Suunto 9 Peak maximum battery life

isazi

A pretty nice trick to double battery life, in activities where you are not going to look at your watch anyway, is to have a custom battery mode with everything performance but screen off (to turn it on you press a button). Screen consumes much more than the HR/Bluetooth.

surfboomerang

@isazi True, saves about 10%

marcorossi

@surfboomerang said in Suunto 9 Peak maximum battery life:

Mine drops approximately 3% per day without activities. Even with notifications enabled.

Do you want me to buy this watch?
Because this is how you make me buy this watch

Thanks for the info @surfboomerang

surfboomerang

@marcorossi In case you have any doubts buying the watch, maybe this helps…

25hrs after my last battery level post the level dropped 4% (85% -> 81%)

Simon

@marcorossi
I’ve tested quite a lot around with battery life. First off, every watch may be a little different, especially when it comes to remaining time estimates of the watch.

The estimation looks like that for my watch:
Battery drops slower from 100% drown to around 85% (3-4% per day). After that, the drain rate seems to be faster down to around 35% (5-6% per day); below 35%, it seems to slow down again (3-4% per day). All together, I’d probably get around 18 days our of the watch - no smart functions enabled and energy saving mode enabled.

Energy saving mode doesn’t help much, so I don’t use that, because it disables the BT connection to the app.

But here’s a neat trick for you: If you really not using the watch for a while, you can turn it off completely. Battery drain is then nearly 0 and it will probably last for months, if not years. I’ve never noticed any drain there. The downside: After turning it back on, you should first let it sync with the app. Otherwise, the GPS lock will take forever when starting an activity. And you will need to re-calibrate the compass. The watch will ask for that automatically. Also, the time and date is reset, but it corrects itself within a minute or so - even without connection to the app. No idea how that magic is working :'-D

@isazi
Just out of curiosity: How IS that working? I can have BT disabled on my phone and the watch still fixes time and date after turning it back on.

isazi

@simon said in Suunto 9 Peak maximum battery life:

@isazi
Just out of curiosity: How IS that working? I can have BT disabled on my phone and the watch still fixes time and date after turning it back on.

Not sure. Either GPS or it stores that information somewhere before shutdown and restores it. I usually have it connected to the app so few seconds after turning on everything is back to normal.

Simon

@isazi GPS is a good idea, but unlikely. It fetches time/date too very fast and indoors. Yeah, maybe there’s a chip that keeps the time running while the watch is powered off. That wouldn’t consume a noticeable amount of energy …

marcorossi

@simon said in Suunto 9 Peak maximum battery life:

The estimation looks like that for my watch:
Battery drops slower from 100% drown to around 85% (3-4% per day). After that, the drain rate seems to be faster down to around 35% (5-6% per day); below 35%, it seems to slow down again (3-4% per day). All together, I’d probably get around 18 days our of the watch - no smart functions enabled and energy saving mode enabled.

Interesting, I expected a non-perfectly-constant discharge, even for a reasonably constant usage; on the other hand I did not expect that below a certain percentage the amount of charge used daily could decrease again.
All in all, I’d prefer to have an even better battery life (I’m currently using a Withings Steel HR Sport that I use in “nearly watch-only mode” and charge about every 4 weeks), but for a sportwatch as compact as the Peak 9, considering all the features that are available I think that 18 days is a very good result.

But here’s a neat trick for you: If you really not using the watch for a while, you can turn it off completely.

Well, battery life is important to me but this feels a little bit excessive: I prefer not to have a watch on my wrist and then ask the time to people around me
Just kidding, thank you for having shared your experience!

isazi

Charged the battery 8 days ago. In the meanwhile I accumulated almost 8 hours of GPS activity and 1:30h of indoor activities. Battery is at 14% and I’ll charge it again today.

surfboomerang

@isazi I’m 6 days after the last charge. Recorded only 3 hrs with the watch this week, but battery level is at 65% at the moment.

Well done Suunto!

ist-1973

@simon How to completely turn off the clock?

surfboomerang

@ist-1973 Settings -> General -> Power Off
(S9P only if I’m not mistaken)

surfboomerang

For the record.
8 days after the last charge and I am down to the 50% mark, 6hrs of GPS activity (best performance)

babychai

Hi,

As advertised S9P can last for 25 hours when choose Performance for battery mode when turn on GPS.

How to achieve 25 hours battery life when turn on GPS for my hiking activity?
Few days ago i noticed the battery consumed 16% battery life (from 99% dropped to 83%) in 3 hours.

It means that 1 hour it consume about 5.33% battery (16% / 3hrs).
By calculation 18.76 hours x 5.33% = 99.99%

Therefore, the battery only can last for about 19 hours.

My setting was below when i turn on GPS:
Notification: On
Sleep tracking: on
24/7 HR: On
Theme: Light (i think it doesn’t matter whether it’s Dark or Light?)
Battery Mode: Performance

Any advice how to achieve 25 hours when turn on GPS for my hiking activity?
Which setting i need to turn it off in order to achieve it.

I need the Best GPS accuracy so please do not ask me change it to Endurance, Ultra or Tour battery mode.

Thanks.

freeheeler

@babychai
battery life in activity is independent from the daily basic settings like 24/7 HR, notifications etc… of course if you receive frequent calls during a hike (hopefully not), then it wears down the battery.
there are few things you can do:
turn off backlight (small impact IMHO)
turn off auto laps
use the GPS settings with only few different systems (GPS and QZSS afair)
and last but not least, use an external HR sensor over the internal OHR if you have one or don’t mind buying one.
at least in my S9B I’ve got 32h instead of 25h predicted battery life.
Never tested if it really gets to these amount of hours since I usually don’t have so long consecutive hikes.
And my S9B battery testings are over 2.5 years back, so I don’t remember anymore the consumption per hour that I could calculate linearly.

what you can also do is taking a power bank with you and charge while hiking?

and last but not least: maybe it’s just a momentary issue. Similar to S9B in the beginning.

DMytro

@freeheeler If I recall correctly s9p has actually better battery life with Ohr than with a belt.

Regarding battery consumption: I think battery consumption is not linear, maybe try testing it for a longer hike to deplete a third or even a half of the battery charge, this might be more representative.

freeheeler

@dmytro
oh, true! sorry for my misleading comment… and thank you for correcting me!
in S9B it’s the other way around.
OHR must have become more efficient

Egika

@dmytro not sure about this one.
It is true for S7 - S9(B/P) series has super low power BT…
Is there an official statement about this somewhere?

isazi

@babychai if you use navigation, S+ apps, or guides, battery life can be shorter than 25 hours. Battery life is also reduced if you receive many notifications or autolap is very frequent (the screen lights up). I consistently have an estimated battery life between 24 and 30 hours (measured after activity).
I even plotted estimated battery life over the past year for the S9P (and other watches) and found consistent results.

Spree

The main item anyhow is GPS systems. Using Galileo or Glonass alone immediately reduces battery life (even the expected one shown by the watch) to 21 hours instead of 25.
Also, hiking - because you go slow and therefore GPS reception is more difficult, leaving along the possibility of being in the woods or other difficult conditions - tends to have slighly lower battery life than e.g. running.

Considering batetry consumption is not entirely linear (i.e. you cannot take the first hours of consumption and think that the consumption rate will be the same for the remaining 20 hours), 16% in three hours is essentially in line with what I would expect if Galileo or Glonass were in use.

Also, of course, notifications and backlight are a great point. If checking the watch often is not that important, using the “display timeout” battery saving feature will definitely increase battery life significantly