Does Raise to Wake Have a Big Effect on Battery Life?

[Buadhai]

My original Ultra is 18 months old. Recently I noticed that when I put it on the charger at bedtime the battery was down to 25% or less. OK for normal use, but not OK if I'm gonna do a long cycling workout.

I decided to change one thing to see if it had much effect. I disabled Raise to Wake. Now the watch is around 60% at bedtime. It's hard for me to believe that this one thing has that much effect on battery life. Is something else going on?

Note that I am a creature of habit and do pretty much the same thing boring day after boring day. The same morning workouts. The same late morning cycle-out-for-coffee and then chill at home the rest of the day. So, the only thing that changed was Raise to Wake.

 

[GerritV]

This was exactly my experience as well.
My guess: "waking" means both activating / illuminating the screen and updating all the complications on it.

 

[srknpower]

I think it has a considerable effect on battery life.

 

[marcobalto]

My original Ultra is 18 months old. Recently I noticed that when I put it on the charger at bedtime the battery was down to 25% or less. OK for normal use, but not OK if I'm gonna do a long cycling workout.

I decided to change one thing to see if it had much effect. I disabled Raise to Wake. Now the watch is around 60% at bedtime. It's hard for me to believe that this one thing has that much effect on battery life. Is something else going on?

Note that I am a creature of habit and do pretty much the same thing boring day after boring day. The same morning workouts. The same late morning cycle-out-for-coffee and then chill at home the rest of the day. So, the only thing that changed was Raise to Wake.

Do also have Always On turned on? Did you test this with different settings of Always On?

 

[Howard2k]

What happens if you reverse the setting and test it again. Is the difference reproducible?

 

[Buadhai]

Do also have Always On turned on? Did you test this with different settings of Always On?

Always On is enabled and every setting within Alway On is enabled.

What happens if you reverse the setting and test it again. Is the difference reproducible?

OK. I will reverse the settings to see what happens.

Right now it is 2:00 PM. I did a 15K clcying workout this morning with Auto Pause enabled (another battery hog) and casually rode my bike another 20 mid day. The battery is now 78%. I haven't seen battery usage that low in quite some time.

I will turn Raise to Wake back on now. The rest of my day will be rather sedentary except for a short pool workout late this afternoon.

 

[Buadhai]

What happens if you reverse the setting and test it again. Is the difference reproducible?

Yes it is. I enabled Raise to Wake again and the battery is now down to 25% at bedtime. With Raise to Wake disabled the battery usually is at 50-60% when I put it on the charger for the night.

Not a rigorous, scientific study; just anecdotal observations, but enough to convince me to leave Raise to Wake disabled.

 

[tarsins]

I found the best settings for both battery and visual appeal was AOD on, raise to wake off. The dimmed AOD is easily readable and I much prefer it to a blank screen.