I am currently using Wahoo’s betasoftware, which is intended to be finalised and then generally available when the Bolt 3 and Roam 3 are released on May 6th. It seems pretty stable and hasn’t crashed yet…unlike my 2-year-old Garmin Forerunner 965, which signalled the blue triangle of Garmin-death twice last week in the gym. #sigh.
Anyway, I’m performing various tests on it. Still, one test I thought I would perform that I don’t typically do was to leave the devices recording a workout outside on a table until the battery was depleted. I would have no sensors connected, autopause disabled and screen backlight disabled. I expected to see a slightly meandering GPS track around my back garden, which I got. The table is close to my house, so some GPS signal will be reflected off it, keeping the ELEMNT on its toes with something to do…but not too much. This is a straightforward test to determine the maximum possible battery life. It’s not representative of real-world conditions, but if you were to get 75% of the battery life I get here, then you (we) could perhaps try to start to understand what features have eaten up the 25%.
Further battery drain beyond what I show here would likely be caused by unreliable GPS, following a route, reading from sensors, backlight, phone pairings, less commonly used colourful screen elements, etc.
Element ACE claims up to 30 hours of battery life, whereas Roam 3 claims 25 hours (up from 17 on Roam 2) and Bolt 3 claims 20 hours (up from 15 hours on Bolt 2). My tests scored 49 and 27 hours, respectively. I tried this extremely time-consuming test twice with the Wahoo ACE, but the saved workout never uploaded for some reason. I also had an issue with my first attempt at this test with Bolt 3, where I fully depleted the battery, but the ride was not recovered when restarted with external power.
In a discussion with Wahoo, the company noted that it has been tinkering quite a lot with the core battery features. Based on these results, there is a significant performance improvement when ACE was launched.
Best-Case Battery Life (Unrealistic for real-world usage)
Roam 3 – 46 hours, 49 hours, 44 hours (15 hours based on navigating on a 2-hour ride with sensors, maybe also some backlight.)
Bolt 3 – 21 hours (27 hours based on a proper 2-hour ride). I made a mistake here, but I can’t think what eg backlight was disabled.
2 thoughts on “an odd Wahoo Battery test on Bolt 3 and Roam 3”
Thank you for your thoughtful testing. These tests take time and patience and I’ll be honest, when I am not getting the amazingness that some YouTubers get I start to question myself.
🙂 ty for your kind words!
well, these tests involved leaving it on a table for over a day…:-)
all the rest of it does take days though.!
some of the above result are amazing. but i suspect real life usage will be considerably less. with ACE wahoo was not really clear about the impact of and need for screen backlight. with backlight off it performed acceptably but with backlight on that lowered battery lives below expected/calimed levels quite notably. anyway…they’ve tinkered with all of that.
Thank you for your thoughtful testing. These tests take time and patience and I’ll be honest, when I am not getting the amazingness that some YouTubers get I start to question myself.
🙂 ty for your kind words!
well, these tests involved leaving it on a table for over a day…:-)
all the rest of it does take days though.!
some of the above result are amazing. but i suspect real life usage will be considerably less. with ACE wahoo was not really clear about the impact of and need for screen backlight. with backlight off it performed acceptably but with backlight on that lowered battery lives below expected/calimed levels quite notably. anyway…they’ve tinkered with all of that.