logoalt Hacker News

tuckwattoday at 5:28 PM9 repliesview on HN

30 hours of battery life is a deal breaker. I don't want to charge my watch every day.

I've been using the Garmin Forerunner for a few years now and the battery life is 2 weeks!


Replies

doobiedownertoday at 6:21 PM

The charger on the 4 both sucks and blows. Countless times I’ve taken it off the charger to find 0%.

The nice strap they showed in the adverts broke instantly when I took it out of the box. Two pins sheared right off the in the middle of the band.

WearOS Apps are trash.

I wish I had gone garmin. ;(

impulser_today at 6:24 PM

If it charges fast enough this shouldn't matter. You just charge it while you take a shower and as long as it charges enough for the day it fine.

show 1 reply
dgellowtoday at 6:04 PM

My Apple Watch broke, I replaced it with a Casio with an Ollee Watch board. It doesn’t have the fancy features but it’s so nice to not have to ever think about the battery life! I wish the firmware was open source, there is a few features I would like to tweak a bit

molepersontoday at 6:07 PM

Daily charging for normal use isn't so much an issue once it becomes a habit, but battery life during extremely long (24+ hour) activities is pretty much a make-or-break feature for me.

I've done some 50ks and while truthfully I may never do an ultra that requires that much battery life, choosing a device that can't almost feels like admitting defeat. It's kind of stupid but I know I'm not alone in that thought process.

show 2 replies
Rotdhizontoday at 5:49 PM

I still have the Pixel Watch 2 and it's much the same, battery barely lasts a day, if even that. I didn't know this going in. I had purchased the Pixel 8 I think it was and saw the watch was heavily discounted if I bundled it in so I did. Will never buy another one. I'm a heavily sleeper and need multiple alarms sometimes to wake up and would often use my watch alarm to supplement my phone. So it became a nightly routine of making sure I didn't forget to charge my watch before bed, lest it dies in the middle of the night.

show 2 replies
Saristoday at 6:21 PM

Especially when Garmin and some other watches last a week or more.

Neil44today at 5:56 PM

Same my 4 year old Huawei watch still goes 2-3 weeks. It seems to be the devices with simpler OS's that last longer and the wearOS and apple equivalent struggle to do more than a day or two.

etchalontoday at 5:43 PM

It's less of a big deal than I thought it'd be.

I switched from a Garmin to an Apple Watch - which has less battery life - for some development work I had to do and it turned out I barely noticed.

Charge phone, charge watch, charge headphones just became a nightly checklist.

show 2 replies
georgemcbaytoday at 6:03 PM

> 30 hours of battery life is a deal breaker.

Also quite funny considering they are highlighting the sleep features of the watch quite a bit:

"When it's time to recharge, Pixel Watch 5 and Google Health Coach elevate sleep tracking with 15% more accurate sleep stage detection, bedtime automations that automatically pause audiobooks when you drift off, and a dedicated bedtime watch face. When morning comes, Smart Wake ensures you wake up feeling refreshed. By monitoring your heart rate and movement during the 30 minutes leading up to your alarm, Smart Wake identifies optimal moments of lighter sleep to gently wake you before your set alarm time."

Sounds neat, but uh, how are you supposed to use any of that and also use the watch as a watch with a 30 hour battery life?

show 1 reply