My Garmin Explore has a battery save feature that when activated will shut down the screen after about 6 seconds (gives a prompt when only 3 seconds to go) and will also use a brightness level of 50%. Tapping on the screen turns it back on temporarily to view then proceeds to shut the screen off.

My understanding is that the screen is the biggest drain on battery life. And here's my question. At 50% brightness I find it's too dim for my aging eyes. If I adjust the brightness level to anything above 50% when I return to the screen, it is back to 50%.

Is there a way to keep the screen at a higher brightness level yet still use the battery save mode to shut the screen off to save battery?

Maybe don’t use battery save mode ?. I’ve mine off on a 1000, as I tend to primarily view a data screen. If not navigating or viewing the map on a steady basis, I get about 12 hrs. use on the device and that’s typically a few days use before needing a charge. It’s my understanding that it’s staying in a map view that kills the battery. Also play with backlight and try brightness.

Thanks Steve.

I rode a century this weekend with a loaded course navigating, brightness at about 70 percent, bluetooth off and NOT in battery save mode. It lasted long century and still had about 15% battery life left.

On long rides I don't need to look at the screen too often so I would much prefer to be able to keep the brightness level at 100% and use battery save mode but apparently the Explore won't do that.

You could suggest this to Garmin; they'll ignore you completely, then put this feature into a new device 5 years from now and charge you $600 for it. Even though it'll be a change of about 2 lines of code.

I would just leave battery save off. If you can finish a century without it, you should be golden.

Congratulations, by the way. Avid cyclists think of 100 miles as a lot of work but not crazy, the bike version of a marathon. 99% of the world thinks riding 100 miles on a bike over the course of a lifetime is impossible.

[MENTION=188524]Seattle Forrest[/MENTION] My first 10 mile ride I was jumping for joy, as if I had hit the lottery Little did I know and it wasn't until I met some cyclists a few weeks later that I got more serious and haven't looked back yet.

As far as Garmin, I'll send them the suggestion and perhaps I'll find a new 1030 in my mailbox "soon".