today. And on much worse hardware.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    Is that a MIP Garmin or an OLED Garmin? I've heard that their OLED battery life is getting better with newer models but usually you have to make a choice between battery life and sunlight readability (better on MIP) or brightness and vibrancy (better on OLED) with them.
    - drewg123 2y ago
      MIP ... Garmin Fenix 6 pro.
    - sdoering 2y ago
      It also heavily depends on the amount of notifications and the brightness of the display. As well as a few - to me not easily identifiable - other factors. In the last few weeks I had battery life between 30hours and nearly 6 days.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      I have an OLED garmin (965). Battery life is about 1 week for me.
8bithero 2y ago
Personally I find notifications on a watch to be exceptionally annoying so I almost always have my watch set to sleep mode. The only thing I use the watch for is to tell the time, track my sleep, heart rate, and steps. I'm not sure if sleep mode affects the accuracy of the tracking but it does make my battery life last for a good 2-3 days.
- drewg123 2y ago
  They are also a huge battery drain. I wish Garmin put the effort into their iOS app that they did with their Android so as to be able to filter notifications by app. Eg, I want iMessage notifications on my wrist, but I could care less about IG notifications, and I actively turn off bluetooth to save my battery life when my wife is forwarding me reel after reel...
- dktp 2y ago
  I'm in the same boat being extremely annoyed with notifications on the watch. But I just disabled them completely on my Garmin There's a setting under Notifications & Alerts > Smart notifications > Status (switch to off). In the Garmin app
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  i disable all notifications except texts from my spouse and phone calls (from anyone). that’s my suggestion, it’s good balance. :)
gwill 2y ago
my garmin is currently low and i have 4 days of battery life or 2-3 long runs with gps and bluetooth enable left. with physical shortcuts to payment and timers, i haven't worn my apple watch in weeks
- entropie 2y ago
  Especially if you do a bit of serious (long-distance) running, you can't get past garmin. My partner has recently reached the semi-professional level and nobody there actually uses anything else. A few apple enthusiasts often refuse at first, but they all switch at some point. I'm not that deep into the fitness scene, but I'm convinced by the 14-day battery life. But I also understand if you find the look a bit unfashionable.
  - intothemild 2y ago
    As a distance runner myself, this is accurate. I've known a few people who are hesitant to switch from Apple (or really any "smart watch"), but when they do, it's the same comment "Oh wow I didn't know these were so good!" A common complaint I hear is "yeah but there's no apps! how do I add extra functionality to my watch?" .. they just don't believe you when you say "it's already there" Smart watches are general purpose devices, more sandboxes than anything else.. where as Fitness/Sports Watches (Garmin/Coros/Suunto/etc) already have everything you need for Fitness/Sports, and things you didn't know existed. What's happened is that it's trivially easy for Fitness watches to add some smart offerings (Calls/Texts/Notifications) and also some apps...then it is for Apple/Google/Samsung to add fitness things. Sure Apple and also Google did add in some training load/status/etc stuff.. which is great cool... but it's also still a device that I have to charge daily, instead of monthly. And then, when theres a fitness metric or long term stat I want to see, i have to give some third party developer my health data to do it. An example of that last thing. I have a friend who's a triathlete, I'm going to travel to run a Half Marathon with him, he uses an Apple Watch SE, I'm on a Garmin Fenix 7x. He's jealous of all the long term stats I have, like all the training load over time, adaptive workouts, etc etc. He's on that cusp of ditching a smart watch and getting a dedicated fitness watch. When I see him, and he sees what I can do on my watch.. he's gonna love it.
deleted 2y ago
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CooCooCaCha 2y ago
Weird take. Do you think your Garmin and your 10 year old watch can do the same things as an Apple Watch? No. Apple Watches are more like mini-iPhones. For example, I can take calls from my watch without a phone nearby, which is more appealing to me than multi-day battery life.
- giaour 2y ago
  Do you actually use the mic and speaker on your watch like Maxwell Smart, or do you need to also carry a bluetooth headset or pair of AirPods to take calls from your watch?
  - CooCooCaCha 2y ago
    I do use the mic and speaker for short and simple conversations. Overall I like that I can go on a run and leave my phone at home while also being able to take a call if I need to. Look, I’m not claiming it’s life changing. The way I describe the Apple Watch to people is that you can definitely live your life without it but the little conveniences add up. It’s silly that I’m getting downvoted because it’s true. The Apple Watch and some android watches are more powerful devices more akin to a mini-phone. And because they’re more powerful they use more power. Do people really think Apple is purposefully gimping their own device or maybe there’s more too it than “these are all smart watches”. I’m totally ok with charging my watch every night and the extra little conveniences I get from a more powerful device are worth it to me.
    - pphysch 2y ago
      > The way I describe the Apple Watch to people is that you can definitely live your life without it but the little conveniences add up. For a Garmin-style watch, the convenience of only needing a ~30min charge once or twice a month is pretty big.
      - CooCooCaCha 2y ago
        I throw my watch on the charger when I go to sleep, so I don’t really seen the benefit. I’d rather have a more powerful device as a tradeoff. If that matters to you then great but I take issue with putting all of these watches in the same bucket and pretending that they’re all the same except for battery life. It’s just not true.
giaour 2y ago
100%! I switched from an Apple Watch to a WiThings ScanWatch for the battery life. Sleep tracking and vibrating alarms are kinda useless if you are expected to charge the watch every night.
- officeplant 2y ago
  Honest question. Do you not have 30 minutes to spare daily where you don't wear your watch and it could charge?
  - giaour 2y ago
    I made the switch a few years ago, but I recall the Apple watch taking much longer than 30 mins to charge. The current iteration of the Apple Watch SE (which is what I had) claims that the battery lasts 18 hours and can charge from 0-80% in 90 minutes: https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-se/specs/ https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-se/specs/ I'm much happier with a watch that does fewer things but does them well. Only having to charge it for ~30 minutes once every few weeks means that I can just leave it on all the time like the non-smart watches I used to wear.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Why charge it all night? Just throw it on the charger when you get in the shower. Even if it doesn't hit 100% in the space of one quick shower, it'll easily add enough charge to go at least one more full day. I don't think I'd want the extra battery life unless it was much longer. Like a month or more. Remembering to charge a device just once a week is harder to make a habit out of than just putting the device on the inductive charger every time I take a shower.
  - giaour 2y ago
    I think this approach works for the newer and more expensive models but not for the SE (which is what I had). The SE's battery is only rated to last 18 hours and does not offer fast charging, so taking it off and sticking it on the charger when you go to bed made sense; otherwise, you need to charge it at alternating times of day or leave it off for 6 hours in the middle of the day.
aliasxneo 2y ago
I have failed to comprehend the allure for precisely this reason. I've looked at adopting the Apple Watch a few times now, but as a person who struggles with insomnia and finds sleep tracking valuable, I'd have to buy a separate device to use with the watch because of the battery life. Or, I could just keep my current Fitbit which consistently lasts a week and gives me good enough information.
- brookst 2y ago
  FWIW the Android and Apple smartwatches will all charge nearly completely during a 15 minute shower. It's very possible to wear them for sleep tracking and only charge a bit a day. But I agree there is a huge difference between once-daily charging and once-weekly charging.
- officeplant 2y ago
  I just charge my watch once I get home from work. Only takes 30-40 minutes. Its not gonna miss many bio-metrics while I watch an episode of a favorite show.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  People make it out to be some big deal, but I don't really understand. I have an Ultra 2, and it goes an easy 2 days on a single charge. I wear it all day and all night (for sleep tracking), and put it on the charger when I get in the shower. When I'm getting dressed, I put it back on and it's good to go.
  - willio58 2y ago
    Same here. It's been great, and I'm on the Ultra 1 still. I will say it wasn't great when I had the non-Ultra. It was fine at first, the watch would last a full day, but like 2 or 3 years later it would struggle if I did a lot of exercise in a day to make it to the time I go to bed. I also recently went on a 5-day backpacking trip and it was a struggle to keep my phone and watch charged with an external battery. If the ultra lasted even 3 days instead of just 2ish on a charge this would have made it way easier. By the end of the trip to save charge I just gave up charging the watch.
trog 2y ago
My Fitbit devices (first Ionic, and now on my second Sense) have spoiled me, I can't imagine having to think about charging on a daily basis. I get 3-5 days depending on what I'm doing. I'm sure you get used to it and it becomes part of a routine but it's nice not having to deal with it daily.
lawn 2y ago
Indeed. I went even further and got a Garmin Instinct 2X Solar with a battery life of a month. I didn't understand how annoying it was to always charge the watch/Oura ring/Whoop band/phone until I got rid of them (except for the phone, that's still annoying).
juntoalaluna 2y ago
FWIW, I never ran out of battery with my Apple Watch. Charging it was part of my routine. I changed to a Garmin this year (started to do ultra marathons) and I've run out a couple of times because I just don't remember to charge. Especially when using GPS and bluetooth audio with it massively bumps up power consumption (which felt less like the case on the Apple Watch) Still prefer the Garmin, but just saying that I don't think battery life is the huge feature that people think it is.
Ajedi32 2y ago
I charge every night so all day is all I really need, but unless they're advertising at least 2 day battery life it's probably not going to consistently last all day (especially after a couple years of charge/discharge cycles) so that's a bit of a nonstarter for me.

"all-day battery life" Ugh, Apple really has lowered expectations. In order to switch from my Garmin, I'd want at least a week.. Even my MS Band from 10 years ago had 48hrs of battery life.

maxglute 2y ago

Was hoping needle move to all-week within a few iterations but not even close. Still enjoying my glorified fitness band watch with 2-3 week battery life.

nickthegreek 2y ago

At least it has this: >Plus, a new better Battery Saver Mode extends battery life to up to 36 hours across both sizes, without compromising any of your health and fitness tracking or safety features. I don't know if 48 hr battery is that much better. Charging it everyday is easier than remembering every other day. You basically have to jump from 24hr to a week battery for people to truly care.

drewg123 2y ago
That's what I've gotten used to from my Garmin. It has a claimed 2 weeks of life, and I charge it once a week. I pointed out the 48hr life because I loved the MS Band, and I can't think of anything it didn't do that any modern smart watch does for me that I actually care about. And it got the same or better battery life as is typical in the market today. And on much worse hardware.
- jsheard 2y ago
  Is that a MIP Garmin or an OLED Garmin? I've heard that their OLED battery life is getting better with newer models but usually you have to make a choice between battery life and sunlight readability (better on MIP) or brightness and vibrancy (better on OLED) with them.
  - drewg123 2y ago
    MIP ... Garmin Fenix 6 pro.
  - sdoering 2y ago
    It also heavily depends on the amount of notifications and the brightness of the display. As well as a few - to me not easily identifiable - other factors. In the last few weeks I had battery life between 30hours and nearly 6 days.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    I have an OLED garmin (965). Battery life is about 1 week for me.

8bithero 2y ago

Personally I find notifications on a watch to be exceptionally annoying so I almost always have my watch set to sleep mode. The only thing I use the watch for is to tell the time, track my sleep, heart rate, and steps. I'm not sure if sleep mode affects the accuracy of the tracking but it does make my battery life last for a good 2-3 days.

drewg123 2y ago
They are also a huge battery drain. I wish Garmin put the effort into their iOS app that they did with their Android so as to be able to filter notifications by app. Eg, I want iMessage notifications on my wrist, but I could care less about IG notifications, and I actively turn off bluetooth to save my battery life when my wife is forwarding me reel after reel...
dktp 2y ago
I'm in the same boat being extremely annoyed with notifications on the watch. But I just disabled them completely on my Garmin There's a setting under Notifications & Alerts > Smart notifications > Status (switch to off). In the Garmin app
lurking_swe 2y ago
i disable all notifications except texts from my spouse and phone calls (from anyone). that’s my suggestion, it’s good balance. :)

gwill 2y ago

my garmin is currently low and i have 4 days of battery life or 2-3 long runs with gps and bluetooth enable left. with physical shortcuts to payment and timers, i haven't worn my apple watch in weeks

entropie 2y ago
Especially if you do a bit of serious (long-distance) running, you can't get past garmin. My partner has recently reached the semi-professional level and nobody there actually uses anything else. A few apple enthusiasts often refuse at first, but they all switch at some point. I'm not that deep into the fitness scene, but I'm convinced by the 14-day battery life. But I also understand if you find the look a bit unfashionable.
- intothemild 2y ago
  As a distance runner myself, this is accurate. I've known a few people who are hesitant to switch from Apple (or really any "smart watch"), but when they do, it's the same comment "Oh wow I didn't know these were so good!" A common complaint I hear is "yeah but there's no apps! how do I add extra functionality to my watch?" .. they just don't believe you when you say "it's already there" Smart watches are general purpose devices, more sandboxes than anything else.. where as Fitness/Sports Watches (Garmin/Coros/Suunto/etc) already have everything you need for Fitness/Sports, and things you didn't know existed. What's happened is that it's trivially easy for Fitness watches to add some smart offerings (Calls/Texts/Notifications) and also some apps...then it is for Apple/Google/Samsung to add fitness things. Sure Apple and also Google did add in some training load/status/etc stuff.. which is great cool... but it's also still a device that I have to charge daily, instead of monthly. And then, when theres a fitness metric or long term stat I want to see, i have to give some third party developer my health data to do it. An example of that last thing. I have a friend who's a triathlete, I'm going to travel to run a Half Marathon with him, he uses an Apple Watch SE, I'm on a Garmin Fenix 7x. He's jealous of all the long term stats I have, like all the training load over time, adaptive workouts, etc etc. He's on that cusp of ditching a smart watch and getting a dedicated fitness watch. When I see him, and he sees what I can do on my watch.. he's gonna love it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

CooCooCaCha 2y ago

Weird take. Do you think your Garmin and your 10 year old watch can do the same things as an Apple Watch? No. Apple Watches are more like mini-iPhones. For example, I can take calls from my watch without a phone nearby, which is more appealing to me than multi-day battery life.

giaour 2y ago
Do you actually use the mic and speaker on your watch like Maxwell Smart, or do you need to also carry a bluetooth headset or pair of AirPods to take calls from your watch?
- CooCooCaCha 2y ago
  I do use the mic and speaker for short and simple conversations. Overall I like that I can go on a run and leave my phone at home while also being able to take a call if I need to. Look, I’m not claiming it’s life changing. The way I describe the Apple Watch to people is that you can definitely live your life without it but the little conveniences add up. It’s silly that I’m getting downvoted because it’s true. The Apple Watch and some android watches are more powerful devices more akin to a mini-phone. And because they’re more powerful they use more power. Do people really think Apple is purposefully gimping their own device or maybe there’s more too it than “these are all smart watches”. I’m totally ok with charging my watch every night and the extra little conveniences I get from a more powerful device are worth it to me.
  - pphysch 2y ago
    > The way I describe the Apple Watch to people is that you can definitely live your life without it but the little conveniences add up. For a Garmin-style watch, the convenience of only needing a ~30min charge once or twice a month is pretty big.
    - CooCooCaCha 2y ago
      I throw my watch on the charger when I go to sleep, so I don’t really seen the benefit. I’d rather have a more powerful device as a tradeoff. If that matters to you then great but I take issue with putting all of these watches in the same bucket and pretending that they’re all the same except for battery life. It’s just not true.

giaour 2y ago

100%! I switched from an Apple Watch to a WiThings ScanWatch for the battery life. Sleep tracking and vibrating alarms are kinda useless if you are expected to charge the watch every night.

officeplant 2y ago
Honest question. Do you not have 30 minutes to spare daily where you don't wear your watch and it could charge?
- giaour 2y ago
  I made the switch a few years ago, but I recall the Apple watch taking much longer than 30 mins to charge. The current iteration of the Apple Watch SE (which is what I had) claims that the battery lasts 18 hours and can charge from 0-80% in 90 minutes: https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-se/specs/ https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-se/specs/ I'm much happier with a watch that does fewer things but does them well. Only having to charge it for ~30 minutes once every few weeks means that I can just leave it on all the time like the non-smart watches I used to wear.
rootusrootus 2y ago
Why charge it all night? Just throw it on the charger when you get in the shower. Even if it doesn't hit 100% in the space of one quick shower, it'll easily add enough charge to go at least one more full day. I don't think I'd want the extra battery life unless it was much longer. Like a month or more. Remembering to charge a device just once a week is harder to make a habit out of than just putting the device on the inductive charger every time I take a shower.
- giaour 2y ago
  I think this approach works for the newer and more expensive models but not for the SE (which is what I had). The SE's battery is only rated to last 18 hours and does not offer fast charging, so taking it off and sticking it on the charger when you go to bed made sense; otherwise, you need to charge it at alternating times of day or leave it off for 6 hours in the middle of the day.

aliasxneo 2y ago

I have failed to comprehend the allure for precisely this reason. I've looked at adopting the Apple Watch a few times now, but as a person who struggles with insomnia and finds sleep tracking valuable, I'd have to buy a separate device to use with the watch because of the battery life. Or, I could just keep my current Fitbit which consistently lasts a week and gives me good enough information.

brookst 2y ago
FWIW the Android and Apple smartwatches will all charge nearly completely during a 15 minute shower. It's very possible to wear them for sleep tracking and only charge a bit a day. But I agree there is a huge difference between once-daily charging and once-weekly charging.
officeplant 2y ago
I just charge my watch once I get home from work. Only takes 30-40 minutes. Its not gonna miss many bio-metrics while I watch an episode of a favorite show.
rootusrootus 2y ago
People make it out to be some big deal, but I don't really understand. I have an Ultra 2, and it goes an easy 2 days on a single charge. I wear it all day and all night (for sleep tracking), and put it on the charger when I get in the shower. When I'm getting dressed, I put it back on and it's good to go.
- willio58 2y ago
  Same here. It's been great, and I'm on the Ultra 1 still. I will say it wasn't great when I had the non-Ultra. It was fine at first, the watch would last a full day, but like 2 or 3 years later it would struggle if I did a lot of exercise in a day to make it to the time I go to bed. I also recently went on a 5-day backpacking trip and it was a struggle to keep my phone and watch charged with an external battery. If the ultra lasted even 3 days instead of just 2ish on a charge this would have made it way easier. By the end of the trip to save charge I just gave up charging the watch.

trog 2y ago

My Fitbit devices (first Ionic, and now on my second Sense) have spoiled me, I can't imagine having to think about charging on a daily basis. I get 3-5 days depending on what I'm doing. I'm sure you get used to it and it becomes part of a routine but it's nice not having to deal with it daily.

lawn 2y ago

Indeed. I went even further and got a Garmin Instinct 2X Solar with a battery life of a month. I didn't understand how annoying it was to always charge the watch/Oura ring/Whoop band/phone until I got rid of them (except for the phone, that's still annoying).

juntoalaluna 2y ago

FWIW, I never ran out of battery with my Apple Watch. Charging it was part of my routine. I changed to a Garmin this year (started to do ultra marathons) and I've run out a couple of times because I just don't remember to charge. Especially when using GPS and bluetooth audio with it massively bumps up power consumption (which felt less like the case on the Apple Watch) Still prefer the Garmin, but just saying that I don't think battery life is the huge feature that people think it is.

Ajedi32 2y ago

I charge every night so all day is all I really need, but unless they're advertising at least 2 day battery life it's probably not going to consistently last all day (especially after a couple years of charge/discharge cycles) so that's a bit of a nonstarter for me.