These are Apple’s published battery life times if you pull it off the charger and go.

• Up to 6 hours outdoor workout with GPS
• Up to 5 hours outdoor workout with GPS and LTE
• Up to 4 hours outdoor workout with streaming audio, GPS, and LTE

Assuming your battery was going in a little below 100% from initial use, you were probably right on with 3 hours. There probably isn’t much more you could do, except ensure a full charge and turn off LTE. That might get you 5 hours with BT music streaming.

I have an AWS4, and I would never consider using it for a workout except as a last resort. I am always Garmin for business. The AW is for play.

I would use a Timex Ironman watch.

Is it possible you could just use Apple's internal optical for HR? I have to assume the constant connection to the Scosche could eat it up juice. Also, is there a reason you need to have the LTE/cellular on? I mean are emails really necessary during the run? Given the music on the phone, shutting that off would save some juice.

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How are Apple watches overall? Do they work well on the swim? Do they count laps accurately?

First time I considered an Apple Watch for workouts. I saw one at Best Buy this weekend. Looks like tons of options on the watch. As many as sports watches... makes me wonder if Apple is good as a sports watch.

People chime in.

The Apple Watch does a lot of fitness and activity things, but nothing well. It counts laps as well as my Garmin. It does not get stroke as well (Garmin is perfect, while AW occasionally misses). The problem with the AW in water is you cannot show the fields you probably want. And, it’s wrist raise will not light the screen to see during turns, while the Garmin is always visible. Same for running and biking... it will capture workouts, but only with mediocre capability compared to Garmin.

Garmin and Fitbit crush AW for activity tracking. Garminn crushes AW for fitness tracking.

I am a data junkie... I wear a Fitbit for activity and sleep tracking. I wear a Garmin for workouts. I wear an Apple Watch as my daily wear watch.

There are 3rd party swimming apps that will likely alleviate all of those problems.

As for OP, the internal HR on the AW4 is likely as good or better than the Scosche so I would skip that. Turn off cellular and WiFi and just leave Bluetooth for the connection to your headphones and you’ll likely be fine.

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--Chris

Yes and no... the 3rd party apps are not as stable and reliable as a Garmin. I have never had a Garmin watch crash during a workout. My AW experience with 3rd party apps was poor to mediocre. The AW apps are probably better than I last experimented, but imho, they are not trustworthy for stuff you care about. Also, nothing solves the wrist raise limitation to view in water.

The AW’s wrist HR sensor is probsbly the best wrist sensor on the market. But wrist HR measurement is less reliable than optical sensors on the forearm or bicep. Plus, the Scosche’s Valencell sensors are no slouch. A Scosche on the arm will crush the AW on the wrist on a bike, and probably beat it on the run. AW does beat Garmin and Scosche in the water.

So my question is, should I be getting more time out of the workout mode?


That's about right based on my experience. I will stream Apple Music to a single AirPod and ~2.5hrs seemed to be limit for me. I'm not consistently doing 2.5hr runs so to me it's not a big deal. I don't think screen brightness will have an appreciable effect, unless you have it set to keep the screen ON at all times (as opposed to only on when raising the wrist). GL.

Not that anyone would care but me, but I tried it again, this time turning off the cellular data and wifi, and still using the BT heart monitor. Still used the bluetooth headphones with music that was previously downloaded to the watch. A 1 hour 10 min run only took the battery down by 15%. I can live with that.

Not nearly as much power as lighting up the LEDs in the watch's optical HR sensor.

I regularly get 4-5 hours using a 40mm AW and the Apple Workout app. Assuming that you have a 44mm version, you should definitely get more. Some thoughts:

1. iSmoothRun could be a culprit. I have no idea what optimizations the Workout uses and if they're even available to third-party apps, but Apple seems to take battery life very seriously. That's my first guess.
2. Music via BT shouldn't be a huge battery drain, but every little bit helps (or hurts). If I need maximum battery life, I dig out my old iPod Shuffle. Though not available anymore, there are other cheap and small MP3 players.
3. Unless you need notifications or such, why not turn off LTE. If you encounter an emergency mid-run and need to call someone yourself, you can always re-enable it.
4. Screen brightness shouldn't matter since the screen should be off nearly all the time (unless you're constantly flicking your wrist to have a look). If iSmoothRun doesn't turn off the screen, then that's definitely a huge issue.

Probably the best indicator of what to do is from the Apple Workout app. It has an explicit "Power Saving Mode" that is described thusly: