Looigi

GLONASS is a communist plot to handicap the West by shortening the useful battery life of their cycling computers.

Seriously, turning it off might help battery life depending on the architecture of the the device. IDK about the 520. Screen brightness, most definitely. Number of displayed data fields, not at all.

znomit

The garmin advertised battery life is usually conservative. I've gone 20+ hrs on the 520. Turn the backlight off during the day. Turn off glonass and bluetooth.

gregf83 

I forgot to charge last week and mine died after about 9 hrs with 60% backlight.

chrisjur

Absolutely not what I'm seeing at all. Battery has never been a concern for me and I'm very often doing 4+ hours in the saddle with HR, speed and cadence hooked up, as well as the two supported Bluetooth connections to my phone. I keep backlight at 70% and never run any routes on it.

In fact, I would say that, overall, this unit has been flawless in the 4 or 5 months that I've had it.

Phlorida

I run constant 20% back light with bluetooth and glossnas with cadence and HRM without any battery life issues.

Roberto1974

I have an Edge 1000 and backlight is indeed the biggest issue - usually I have that off and brightness between 10%-70% depending on outside conditions and how much I want to look at the Garmin during each stage of the ride. On the 1000, screen refresh (such as when you have the gps map with navigation on) also drains the battery a lot faster than a more static display such as the home screen.

You can also consider getting a battery charger such as this one to carry with you, as it can charge your Garmin as you ride.
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-PowerCo...arger+lipstick

With this simple trick I was able to go for over 200 km on a single ride with over 10h actual riding time and never see the Garmin shut off.
https://www.strava.com/activities/419123011

Chandne

Good to know this GPS screen refresh detail about the Garmin 1000. That is my next GPS purchase, as soon as I find a good deal on one. Are you guys riding at night a lot? Is that why some of you keep that backlight on? I don't need it during the day, and I only occasionally ride at night and it is usually a group mountain bike ride where I don't need my GPS out (I keep it in the pack). I will start doing later rides in the Fall and will probably keep the backlight on at a low level but even then, I guess I could keep it off and tap it to read for a few seconds when needed.

netman9718

Update. I followed the suggested advice and have ridden three separate two hour rides on the same charge and still have half a battery charge.
Thanks for everyone's help.

topslop1

I went Bryton 310 against the advice of nearly everyone on this forum. Giving the new guy a shot and going to see how well it performs. I wasn't happy to plunk down much more money than the Bryton 310 to 'graduate' to a Garmin 520 that has known bugs that don't seem to be fixed or worked on even. Pass for a flawed product.

I'm foolish probably in expecting that the Bryton is not a flawed product, but I'll report back and find out what issues are specific to that little gps.

redfooj

not aware of any bugs wiht my 520