How to Improve My Garmin Instinct 2 Solar Series Battery Life

If you are charging your Instinct Solar series watch more frequently than expected, it could be due to the amount of usage or settings being used. Below is a list of functions that could cause the battery to drain faster than anticipated, for instructions on enabling or disabling these, review your owner's manual.

Using Power Manager to Improve Battery Life

The Power Manager, featuring Battery Saver and Power Modes, allows you to customize and save key settings that affect battery consumption to improve battery life. If you are looking to get the most out of your watch's battery, start by looking into the Power Manager.

To learn more about Power Manager, see -  Understanding and Using the Power Manager with Garmin Watches.

Functions That Use Additional Battery

NOTE: It is important that before you address some of the functions that affected battery life, that you first make sure your watch is up to date - How to Install Software Updates to My Instinct Series 2 Watch.

• Backlight 
  Having backlight set at 100% will drain more power than lower backlight levels while the backlight is in use. Reducing how frequently the backlight comes on will help preserve battery between charges.
• GPS 
  GPS tracking is activated during activities or navigation. Longer activities and recording more course points will contribute to greater battery usage. Try changing Data Recording to Smart to reduce consumption. 
• Bluetooth
  Occasional text notifications and use of other connected features will drain far less battery than more phone interaction, such as: receiving texts, answering the phone, running a music player, or getting weather updates.
• Vibration
  Alerts that cause vibration or make sound use additional battery. Turning them off can extend the battery life of the watch.
• Pulse Ox and Sleep Pulse Ox
  Turning on Pulse Ox and Sleep Pulse Ox (SPO2) will increase battery usage significantly. Turn these features off to conserve battery.
• Connect IQ
  If you are experiencing increased battery drain after installing Connect IQ apps, see - Battery Drain After Loading a Connect IQ App. 

If battery drain still continues after making some settings changes, try resetting the watch to factory defaults and seeing how long the battery lasts without pairing it to the smartphone again. If the battery lasts like it used to, then the battery drain would be the result of the choice of customized settings on the watch, or Bluetooth connected features.