Tips to improve your Garmin Edge 1000 battery life.
It’s quite common to hear from people who have upgraded their Garmin from an older model, say the fantastic and reliable edge 800, to the newer edge 1000 only to be frustrated by how quickly the battery drains down.
There’s a few reasons why this might be expected.
Firstly, it has a larger screen. Screens suck a lot of power. Especially if you have the back light turned on.
Bluetooth connectivity with your smartphone, so you can receive text and call alerts on your Edge 1000, are quite handy but again, that Bluetooth is another big battery drainer.
Here’s a few ways to improve the Garmin Edge 1000 battery life.
It’s annoying when your device runs out of power on a ride. Follow these tips to extend the battery life of your Garmin GPS.
Minimise use of the backlight
This is probably the most significant factor.
Firstly, set the screen brightness as low as you can go without making it invisible. This will depend on the conditions and how sunny or overcast it is.
When you touch the screen or when it wakes up to prompt you with an alert, the backlight comes on and stays on for a set amount of time. The timeout value dictates how long it stays on. Set it to the minimum, 15 seconds.
Kill the Bluetooth
Bluetooth is needed if you want your Garmin Edge 1000 to talk to your smartphone. This is necessary if you want to get live text or call alerts on your Garmin screen, or to use the live tracking feature.
Many people report inconsistencies with the Bluetooth connectivity, and if devices are left in a state where they’re searching for another device to connect to, that’s only going to run the battery down faster.
So turn Bluetooth OFF if you don’t need it.
Magical sync over the ether.
If you like the fact that your Edge 1000 can sync your ride data as soon as you get back home automatically, you might not want to turn off the WiFi option.
But if you’re dead set on conserving battery life, kill the WiFi too!
Navigation – keep it simple
Your Garmin edge GPS uses more battery when the unit has to process route directions, so one way to minimise this is to turn off recalculation. This would normally kick in if the unit thinks you have gone off course.
There’s also an option to set it to “prompted”, which means it will ask you if you want it to recalculate.
Have a kip
No not you, your Garmin.
You should enable the Auto Sleep feature. This will help save the battery by allowing the unit to power down in those quieter, more restful moments. Like the cafe stop, when you’re busy stuffing your face with chocolate brownies. Probably best that the Garmin doesn’t see that anyway… Imagine all those extra calories it would report to Strava…
How long should the Garmin Edge 1000 battery last?
The official spec says about 15 hours if I remember correctly, but most people seem to report the figure of about 10% per hour, which would obviously total about 10 hours.
With the backlight on full brightness and with Bluetooth active, people generally report far less – between 5 and 6 hours of battery life. Maybe the Edge 1000 isn’t that suitable for long distance journeys?
Any more tips for saving Garmin Edge 1000 battery life?
Please share in the comments!
The long and the short of it is you may as well stick with your old model If you have to turn off all the new features!
These are just tips for longer rides. I leave everything on for 100 mile or less rides. Guess if I was faster it would last 200 miles????
Thanks, I found this to be useful. I did all of the above , and just to be sure that battery energy wasn’t being lost on the navigation features, also set:
Settings ==> Activity Profiles ==> Data Screens ==> Map – to disable
– the Garmin 1000 had 2% battery left after 14 hrs 13 mins elapsed time (11 hrs 16 mins moving time), so I saved it at that point (253km).
Note also that for longer (fuel) stops, I hit the Pause and then Power buttons to also save battery, and of course the reverse when recommencing. This may not have been necessary, but I wasn’t sure how long the unit takes to Auto-sleep after Auto-pause kicks in.
Did a long gravel race today, after downloading the course to my Garmin 1000. Obviously, when you’re trying to avoid cue cards, constant display of the downloaded course on the map page is essential. I’ve done some of the things mentioned above, but I will do more. Anyway, the battery died at 6 1/2 hours (3 hours before the ride finished). I was using the Garmin remote, which I really don’t need to use. Constantly listening to the remote must have reduced battery life, as well. Wonder if it wouldn’t be good to avoid as many sensors as possible if going on a long ride?
Did everything recommended, and still get only about 6.5 hours of battery life. Very disappointing…
LOL! I love the Sarcasm Todd :)
I like the bigger screen than my old Edge 705 and a lot of the other features. It really depends upon the length of your ride. I had the display on “torch” mode (full bright/always on), and found that I was at 47% after 2 hours and 40 minutes. I put the display on auto-bright with 15 seconds on and got another 4 hours after that. I think people who want to downgrade because of not having all of the features on are missing the point: First, you may not need all the features, but not some; second, you can tweak the features to conserve battery life without getting rid of them necessarily; and third, on shorter rides, you can have a lot going on but still finish the ride with plenty of juice.
I think my first “off” may be Bluetooth. I have an earbud to my iPhone, so I don’t see the need for the display if I can just ask Siri to read my text.
All good hints here thanks! I’d just add one that was maybe considered too obvious to mention: turn off Glonass and leave the GPS satellite tracking on only.
(Settings>Activity Profile>Select Profile>GPS>GPS Mode>GPS)
Fantastic machine 99% of time. However am doing L’Etape in July and concerned it may cut out before the end. Are there any additional batteries that can be plugged in the USB port to give me longer?
Yes there are
Sorry but I don’t know the various brands but they do work. I have posted a comment on how to use them
Good luck with the Etape, they are brilliant events!
Hitting the stop/pause button then the off button when you stop saves battery time. Just press on and don’t forget.to press start to resume your ride. You can buy remote battery packs with USB connectivity. You must do the same sequence as above otherwise you will lose navigation. I did this succesfully riding 100 plus miles a day from Italy to London. The packs are bulky but I had a support crew ao they carried it. Even doing this for a 10 minute coffee break will make a difference. Good luck and hopefully Garmin will eventually sort this problem which is everyone’s gripe
Further to my earlier comments I can tell you know which Power Pack is best to recharge your Garmin it is the Anker PowerCore 20100 try Amazon
Hi. I just wondered how much extra battery life you got by using the power pack? And is that power pack small enough to transport easily?
Use only those sensors that you think matter on a long ride.
Your tips will for sure work, however I can’t see the value of buying the edge 1000 if you want to turn it all off as you suggested.Maybe you should keep the 200 model which you still have to sync via ethernet.
I can ride do up to 120 miles with one battery -safely 100 miles- backlight on 30 seconds and everything on.
I also use Di2 and have all connected to the garmin.
If the battery dies is it possible to recover the activity up to the point when the Garmin switched off?