Battery life on eTrex 20?

[sea_munky]

Hi folks

 

I'm new around here and bought myself an eTrex 20 to motivate myself to get out and explore more. I've found 6 caches so far. Hooray!

 

I bought my eTrex 20 brand new 10 days ago. I put freshly charged Sanyo eneloop batteries in (also brand new) and got only about 5 hours of use on it. This can't be typical! The review on OutdoorGearLab says battery life is 25 hours!

 

Should I start considering a return? How many hours do you get?

 

Also, today I got the "Low Battery" warning and then soon after the map screen switched from white to black. Is this typical? Thanks for any info and tips!

[+BlackRose67]

I usually get around 18 hours before the indicator gets to 1 bar, then I will swap the batteries out for a fresh pair.

 

Did you have the battery type set to NiMh (versus alkaline or lithium) in the setup?

 

When you get the low battery warning, you need to swap out the batteries fairly quick, or the unit will shut down.

 

Battery life also depends on what the backlight is set to. If it's on all the time, you'll eat through the batteries pretty fast.

I think I have mine set for 30 seconds.

[+Walts Hunting]

Did you change the battery setup to say you have rechargeables? If it is still set for alkaline you will mKe the battery charge indicator do exactly what you described.

[+Graculus]

I can't speak for the eTrex 20, but my Oregon 550 will go for a whole day easily on those eneloop batteries (2800mAh). As said in the responses above, make sure in settings you have the battery type correctly set.

 

Chris

Graculus

Volunteer UK Reviewer for geocaching.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

UK Geocaching Wiki

Geocaching.com Help Center

UK Geocaching Information & Resources website

[+dizzabella]

my etrex 20, after 5 hours I lose maybe 1 bar which means that I get around 20 hours from fresh batteries. I haven't used rechargables and keep the back light turned pretty low.

[sea_munky]

Thanks everyone. I didn't know there was a battery setting. I changed it to NiMH as suggested. We'll see how that works out.

 

The other thing I didn't consider is that I'm uploading caches to go paperless. While the cable is connected, is the unit still drawing battery or is it USB powered during that time?

[+Walts Hunting]

Cable supplies power when attacheed.

[+W7WT]

We have two Etrex 20s and I don't know how long they last as I only put fresh Costco alkaline batteries in to start a trip. We just went to a 4 day geocaching trip to some mini power trail north of Walla Walla, Wa. We leave them on all the time we are geocaching. We are home now and I deleted all the caches in all of our GPSs and checked the battery indicator on the Etrex 20s and they still indicated full. We had 60CSXs before and they were good for about a day and a half.

[+2wheels4cache]

In my ETrex 20, Lithium batteries last longer than Alkaline. If I'm out caching, I turn it on shortly before the first cache and leave it on until the last one. Frequently turning in on and off seems to eat up the battery power, just like a long backlight does.