Garmin Smartwatches Reportedly Suffer Nearly Halved Battery Life With New Feature.

Garmin’s various smartwatches, including several of its products, feature an integrated microphone and speaker. These components enable hands-free calling, voice dictation of text messages, and voice assistant integration over Bluetooth without requiring a dedicated cellular connection. Garmin recently introduced a new feature that allows users to activate the voice assistant using a verbal wake word instead of pressing a physical button.

While it might be expected that a device consuming some extra power while actively listening for voice triggers, the increase it causes in power consumption in standby mode is surprisingly large. Consistent user reports on Garmin’s support forums show that enabling the feature can reduce battery life by nearly half.

However, context matters: Garmin smartwatches are known for their exceptional battery life, especially when compared to rivals like the Watch. For instance, one user reported that the estimated battery life of a Garmin Forerunner 970 (Amazon) dropped from 15 days to 9 days—a significant decline, but one that still leaves ample runtime for daily use. Users can easily disable the “OK Garmin” activation command from the settings, and Garmin may address the efficiency issue in upcoming software updates.

Sources

Garmin (1), Garmin (2), via Gadgets & Wearables, image source: Notebookcheck