Position accuracy vs battery life

[Wojtas81]

eTrex Touch battery life is advertised as up to 130 hours. Not as good as GPSMAP 67 but comparable.
But (according to the specification) it is based on assumption that SatIQ mode is used.

In this mode however it is not always reliable and fails occasionally (here is an example).
In normal mode (ie. All systems + multi-band), battery life is reduced and is drained up to 5% an hour. It is comparable to GPSMAP 66sr (here is the test).

Based on the above, I think that:
- GPSMAP 66sr has only All systems + multi-band mode (ie. no SatiIQ mode) and medium battery life
- GPSMAP 67 has only SatIQ mode (no true/full power All systems + multi-band mode) but also great battery life
- eTrex Touch 2 has switchable mode - you can choose between great battery life or reliable accuracy (with no drifting like this).

These are only my assumptions.

[GPSrChive]

GPSMAP 67 series are not equipped with SatIQ.

Currently, the only handheld devices with SatIQ are the GPSMAP H1 series and the new eTrex Touch (Gen 2 ) series.

[Wojtas81]

Officially you are right, but SaqIQ is nothing more than just name of their proprietary software technology (ie. software battery optimizations).

And we do not know what battery optimizations are under the hood of specific devices and how they really work.
Garmin will never release such technical details, we can only suspect this based on what we can test and observe.

But we do know that some optimizations exist, and we can suspect that in GPSMAP 67 they are way more aggressive than in its predecessor.
Otherwise there are zero technical reasons why GPSMAP 67 battery life is so improved, and there are zero technical reasons its position accuracy suffers under the same circumstances where older devices do not.

Airoha GNSS chips (used in GPSMAP 67 and Garmin watches) are very good quality, at worst as good as Broadcom chips (used in GPSMAP 65s/66sr).
I said "as good as", but I think they are actually better.

[GPSrChive]

eTrex Touch battery life is advertised as up to 130 hours. Not as good as GPSMAP 67 but comparable.

Please be mindful that the battery in the GPSMAP 67 is 50% larger than the battery in the eTrex Touch (Gen 2).