Garmin Vivoactive 4 Battery Drain

Garmin Vivoactive 4 and Vivoactive 4S come with a battery life of 8 days on the smartwatch mode. The battery ought to last for 6 hours on GPS mode. However, some Garmin users may have experienced battery drain issues on the Vivoactive 4. Or, you have experience significant battery drain during night time. The issue may happen on an intermittent basis. This will leave you with virtually no clue about the potential cause of such battery drain on a Garmin device. If your Garmin Vivoactive 4, Vivoactive 4S, or Vivoactive 3 is draining the battery at a fast pace, we recommend that you perform the following actions to resolve the battery drain issue on Garmin. When we say battery drain, it implies that you are draining over 50 percent battery of the Vivoactive watch in less than 24 hours on a non-GPS mode.

Before we suggest different approaches to resolving the battery drain issue on Garmin Vivoactive 4, it may be a wise idea to make sure that the battery health is good. If your battery’s health is in good shape, we will look into resolving the battery drain issue on Vivoactive watches below. Older watches, normally, have a sub-optimal battery charge or backup due to the lift of the battery.

Topics covered in this post

Check flashlight on Vivoactive 4

Flashlight on the Vivoactive 4 is a battery hog as it consumes a fair chunk of battery for smooth functioning. Many times, Garmin users have accidentally switched on the flashlight due to accidental pressing of the touchscreen. This happens most times due to an accidental touch or a touch while you are sleeping.

We suggest that you keep the flashlight under at least 2 levels of navigation so that accidental touch does not force it to turn on while you are sleeping. In fact, if you can just take off the flashlight widget from the Garmin Vivoactive 4, you will have one reason for the accidental battery drain.

For people who have been experiencing battery drain on Vivoactive 4 during nights, the most likely cause of the phenomenon is accidental touch to turn on the flashlight on your smartwatch.

If you intend to keep the flashlight on Vivoactive 4, do that at least 2 levels below the watch’s home to prevent accidental touches.

Check Pulse OX

Pulse oximeter takes your blood oxygenation levels through the Pulse OX sensor. Pulse OX is a very useful feature for spot-checking or on-demand testing of blood oxygenation values. However, if you keep it always on or keep it on while you are sleeping, it will take a lot of battery life away. Measuring blood oxygenation levels may not be needed on a perpetual basis. You could take blood oxygenation levels through Pulse OX twice or thrice a day. Do ensure that Pulse OX is not set to the continuous recording of pulse oxygenation levels.

This will save your Garmin’s battery life. At the same time, you can make good of the Pulse OX functionality through on-demand testing of the oxygen saturation levels on the Garmin Vivoactive 4. Do remember that Pulse OX feature causes significant battery degradation.

GPS Checks

GPS connectivity consumes a major chunk of battery Which is why the battery life reduces from 8 days to just 6 hours when you are using the Garmin Vivoactive 4 on the GPS mode. GPS should turn itself off automatically after you have completed an activity while using a Garmin Vivoactive 4. In some cases, you may find that the GPS services do not turn off even when your activity has been completed. You could attribute this to a bug or software malfunction.

Try to turn off your GPS manually after an activity has ended. Validate the battery life after stopping or ending the GPS services manually. This would be a sure indicator of whether GPS is causing the battery to drain faster.

Remember, GPS on Vivoactive 4 should be enabled when you are running, trail walking, or hiking. There does not seem to be any rationale for keeping GPS all the time, especially when you are indoor.

Latest firmware on Vivoactive 4

It is important to update the firmware on the Garmin Vivoactive 4 to the latest version. You must strive to keep your Garmin Vivoactive 4 on the latest firmware because firmware updates resolve a lot of bugs. Firmware updates are also designed to bring in performance gains on the Garmin smartwatches. Perhaps, Garmin is the best smartwatch company as it brings in regular system and firmware updates for all the watch editions including the Garmin Vivoactive 4 and the Garmin Fenix series.

If you are running into an inexplainable battery drain issue on your Garmin Vivoactive 4, please do make sure that the firmware is updated to the latest version As of February 2022, the latest firmware version of Garmin Vivoactive 4 is the firmware release version 6.71. The firmware update runs as a beta version right now. However, you may patch your Garmin Vivoactive 4 with the latest firmware version to protect against any bugs or unoptimized use of the resources on the Vivoactive 5.

Charge Vivoactive 4 on computer

This may not sound like a very logical suggestion. However, users have reported that the battery drain issue got resolved on the Vivoactive 4 smartwatch after the watch was connected to the computer and charged through the computer. So, if you are experiencing poor battery life on a new or not-so-old smartwatch, please do charge it fully through a computer. It may, magically, resolve the issue of battery drain on the Garmin Vivoactive 4 smartwatch.

Custom watch faces

If you are draining the battery on the Vivoactive 4, do try to find out if you have been using custom watch faces. There is a chance that you may be using a custom watch face that is consuming a lot of battery life of the watch.

Try to turn off the custom watch face and use one of the existing watch faces presented by Garmin. Watch out for the performance gains that accrue after you have put off the custom watch faces on the Vivoactive 4 watch screen.

Reset your Vivoactive 4

Before resetting the Vivoactive’s default settings, we suggest that you must try to restart your Vivoactive 4 at least once. Upon rebooting, do allow some time to the watch and track the changes in battery life of the watch. If a reboot of the Vivoactive 4 does not help, then you could move ahead with doing a reset on the Vivoactive 4 watch.

If the above-stated steps do not help you in improving battery life on a Garmin Vivoactive 4, we suggest that you may manually reset your Vivoactive 4 smartwatch. Resetting the Vivoactive 4 will be a sure way to resolve battery drain issues on the Vivoactive 4. When you reset the device, make sure that you are only resetting the default values on the watch. This will reset the Vivoactive 4 system files without posting any damage to the user data on the watch. A factory reset, on the other hand, will wipe out your data as well.

Summary

Garmin Vivoactive 4 or Vivoactive 4S battery drain issue can be resolved by following the steps mentioned above. The battery drain issues could also affect other Garmin watches including the Fenix series watches and other Garmin watches. If you are unable to resolve the battery drain issue, the last option is to perform a reset of the default settings on the Vivoactive 4 watch. A reset of the default watch settings is a certain way to resolve the battery drain issues. If this fails, try performing a factory reset (you will lose all your user data on the watch). Assume the situation wherein a factory reset of Garmin Vivoactive 4 fails, and your Garmin Vivoactive 4 is under warranty. Go ahead and contact Garmin Support. They should be able to troubleshoot for you and take a call about resolving the issue through a Vivoactive 4 replacement or any other approach.

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Helen Kurt

Helen Kurt is a geeky nerd who loves to cover the wearables space. She has over 5 years of experience in the smartwatch domain. You can reach her on email at [email protected].