Garmin has a plethora of devices, and some of them have the best battery life you can get in a smartwatch of their kind. One of them is the Garmin Enduro 4 that I’m using now. Garmin watches already last a long time, but a few simple adjustments can make them last even longer, so here are the five settings I changed on mine, along with a few honorable mentions.
1. Pulse Ox off completely
Measuring blood oxygen all day and night keeps the sensor on the back of the watch working for hours, and as far as I can tell it is one of the biggest drains you can leave running without noticing. When I want the number, I take a two minute Health Snapshot instead, which records heart rate, HRV, respiration and stress in one go.
2. Backlight at 5% with a 4 second timeout
The Enduro 4 has the same memory in pixel display as the Enduro 3, and it is readable in daylight without any backlight at all, so 5% is plenty for me in the dark.
On AMOLED watches, and that is many of the Garmins out there, the setting that matters most is the always on display. Toggling it off can actually double the battery life on your AMOLED Garmin.
3. Gesture backlight off
With the gesture on, every flick of the wrist turns the light on. So I only use the gesture after sunset and inside activities, and I press the button for the rest of the time.
4. Music only when I run
On the Enduro 4 the normal power mode is rated at up to 80 hours, but with music that drops to 22. So for long hikes and rides, I think your phone is the better music player.
A few honorable mentions
Before number five, a few smaller ones. I keep Wi-Fi off and only turn it on when I need to sync, I use a watch face without a second hand, and I let fewer notifications through to my wrist. It is also worth taking a look at Garmin’s Power Manager, which shows what each setting actually costs you.
5. Extended battery mode for the long days
For hikes over several days and for longer rides, where battery life matters more than precision, I use the extended battery mode, which as far as I can tell replaces the GPS only setting I used on the Enduro 3. On the Enduro 4 that gives you up to 120 hours, or 320 hours in optimal solar conditions, compared to 60 hours in max accuracy, which uses all satellite systems and multiband.
The two modes I don’t use
Now, if battery life was the only goal, there are two more modes that could go even further. The first is max battery, which as far as I can tell is what used to be called UltraTrac under a new name. It records your position and sensor data far less often, so your track turns into a rough sketch with the corners cut off.
The second is expedition mode, which records a GPS point every hour and turns off all sensors and the phone connection, and that gets the Enduro 4 up to 77 days.
But I don’t really use either of those two. For me, a big part of the joy and a big part of the training value is the full recording, the heart rate, the elevation, the training load and the actual line I walked.
The real battery tip
That’s why I chose both the Enduro 3 and now the Enduro 4 over all the other alternatives out there. The battery is big enough that I don’t have to choose, and I think that’s the real battery tip. Buy the battery you need, so you don’t have to switch off the things you bought the watch for.
If you want to go deeper, I have tested settings for more models in my real world Garmin battery guide and a full Enduro 3 battery guide. Do you have any battery tips that I didn’t cover here?
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