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Comment by dcchambers | Hacker News Reader

I had no idea the battery life on most smart watches is so bad that "24 hours of screen on battery life" is something to brag about. The apple watch is no better.

My Garmin Forerunner 945 (a running focused smart watch), more than two years old at this point, gets nearly two weeks of battery life on a single charge, and it's got an always-on screen as well.

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Quick edit:

Even the latest Forerunner 965, which has an AMOLED touch screen, gets 7 days of battery life in display-always-on mode, and 3 weeks in default mode (display turns off)^1

[1]: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=FEjONGCI270wlBlREC7Uw8...

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Yes, transflective screens consume MUCH less energy than a OLED/LCD or whatever display tech that these watches have that require backlights to function.

The Garmin works just fine without an active backlight (due to transflective) and has much fewer colors and worse resolution and worse refresh rate. It also does not have a touchscreen which also consumes lots of energy.

The modern smart watch advertises always on screens because it manages to get a day of battery life with a "good" display

All good points, though even the latest Forerunner 965, which has an AMOLED touch screen, gets 7 days of battery life in display-always-on mode, and 3 weeks in default mode (display turns off)^1

[1]: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=FEjONGCI270wlBlREC7Uw8...

My Amazfit GTS 2 mini also manages 2 weeks on battery and it's got an OLED screen that I've set to always on, and it's got a touchscreen. And it's a small and light watch so the battery can't be that big.

I think the biggest battery waste is the full OS. Like the Garmins my watch doesn't have installable apps.

Ps Garmin also sells OLED touch models with long battery life. Like the venu

Garmin smartwatches support installable apps.

https://apps.garmin.com/

IME the OLED Garmins don't have that long of battery life if you have the display set to always-on. For me (Forerunner 265), it lasts maybe 3 days. Better than an Apple Watch, but not nearly as good as an Amazfit.

My Garmin Enduro 2 has a touchscreen, and battery lasts somewhere from 2 to 3 weeks depending on how much I use it during an activity.

My Fossil Hybrid HR has (real) motorised hands sitting on top of an e-paper display. 2 weeks of battery pretty easily. Just a shame that the syncing software halves the battery of your phone, requires privacy-invasion talking-back-to-the-server bullshit, and is ugly and useless to boot. But still required for watch functionality.

Christ I wish more smartwatches were hybrid & e-paper displays. I just seems the most obvious form for a smartwatch to exist in, yet there's almost none around.

I have the same one, though branded as a Skagen Jorn Hybrid HR. I'm pretty sure it's the exact same watch. I can get 3-4 weeks out of it.

One nice thing about their privacy-invading app is that it works perfectly fine if networking permissions are disabled for it, at least on Android.

It also works with Gadgetbridge, except for sleep tracking. I really want to find the time to add a sleep tracking algorithm to Gadgetbridge one day.

I've flashed every phone I've ever owned with custom firmware but the gadgetbridge route confused the heck out of me for some reason. I ended up just using a previous version of the software for a while until I changed phones, and never bothered downgrading or flashing after that.

I miss my Pebble. I have a Garmin now, but it lacks many basic functionalities, especially around notifications. For example, if someone texts me a few times in a row, I can't scroll to get to prior notifications. Lame!

Same here. I'm really surprised that after Pebble's implosion nothing appeared to fill the void. I could've bet real money that within a couple of years we're going to see at least a couple of products at least close to what the Pebble was.

Fossil seems closest in terms of functionality, but their UI/UX is not nearly as smooth. The watches look nice, but they're much harder to read and navigate. Also super slow/laggy. I was hopeful when they first came out, but it seems like they've hardly innovated. They added Alexa a while back, but since there's no speaker (just a mic), responses are text-only. But the core OS is the same, four years later.

I think the screen quality is very different. Newer Garmins have screens that are more comparable, but if you run them in always-on mode, battery life is a few days IME. I don't leave my screen on, and the battery lasts 5-6 days.

I agree that 24 hours is lousy, and I won't buy and Apple/Google watch for this reason.

Can you define newer? Which watch do you have?

I have a Fenix 6s and with Always On mode it lasts about a week. However, if I record activities, I'll need to charge it that night.

At one point, battery life got really bad but a factory reset fixed it.

And the thing still gets updates years after its release!

I once broke my Garmin bike computer screen and they sent me a new bike computer free of charge. Honestly, I'm a big Garmin fan at this point.

I have a Forerunner 265, which I think was refreshed earlier this year to have the new AMOLED display. It looks nice, but it doesn’t last more than about 3 days in always-on mode.

I don’t understand how the Amazfit watches get 2+ weeks, with such nice-looking screens. I would have gotten one but don’t feel comfortable due to data/privacy issues, and the menus were clearly not written English-first. But the battery life was amazing!

I had a Pebble smartwatch for years and loved it. I was a very reluctant switcher to Apple Watch and battery life was one of my biggest concerns.

Turns out it doesn’t really matter. When going to bed at night I used to plug my phone in. Now I plug my phone and my watch in. Pick up both in the morning and I’m ready to go.

Ironically I find myself in fewer low battery scenarios than I did with my Pebble: because I need to charge every day it becomes part of my routine. With the Pebble I’d lose track of when I last charged it and leave the house with it running on fumes. Still miss it, though.

What about sleep tracking? That's essentially the most important feature for me in a smartwatch/fitness tracker

Personally I don’t care about it. But I imagine I could charge it while I’m in the shower if I did.

It doesn't take long to charge, so you can top up before bed. When I've forgotten to take mine off it usually lasts all night anyway.

One exception: exercise hammers the battery. It'll work but it's not as good as my Garmin bike computer for multi-hour rides. 2 or 3 hours might mean it won't last until bedtime, 4+ and it might not last the ride.

There is almost no point in comparing the two, they're completely different devices.

My apple watch has 4g and can stream spotify for example, I can take phone calls from anyone anywhere.

Yeah I hear a lot of people bring up the battery life thing but the Apple Watch and wearOS devices are fully functional computers in their own right. If you do want a fitness appliance of sorts it's really not these devices.

Regardless, I find a fast charger while showering makes the watch last plenty long.

It can run goddamn Doom!

Garmin devices are generally great on battery life but the display on the Forerunner 945 isn't really considered "always on". It always displays an image but isn't readable in the dark without turning on the backlight.

Some newer Garmin devices do have true "always on" displays. Their battery life is slightly worse, but still pretty good.

imo garmins approach is better if you want to wear it while sleeping - less chances to trigger the display and wake up

I've got a Skagen Jorn Hybrid watch with an "always on" e-ink screen and it lasts 4 weeks on a charge. I would be severely annoyed at having to charge a watch every day. A "nicer" looking screen is not worth it.

I've been buying previous generation Garmin watches and I could never go back. Earlier this year I bought a Fenix 6X Pro Solar for $400. It's not the latest and greatest but it's still a phenomenal watch at that price. During the summer I average maybe an hour of GPS a day and I still get a week and half of battery life easily. If I don't use the GPS at all it's 3-4 weeks depending on how much solar power it gets. And it has several power save modes that extend it even further if for some reason that isn't enough.

Just got a Venu 3, largely because my OG Venu battery life was down to two days after 4 years.

I've had thing thing a week and haven't charged it yet. It's even a 3S (shorter battery life than the base model). I've had it always-on, HR tracking, done three indoor workouts, a hike, and a run...

I could never have a device that needed to be charged every day.

I have used Garmin's more consumer focused watches for years (currently have a Venu), and get great battery life too. Not two weeks, but a week is not out of the question.

Of course, I've found that after a couple of years the battery life starts to fade fast. Eventually I'm charging it every other day, at which point I usually start shopping for a new one.

As with all things, your usage is the thing that matters. I haven’t worn a watch longer than a day even when watch batteries lasted literal years and sleep tracking doesn’t interest me (I sleep like the dead - it’s great). So whether it’s 3, 5, 7 or more… anything after about a day is just a flex and isn’t particularly interesting to me.

Never really impacted me. I take my watch off when I go to bed and stick it on the charger beside my bed. Never have to think about the battery life.

I used to have a pebble watch that had 10 days battery but it would always go flat on me mid day because I didn’t have a regular charging schedule. Apple Watch has never gone flat mid day for me.

The chonky apple watch lasts 2-3 days. The small ones are engineering marvels to last even 24h.

It’s not ideal, but also not that much of an issue.

And for many the Garmin is not a suitable alternative.

My affordable Fitbit inspire’s battery life is also more than 2 weeks that I have to set a reminder to charge it because the battery life is so long.

Happy user of a Xiaomi band which has similar life and likely hardware.

The strategy I found for charging is to habitually plug in when in the shower, the few mins of charge per day provides "forever" battery life for me.

That strategy also works for my Apple Watch.

That’s a good strategy. I’m afraid I might miss some steps or valuable data during shower.

My Fitbit Sense gets 4-5 days off a full charge. It's not always on though.

Difference between a general purpose CPU vs a special purpose one.

this is why I prefer a hybrid watch over a smartwatch. My Amazfit T-Rex and Withings Steel HR batteries last a month

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