4iiii vs Stages Power Meter - Battery Life
 

I have a left-sided Generation 3 Stages Power Meter on my mountain bike. The power numbers seem accurate and consistent. However, the battery dies if I'm not consistently using my mountain bike. By contrast, I have left-sided 4iiii 105 cranks on both of my road bikes. On both of my bikes, the battery has held up, even if I haven't used it for months. I might need to replace the power meter(s) if I change the crank length on my road bike(s) (I don't want to go down that rabbit-hole in this thread). I am wondering what other peoples experiences are with Stages 3rd Generation and 4iiii Power Meters.

Just went through my e-mails and my Gen 3 was delivered on 7/23/21 and I'm 75% sure I'm still on the original battery, if not it is only the 2nd. Sounds like the sleep function is borked.

edit yeah I'm on the 2nd battery

i have a dual sided 4iiii precision pro. the battery life is adequate but not noteworthy. it drains somewhat inconsistently (occasionally just drops from 90 to 25 or something silly) and generally lasts two months / 1000 miles or so. could be better for sure.

I get about 6 months battery life on a single-sided 4iiii

Update: I took my bike with the Stages Power Meter for a ride on Saturday after not having used it all winter and the battery wasn't working. I meant to replace it today. However, I didn't need to because the light was blinking when I spun the crank. Has anyone had this experience?

Worth noting that 4iiii has a couple different models, and one of the improvements with the newer Precision3 is substantially improved battery life, thus the wide variance in above posts.

AMoney not sure why it wouldn't have been working on Saturday then started working today. Temperature difference? In either event if you're seeing substantial battery drain while the bike sits unused then I'd recommend a support ticket with Stages.

I read your post a few days ago and you jinxed me. I went out for a ride today and my 4iiii PM was dead.

I haven't kept track of how long I'm getting from the battery. But I seem to replace them more often during the part of the year when it's the coolest and I use the bike the least. Wish I'd known they were coming out with a rechargeable battery PM instead of the coin battery one. I've got a pile of coin batteries waiting to go to the battery recycling bin... where I've heard all they do is throw them away because battery recycling still cost more than mining the new raw materials.

I have this issue throughout the year, so I doubt that the temperature is the reason that I'm having these issues. Thanks for your recommendation to start a support ticket with Stages! I just submitted a ticket.

It's very battery dependent. I ride 2-3x per week (~50-60 miles). I started off using your typical Energizer from Target (made in China/Malaysia) and I was getting maybe 3-4 months worth of use. I then switched over to the same batteries that I use in my red dot sights (Japan made Energizer) and its been going 6+ months.

I bought mine back in August of 2022 and with limited riding on Zwift this winter, I'm at 47% on the left-side Stages Power Meter. It seems to sip the battery rather than eat through it like yours is.

Do you have the Stages app installed so you can verify the battery and firmware level of the power meter? It's not a bad idea to "zero" out the power meter using the app as well.