TomTom Adventurer battery life

Healthyhappykez

Hi,

I'm the very happy owner of a runner 2 music + cardio but am thinking of upgrading to the Adventurer.

3 questions.

1. What is the difference between 'breadcrumbing' and GPS in hiking mode?

2. How long will the battery last in each of these modes just tracking route?

3. How long will the battery last if I'm using the 'trail exploration' AND GPS tracking modes....

Thanks in advance

Kerry

tfarabaugh

1) GPS is just the tool used to determine your position and calculate distance, etc. It is used by the Trails feature to navigate as well. You upload a trail to the watch and it gives you a breadcrumb trail to follow ( single line with an arrow pointing in the direction you are heading). There are no maps or any contextual features and will not alert you when you get off the trail. The function is the same in all modes, including hiking.

2) Battery life is rated for around 5 hours for GPS/HR/Music, 9 for GPS/HR, 11 for GPS only, 2 weeks for watch only (that includes pause time as the sensors are still on - so if during a 2 hour activity you had 30 minutes of pause it was 2:30 of battery life, not just the 2 hours it was recording for). Those of course are estimates and best case scenario and are impacted by usage (using backlight, trails, switching screens, etc.) and environmental conditions (overcast skies, tree cover, tall buildings, etc.). If you have night mode or the backlight on that is going to impact it greatly. I have found that they are pretty accurate estimates and my usage and testing has pretty well matched them. Bear in mind that the battery gauge is a rough estimate at best and I have gone many hours when it indicates that it was almost empty. Hiking mode doubles the battery life (approximately) by taking GPS readings once a minute rather than once a second, but accuracy drops significantly.

3) Trails mode takes about 25% of the life in my experience, but there are no published figures. This is because it is refreshing the screen constantly and using GPS and the compass.

i thought they added the trails to the Runner 2 watches. If so, all you are gaining from the Adventurer is hiking mode and a magnetic compass and barometric altimeter. You need to consider how much the features are necessary for you to justify the price.

I hope this helped answer your question. If so, please mark it as a solution so others can look for it if they have the same question.

tt_gt

Trails shouldn't have any noticeable effect on battery life. Maybe a slight reduction if you were to leave it on the compass screen, but this would only be a few %.

So in hiking mode you should get 20+ hours.

tfarabaugh

Good to know. In my case it may have been environmental issues that caused the loss of battery life (and I haven't used it recently so it may have been an old issue).