Ionic battery life

[MikeyJG]

So I charge my ionic last night stayed up late so I could have it track my sleep. The battery dropped 25% over night and it's dropped another 25% I am not using gps on it or wifi any suggestions. Side note I took it off as soon as it hit 100% should it be left on longer. The battery does not last for 4 days but 1 1/2 if I'm lucky

[Janhavi]

Hi,

i have a fitbit ionic. I noticed the battery life go down about 2 months into buying the ionic and changed my screen settings to manual and barely even use the music tab. Yet now my batter doesn’t even last 3 whole days! 

Seems like an elic waste of money if I can’t control my music or anything else and still dont even get the battery life out of the watch!!

[shandrananette]

I've had the exact same issue - I charge it while I shower every morning and it  is usually no less than 70%.  Starting in late January/early February I would have days where it was down to 10% or less when i was driving home.  Last night it died during the night even though it was fine when I went to bed (it was charged yesterday morning).  Chatted with support this morning and they're having me run a battery test, meaning I'm supposed to intentionally run it down to 0% and let them look at the logs.  I charged it fully and have gone down no more than 3% all day, despite tracking exercise (not GPS).  I'm torn as to whether to install the latest update.  I guess I'll see how it does today (and set a backup alarm).  Have you had the issue repeat itself, or did you get any resolution?

[Kac5477]

I have found that certain clock faces drain your battery more than others i had a generic one made by fitbit very simple  and i switched to a really bright rainbow one and i went form 4 days to 2 1/2 days battery life.

[SilviaFitbit]

It's great to have you here @MikeyJG, @shandrananette and @Kac5477. Thanks for the details you've mentioned. Just as @Kac5477 mentioned when you install a clock face with many features it can drain your watch's battery life, you can find this in the information that the clock face provides you when you install it. 

Additionally, you may want to follow these tips Can I improve my Fitbit device's battery life?. If you're having really short battery life, you may want to restart it and make sure you're fully charging it. 

Hope this helps! Keep me posted. 

[Denodan]

Why do you guys push your battery? You killing the lifespan of it.

It amuses me why you guys are pushing the lenght between charges and stressing your battery?

These things cost to much to not want your battery lifespan to last as long as possible.

I charge mine every 2 days regardless of use.

[Danman7000]

My battery life is less than a day. I charged mine last night before bed and it is now at 15 percent. (3:00pm). I don’t sync all day, I have taken off all alerts or alarms. I don’t have an animated clock face. I have to tap to see instead of flipping my wrist. In effect all the things that made it appealing, I am not using and still less than 24 hours of battery life. 

[MneimnehMo]

really bad... should drastically improve battery life to entice more people to upgrade or even buy the watch... it has a lot of nice features compared to the charge 2, but battery life is quite alarming if it only lasts 4 days.. they should improve technology for something that lasts at least 10 days without recharging... 

[Pat03]

Im late to the party here, but here is my 2c worth......

4 days is actually pretty decent battery life compared to other smartwatches. But yes, we would welcome improvement on this.

But the bigger picture here is that the battery is soldered onto the motherboard and NOT replaceable. That is the real issue here. So if your battery goes....your perfectly working good watch goes with it. Im no engineer, but as a customer, this seems like a bad design and leaves the customer very vunerable.

Even if you treat your battery gently, it still is possible to just get a bum battery from the manufacturer and so your whole watch could end up kaput due to no faulty of your own. Then you have to wait to have it replaced which may take 2 weeks with all the too-ing and fro-ing. That might not sound long, but to a guy like me who has had heart surgery and who rely on the watch to monitor HR while exercising....it could be a matter of life and death. Your whole device should not be kaput if a battery dies or if you get a bum battety from day one. The battery should be easily replaceable by a local dealer within a day and the whole watch should not be defunct both short term or long term if the battery goes kaput. This is the change I would rather see happening first, rather than worrying about increasing the longevity in batteries. 

For instance, I had a Blaze originally where in just under 2 years, the battery would take no charge at all and actually would get dangerously hot. I dont care what way I charged my battery. The fact is, it is a disgrace to pay big money for a  perfectly working watch to be rendered useless and you are locked out when a fault occurrs with the battery no matter whose at fault.

Fitbit replaced my Blaze with an Ionic (lucky me!) because the Blaze was discontinued. They did this without any fuss, even though the watch was out of warranty....so this has to be commended and I found their support to be excellent in my experience. But I still cant let that detract from the fact that I was out of action for about 2-3 weeks which can be critical for guys like me who has a condition. I also cant let it detract that maybe the durability of some of these batteries are perhaps suspect. Most certainly, I find that the design places the watch and potential buyer in a very vunerable position. 

[Pat03]

btw.....I would also like to add this too on a positive note and to add a bit of balance to my previous post.

As a guy who has to look after his health and fitness, I found the Ionic to be excellent and certainly a good step up from my Blaze. 

What I like about it over the Blaze is the waterproofness and ability to track swimming. I now can track weight training and can track and adjust for interval training. Also the menus are laid out better and I like being able to customize the two right hand side control buttons to get me into 2 features that I use regularly (Tracking Weight Training top button + Countdown Timer on bottom button). There is other little tweaks like that, which makes the Ionic more enjoyable to use over the Blaze.

As a smartwatch, it might fall short compared to the Apples and Samsungs....but if fitness and health are your priorities.....the watch is right up there imo.

[Denodan]

Why do you guys run your battery right down? In 4 days it must be nearly flat or under 30%.

Batteries get stressed if you run them right down, under 30% your well stressing your battery, so are shorten how long it will last.

I never let mine go under 40% and often charge at 50%+ at its kinder to your battery life overall.

Always running it down under 30% is a sure way to stress the battery and shorten its life span.

A cycle is from 30% and below, so if you charged say from 80% this does not count as a cycle until 5 charges at 80% equals 1 full cycle.

If a car says it will do 200mph does not mean you will do 20pmph or often anyway.

Just because a manufacture says it will last 5 days, does not mean you should, as it's a sure way to cut the life span of your battery.

Even a top nightly even if it's at 80-90% is far better for the battery than running under 30%

Anyway got a Withings Steel Sport HR and is better than the ionic as a sports tracker, with a 25day  battery life.

I use it twice a day to track my cycling and keeps better hr accuracy than my ionic which can be a hit or miss so got rid of my ionic, wanted a real watch, with real hands, not a dead blank screen.

While the sport does not have GPS on the watch, it tethers to your phones GPS and boy is it more accurate than the ionic 

It's up there with my Garmin 1030 bike GPS.

Love my steel sport, and does running also and records v02 max, but not recorded unless you do running, which I dont.

The only thing I missed was ionic has the best sleep tracking out of them all 

Garmin is crap, but most of the time the steel is up there with ionic.

The steel is the best all round sports watch I have found and will recognize up to 30 activities.

[Pat03]

Thanks for your response. I have a few points that you may have overlooked if you were responding to me. 

Nowhere in my post did I say what way I charged my Fitbit. So you are making great assumptions in saying that I charged it wrong. You might find this hard to believe....but not all the materials that make up a watch leave the manufacturing line in 100% good condition. No manufacturing facility does a 100% quality check on their products. Faults occur, including on batteries. No matter what way you charge a battery, no battery should dangerously overheat on charge.

Secondly, you missed the point of my post. You like to use the car analogy, so I presume you own a car, right? Well lets forget about top speeds and deal with the core reality of the issue. If the battery in your car reached the end of its life tomorrow....wouldnt you think it would be insane that you have to scrap the whole car along with the defunct battery when the rest of the car is in perfect running order? That is the point you missed in my post. It doesnt matter if you looked after the battery in your car correctly or not. What im saying is if the battety goes kaput for whatever reason, the rest of the car (or watch) is still functional and you should be able to get back up and running on within a few hours and not have to throw your product on the scrap heap!

Finally, Im glad that you found that the steel is better than the Ionic....but also remember too that those sentiments only relate to "you" and you own personal usage. That dont mean that the Steel is an outright better sports watch than the Ionic per se. The Steel would be an actual mediocre choice for my usage against the Ionic, for example .

For instance, I dont need 30 activies, and the ones that I do need (which are walking, swimming, weights, and in particular interval running)...... I need a watch that excels in them in real time especially if im paying big money for that watch.

Lets take running with intervals for instance.....can the steel set up the interval durations, the rest periods, vibrate to alert me when each interval  arrives? Can it pause the workout if need be? Can it let me see all the stats visually very clearly in large font in real time (running) without having to twiddle at buttons? Can I also see it clearly in the sun outdoors? That data in that little info circle on the steel is mediocre and I wouldnt be able to read anything on that outdoors and on the go at all. I heard its pretty poor in direct sunlight too....a favourite time when people do the popular sport of running. Take even the actual watch face.....it might be clear to you, but mightn't be clear to me or others. I prefer big digital numbers over anologue....remember that every person vision is different and its nice to set up a clock face of your choice like on the Ionic.

Perhaps the gps might be better on your phone....but that insures that you have to take your phone while running, dont it?. There are people like me who rather leave their phones at home for such activity. So the Ionic is nice in that I can play 300 songs to a cheap bluetoothed sports ear buds, record my gps and leave my bulky phone at home and just have the lightweight watch with me.

I'm sure the steel is an excellent watch, but it would fail dismally for my usage compared to the Ionic.  So there are two sides to every coin.

[Denodan]

I had the ionic and comparing the HR, the steel is more accurate, sure it's not for the serious runner, but found the ionic HR accuracy not the best 

I use a hr chest strap when biking and the steel does a far better job than my ionic, which Biking was hit and miss, but no optical hr is as accurate as a chest strap, but the steel does a good job here, better than my garmin vivomove hr accually, so love the hr accuracy. So as an overall fitness tracker I find it better than fitbit, with better hr accuracy.

I just want a good overall fitness tracker, not a serious one and this works great.

Yes as for fixed  batteries, its crap and becoming more common, but the way you charge your battery does really effect its life.

This is why laptop batteries, as an example dont last long, as people run them right down and then charge them up.

The lower you run down your battery at less than 50% the harder it is for the battery to maintain its charge, which is why under 50% you may notice it starts running doe  faster than the top 50%.

Not saying the battery issue your having is your fault, but the way you charge a battery does affect its lifespan.

And yes you can get faulty batteries and often the cause is, if it's been sitting in the shop, or warehouse a long time  that battery is running down all the time, which if to low can cause the battery to not hold a decent charge.

Also with a new battery, it may take 5 or so cycles before the battery holds its max charge.

I have seen many laptop batteries crap out and hold a poor charge in w years due to running  them right down, which is bad for liposuction batteries, which these are in the ionic and most watch batteries, etc.

I just posted this to make people aware and ask why they would run your battery for 4 days when it would clearly be right down before you charge it.

If you were to run your watch down less than 20% then its likely to die in 2 years.

Not saying this is your case, but a poorly looked after battery could die sooner rather than later, and since batteries are becoming fixed, looking after your battery and the way you charge it, now matters more than it ever does.

But not charging correctly does drop the life of your battery by a hugh ammount and can be damaged in a 2 year period.

And yes have seen faulty batteries and often the issue is due to sitting to long without a charge I  the shop, etc or to s lesser degree a manufacturing issue.

I would never let my ionic last 4 or more days or get it right down used to charge mine every 2 days, weither it needed it, or not and the figures manufactures give are never correct in real life.

The most I every have taken my battery down is 30% and often charge at 40-50% more the 50% than anything.

Anything less than 30% and your shorting the overall life of the battery.

So hope these tips will help you and others if they want to max out their battery lifespan.

Its something like 300-500 cycles charges from 30% to 100%.

This increases to like 3000 cycles from 50%+

So if you charged your watch at 90% then 10× is equal to 1 battery cycle, so anything above 50% means your battery will last much longer.

Its even been said that you should not even charge to 100%, but seen no issues.

Anyway hope your loving your ionic. Think it's the better fitbit watch and think they took a step backwards with the Versa. I do find the GPS on the ionic is not as accurate as my phone or bike GPS, so may have been one reason for no GPS in the Versa, even Garmin fitness watches have more GPS accuracy than the ionic.

Over 6.4km my fitbit was close, but always out by .2 or .3  out.

 So would record it as 6.2km when in fact my bike GPS and watch showed 6.4.

Serious runners mostly go for Garmin as Garmin mans watches more to cater for the runner, fitbit always made general fitness watches for general fitness tracking, not so much for the runner.

Garmin tend to cater better toward the serious fitness person, Fitbit dont