I agree with Martin. I got my Roam 3 on July 2025, plenty of riding in the sun in the UK and in Spain (during August!!) and the battery didn’t drain then.
I haven’t had any other episode of heavy draining but still feels like it’s draining faster than before.
I use 4 sensors: Di2, HR, Power pedals and GarmIn Radar.
I run the unit now in Dark mode, having backlight on AUTO. Still, as Wahoo is advertising 25h of battery life, it should leave me at least 50% of the battery after a 6-8 hours ride. Sunlight or not. I should be able to navigate for a decent 150K, right? If that is not possible, the thing is useless for me.
Agreed. This is a significant issue. Not sure what happened but there was a clear change in how it worked after the update. I’ve used Wahoo products for several years but this is making me think I need to shop for alternatives unless Wahoo comes up with a fix soon.
Any word from Wahoo on acknowledging/fixing this? Or is the best option for now to return the new Roam and (painfully) go back to Garmin?
Has anyone here submitted this to Wahoo support? They don’t directly interact here in this forum.
I have. Several times. The only “fix” so far was a new charging block. Seemed like it worked at first and now I’m back to under 10 hours of battery life. We’ll see what they say but it’s super disappointing and frustrating
I agree that certainly sounds both disappointing and frustrating.
How old is your device?
They sent me a new one a few weeks ago! Still doesn’t work
So far customer service is only telling me to buy new charging blocks. But that didn’t work the first time.
If it displays 100% after charging then it can’t be the external charger!
@ElRey Think that is about right depending on settings. I did a ride lasting 6 hours last weekend and think it dropped from 100% between 75 to 80%.
I agree but they seem to think differently. I don’t think that is the issue to be honest.
Pity we have no one online from Wahoo Engineering to discuss this issue. As a community we are ideal firmware integration testers.
Let’s consider what could reduce runtime, in no priority order:
- Battery degradation or environment, or
- WiFi consumes power (much more than BT) but isn’t supposed to operate during ride. MAYBE WORTH CHECKING PHONE ISN’T OPERATING HOTSPOT DURING RIDE?
- Bluetooth (BT LE), version 5.0 on Roam 3 but power control wasn’t standardised until version 5.2. However, with short range I would guess no more than 10mW Tx power. Firmware could change power and comms activity. However, I think BT will have negligle impact compared to other piwer consumers.
- Backlight LEDs, my guess at the brightest display (400nits rough guess), I assume 40mA for white LED Vf so could consume ~100mW. For any TFT display, backlight is 80 to 90% of power consumed.
- Processor , power consumed by processor and memory will be less than display but firmware can definitely affect power.
- GNSS chipset, these days much lower consumption than older chips. I suspect they’re using u-Blox current design.
FIrmware version WH49 is latest and was released Nov 2025, Elemnt app for smartphone had several updates since, now at 302141 15th April 26. Given that WH49 has been on mostsRoam 3s for almost 6 month, only Wahoo app updates. Why are drain reports recent? Maybe worthwhile testing on ride without Wahoo app on phone active?
I have the same issue with my Bolt 3. There was 90% battery drain over 6 hours ride. No issue prior to the April update (WI55-302141 in my case).
I contacted Wahoo Marketing team on LinkedIn, advised them about Wahoo Forum Roam 3 and Bolt 3 users reporting severe battery drain. They replied saying report to Wahoo Support.
Really needs several users with this problem to contact Wahoo Support. I recommend you advise phone app and Elemnt versions, backlight setting, what’s connected during ride etc. Phone type and ios/Android version could be relevant
My experience is not as severe as some reports, 38% remaining after 7h 20min.
I’ve ordered a USB analyser to check power consumption on fully charged Roam under different operating conditions.
I’m not convinced the battery itself is the real issue. After my ride with rapid battery drain (I started this topic with), the battery indicator stayed at 100% during the next ride of about 3 hours. On other rides, it behaved as usual. That makes me think it’s more likely a software issue with the battery status.
I experienced same problem with battery recently
Had extra long ride, roam3 was on for about 10h-11h - and battery died completely
I did contact support during the weekend, so i expect an answer in next days.
This is happening on 9months old unit. Im strongly convinced that recent updat is the reason.
Your 10 to 11h consistent with my experience if I extrapolate 38% after 7h 20min
after the long ride i did factory reset, reconnected my sensors again.
i think i did not connect the unit to the app/mobile during my next rides - and consumption was 27% for 4h of riding (2 separate rides, 3:20 and 0:40)
this is a bit better, but still nowhere near the past battery performance.
I had a problem where my Android phone Bluetooth hidden app was configured as ‘Optimised’ battery power. On long rides, after several hours, this caused dramatic change to Roam 3. Fields would go blank take up to 15s to change, Varia alerts long after car had passed. I discovered this by riding without Wahoo app running on phone.
Just thinking this could be relevant to battery drain, ie Roam 3 processor overloaded, thereby draing power, due to BT comms?