Battery life is one of the main reasons that many people opt for one of the best Garmin watches instead of an Apple Watch, so there’s an expectation with Garmin that they’ll last weeks rather than days on a charge.
I’ve been testing the new Garmin Forerunner 570 and Garmin Forerunner 970 watches, and the battery life has been one of the few complaints I have with them so far.
Both watches have bright AMOLED displays — brighter than on past Garmin models — but even so, I was surprised to only get three to four days of use from the 47mm Forerunner 570, and four to five days from the Forerunner 970, when I had the always-on screen enabled.
That’s less than I got from the previous models, the Garmin Forerunner 265 and Garmin Forerunner 965, so it did feel a let down even with the screen upgrade.
Garmin has moved to address this with a free software update for the watches, where the main change is focused on improving battery life.
Software version 6.17 is available now on both watches, though it’s worth noting that the battery improvement is only on the larger 47mm model of the Forerunner 570.
How to get the Garmin software update
The update is live now, and you might have already received a prompt from your watch to update it — when that pops up, you just have to confirm it on the watch for it to go through.
If you haven’t had the prompt or rejected it at the time, then you can access the update through the menu on the watch.
Hold down the Menu button — the center of the three buttons on the left of the watch — then go to System. In that Menu go to Watch Settings, then System, then Software Update and Check For Updates.
In the change log for the update, it says it will improve ‘expected battery life on watch face’. I’m not actually sure what that phrasing means, but hopefully the result is just longer battery life in general.
An essential update
The Garmin Forerunner 970 should last up to 15 days in watch mode, and the Forerunner 570 47mm model up to 11 days, according to the official specs.
That’s with the screen set to raise-to-wake, but even with it always-on, I wouldn’t expect the drop-off in battery life I’ve experienced so far.
Even with the screen set to raise-to-wake, I’ve found both watches have only made it to six or seven days of battery.
I am a fairly heavy user, in that I run every day and use the most power-intensive GPS setting on those runs, but I’d still expect to get a week of battery from the Forerunner 970 in particular with the screen always-on, as I did with the Forerunner 965, so hopefully this update makes a difference.
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