There comes a time in every watch user’s life where you get to the hotel in a far-flung city, only to realize your watch battery shows 7%. Of course, the problem isn’t that it shows 7%, the problem is that you most definitely left your charger at home, or the previous stop along your trip. I’ve provided many an Amsterdam and Paris visitor over the years with free or loaner charging cables, given the stupid quantity of them I have. However, that still doesn’t keep me from occasionally forgetting a charging cable.
But, there’s one little Garmin watch charging cable that’s come to my rescue a few times over the years because it’s *always* with me. Specifically, it’s on my keys. This tiny little plastic thing simply attaches to your keyring, and there’s a pretty good chance if you’re traveling, you’ve got your keys with you:
(Before y’all get worried about me showing my keys, I don’t even know what most of these keys are for these days. There’s only two keys I actually use there, which you can’t see. The rest are various bike/backup keys that frankly probably don’t even work.)
The other end of the adapter is a standard USB-C port, meaning, if all else fails, you can find someone, anywhere to loan you a USB-C charging cable for an hour. Or, buy one at any hotel/airport/gas station. USB-C cables/chargers are as ubiquitous as soda, but Garmin charging cables are not.
This means you can use your phone charger, laptop charger, or anything else with USB-C. As a reminder, the way the USB standard works, the device (e.g. your watch) requests the amount of power it uses. Then the charging block will deliver the requested amount. That ensures that a powerful laptop charger doesn’t harm a small watch. But it also makes stuff like this super easy, since the Garmin watches draw such a tiny amount of power, that literally any power block on earth you find, will deliver more than enough power for a Garmin watch (see my silly long post on that).
This little adapter works for any Garmin watch that has the standard Garmin charging port. There are a handful of current-gen watches that don’t (e.g. some of the MARQ series), but about 98% of Garmin watches from the last near-decade, use this charging port.
Note that data transfer works just fine too, no issues with copying files/maps/etc if you have to. Most critically, they’re cheap, just $8 for a two-pack:
– $8.99 for a two-pack of USB-C Garmin watch keyring chargers (7.99EUR for a two-pack UK here)
In terms of durability, it seems fine. It’s been smashed around on my keychain for 3 years now. I’m not sure if I used it every single day if it’d be in perfect condition, but that’s not the point. Instead, it’s an emergency use thing – and it’s been perfect for that. It’s not a Garmin-branded accessory, which…is why it’s so reasonably priced.
Lastly, I continue to use a plethora of the Garmin charging pucks, the ones I talked about a few years ago. A two-pack continues to be $7 as well, and they’re just handy to have all over the place. A few people have said the connection gets flakey after a while (a year or so), though I’ve only had one of them die (out of the many I use).
Given they also cost ~$3/each, I’m OK with them having a shorter shelf life (since I seem to kill just as many Garmin-branded charging cables just as fast, though, their newer USB-C ones seem more durable). The desk charger linked below is still my main charger on my desk, some 4-5 years later.
– $6.99 for 2-pack of USB-C charging pucks (EU site)
– $8.97 for 2-pack of USB-A charging pucks (EU Site)
– $13.99 for a Garmin watch desk charging stand/cable (regular USB) (9.73EUR)
Note there are similar concepts for other watch brands. I’ve got an Apple Watch one, it doesn’t hang out on my keyring since it’s a bit bigger, instead, it’s just permanently tied inside my backpack. In any case, thanks for reading (or, supporting the site with the various Amazon links here).
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Garmin Watch Keyring Charger
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Hi Ray, I’ve got a pair of these and have noticed that they can be unreliable if the charging brick that you’re using has a feature like Anker’s PowerIQ that tries to selectively provide the appropriate amount of power for a given device. In these scenarios I find that it will either not charge at all or charge for only a few seconds before losing power. Have you encountered this?
No issues there with my Anker blocks. I’ve got a few (including one in front of me, an Anker 737 power bank), and it charges without shutting off (both FR965 and Epix, just double-checked it).
I’ve seen the thing you’re describing on a few other devices though – such as the CORE body temp sensor, since it pulls such little power (even less than Garmin), some power banks will turn it off.
Cheers!
I have seen same with 100W Anker A2343.
I have a similar issue with the garmin varia. Seems to be very picky in regard to the charger. The same micro USB cable will work with two chargers I have, but not with a lot of other chargers, power banks, USB power outlets…
The varia won’t start charging, but just flash the red led.
Anyone else having that issue?
@Thomas
Yes, my Varia R515 is heckin’ charger picky. It goes into error mode if I use my wall outlet’s built-in USB ports to charge, for example. But my UT800 doesn’t care.
The one thing I’m not going to be carrying with me when I travel is my house keys. They stay in my luggage or, if the room has one, the room safe because they do me no good away from home and losing them would be awful (yes, I have an AirTag on them). Still, I bought these from Amazon because they’ll be very useful around the house or in the car. Thanks!
He means with him when travelling i.e in his hotel room, not necessarily on his person
I don’t bring my keys at all when traveling. Even if nobody is home when I get back, I can open the garage door via keypad. Unless that one time power had gone off and I started reconsidering all kinds of life choices while waiting on the patio for the wife + kids to come home a couple hours later.
Just ordered a two pack of those keyrings anyway, will pack one in the Bose travel case. Thanks for the article!
There are similar keyring chargers for Shokz headphones – which also fit the new Wahoo TRACKR HR monitor. I have one of those in my travel bag.
Ooh very good tip, I need to charge my Shokz much more often than my watch.
Shokz seems to be moving to usb-c, which I think is great.
great post! i’m already a user of the puck style charger thanks to your post quite a while back.
the only thing that really grinds my gears (lol) about this garmin charging port is how absolutely gunky and rusted the inside of the port on the watch itself gets, especially if you swim with the watch. I have been dutifully wearing a silicon style ‘plug’ over the port for several years now, but the port still gets gunky (and the connector on the charger does too). How are y’all keeping this clean so it makes a solid connection/charge?
I’ve never experienced rust or gunk in a Garmin charging port over 9 years, and I’ve never used a silicone plug. And I spend a lot of time in salt water. IMHO those plugs don’t address a problem, they create one.
Fully agree. No rust here… on fenix and diffrrent forerunners.
I wouldn’t say I have “rust” or “gunk” in the charge port, but I would say that Garmin’s charging pins are a bad approach. I don’t know if it’s the watch pins or wear on the charging cable pins that are responsible, but usually sooner rather than later, the watch won’t “see” the cable. No charging, no sync connection. A new cable corrects the problem for a while; the cynic in me suggests this was designed by Garmin to sell more of their overpricing charging cables (which do work better than the Chinese junk, at least for a while).
It’s only after using a pencil eraser or isopropyl alcohol on the watch pins that I can again get a connection. This has to be done on a weekly basis (i.e., user friction). The Apple Watch magnetic induction approach would appear to be a much better solution. So why isn’t Garmin using that?
I think this is because the connector on the cable has springs in it to push the pins against the watch. If the pins get gunky, or the springs gets weak, the cable and watch don’t make a good connection.
It’s very frustrating for my wife, who only uses her watch when she exercises, so the watch stays on the charger the rest of the time. This seems to wear out the springs, or maybe bend the pins so after a couple of months she goes to user her watch and the battery is completely dead, despite being plugged in.
I just take a wire brush to the charging puck when the connection gets flaky and that fixes it right up for a few more months.
Fenix 7 Solar user here – what’s a…”charger”?
Kidding, although I have so many devices I’ve managed to put a Garmin cable in every bag, boat, car, house I own so perhaps N+1 is the answer.
On a separate note, seeing some F8 rumors about AMOLED only and trying to love my Epix 2, I finally (after a year!) realised that the main reason I hated it was that it sucked as a watch. It turns out this was a bug a while ago where always on display didn’t work and I hadn’t noticed and kind of assumed that was how it was. Full reset x2 and some faffing eventually fixed it so if anyone else is in the same camp that may be why. I’ve seen various comments here over the years agreeing with my stance so know I’m not alone :)
I’m with you, I’ve got lots of Garmin chargers lying around. When I give away/sell a watch, I never give it with the charging cable.
In saying that, I can see the merit of this device, it’s significantly smaller than a whole charging cable.
Also, this post is a good reminder that I need to charge my watch….
These are more like 2 USD on AliExpress and yes, highly recommended.
exactly, order direct from aliexpress… just for wait a little longer for delivery – for a fraction of the price that these amazon resellers are selling for.
Thanks for the tip! Ordered a few to keep in my gadget travel bag for some peace of mind, but my god, my kingdom for Qi charging on the next generation of Garmin watches. I’m so tired of proprietary ports.
I wish I had your luck with chargers – they all die out on me in 6-12 months except for the original cable that came with my 965.
Have no idea what I could be doing differently than you are, it definitely doesn’t sound like you baby your watches or the cable chargers.
Very useful, thanks! And the list of all options at the end, much appreciated.
For the Coros users out there, there’s also versions for those too…
link to amzn.to
Awesome, thanks for that link.
Anyone got firm data or testing on the electrical safety of this? All the sellers on Amazon are random, generic Chinese sellers – and cheaply-manufactured charging cables and adaptors from unreliable sellers are a huge cause of fires nowadays. While I love the convenience of this, I’m reluctant to buy it based only on anecdotes.
Considering a watch is plugged in for at most 30-60 minutes to get a full charge and this item is being discussed as something to use when traveling and in a pinch (I.e. not the weekly charging option at home), I’ve zero concerns here with something churned from some no-name company.
For something that charges my phone daily?! There, I’ll do proper research and buy quality.
It would be extremely hard for a cable or a plug to cause a safety issue in this case. The voltages and amperage are both incredibly low, so even if there were massive resistance in the connector it wouldn’t lead to much heat production.
CHARGERS, on the other hand, or cables for higher voltage or higher amperage, I’d share that concern. But…
Are there any alternatives for coros watches?
Thanks
link to amzn.eu
Dude… thank you
US$8 ?????
Amazing how suppliers buy in bulk from China nd make a damn good money out of it.
I buy this in China and it costs me US$$ including two rubber caps for the charge port.
Or Garmin could fall inline with the standard USB-C charging port ?
While there are waterproof USB-C ports, historically speaking, it ends really badly. They’re prone to getting sweat, gels, dirt, salt water, nutrition drinks, and all assortment of gunk and grit in there, which increases corrosion and failure.
Polar tried it years ago, and it ended pretty disastrously.
Any thoughts on longer term use of the Marq magnetic cables? I realise you may not long term use the Marq, but worth asking as they look better in a few ways and you’re the only person we know that might have one :)
What a great idea – and the Shokz one mentioned too.
Anyone know of a Polar one?
Any idea if/when Garmin will move to a wireless charging system like Apple or Samsung?
I don’t see why they would want to. Slower charging means wearing your 24×7 fitness device less often. Fast wired charging is absolutely a better answer for something you want to wear as much as possible, as well as something that occasionally downloads gigabytes of map data and music. The WiFi on these devices isn’t full speed due to size and power limitations so a cable will be the best option for the foreseeable future.
Also – Apple Watch isn’t wireless charging, it’s contactless charging. You still need a very proprietary wire, and that wire is less effective thanks to the lack of contacts.
Not only that, one of the big ‘advantages’ of the current port system is that you can connect it to a computer to offload files/etc…
Certainly becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the population, but it’s definitely handy to have for transfers of big things in weird connectivity spots.
The pucks worked great with my old Vivoactive 4, but they don’t with the Venu 3 which has a more “raised” LED block. The key ring adapters are the dog’s bollocks — I have several of them in various suitcases, backpacks, and in my car.
Is there a similar one for Coros?
Yes, it is.
link to amzn.eu
So if I understand correctly I could plug my GoPro or my Edge 1040 directly onto my computer’s UBS C docking station plug and everything will be safe. Am I correct in my understanding?
Yes. The device pulls the current it needs at the voltage it supports, but USB-C charging is a standard and there won’t be any harm done assuming the charger isn’t some proprietary thing just delivering 18V using a USB connector, but I don’t know of any and they wouldn’t get approval to use the connector in that instance.
Thanks Dave…
I’ve used these Ahayo 2-Pack Type C Female to for… link to amazon.co.uk for many years with no issues. It looks like an even smaller profile than the one you shared.
Garmin watch charging port – Anyone else you have this problem?
My Garmin charging puck and these pucks no longer slide smoothly into the watch charging port. Most times I spend 5 minutes wobbling the two together before a reliable connection is established and charging begins.
What’s the fix?
Yup, see my comment above. A new cable works fine at first, then becomes really unreliable when the pins start to wear. Then you have to do a bunch of fiddling with the watch contacts to get it to connect (pencil eraser, brush, alcohol). None of that would be necessary if Garmin used inductive charging like the competition does. It does seem like a way for Garmin to sell more of their overpriced cables.
Haven’t tried the eraser yet, thanks for the tip.
I don’t heave a key ring anymore…but have connected the adapter to my usb-c charging travel cable, and the one for work as well. Opening the front door with fingerprint and the Tesla with the mobile phone.
I also found they have similar for lightning cables, such as these (is there a way to post a hyperlink? Edit – fancy that it does it automatically!). I haven’t used them personally though.
link to amazon.com
I bought similar ones recently for my daughter and I (a two pack) that connect to a lightning adapter when we went to England to hike Hadrian’s wall. We were trying to be as light as possible carrying the bare minimum and had few electronics. I carried one USB cable that split to two lightning ports, two USB-C ports, and a micro-usb port. I attached the Garmin adapter around that and had everything to charge my iphone, Fenix, DJI drone and controller, and Amazon Kindle. My entire pack for the 7 days weighed about 25 pounds including clothes, rain gear, etc. it doesn’t seem like much but we were weighing everything to get pack weight down. We hiked 117 miles over 5 days.
Charged my Fenix 6s full with one of these, battery lasted just one day. I suspect it might be because Fenix6 isn’t made for usbc, and its stock cable is usba
… that’s not how USB works.
Indeed, that’s nothing to do with the charger.
Instead, that sounds like something got turned on software wise on the watch and didn’t get turned off, specifically/likely GPS. I’ve seen this once in a while on beta FW versions where either a CIQ app will hold the GPS connection, or a native app, and basically you’ve got no idea. It’ll just burn battery all crazy-town, but the next charge it’ll be fine (cause GPS finally shut-off via battery death).
That’s not how useful comments work.
Didn’t get turned off because of the unexpected adapter, or was it unrelated? It never happened again using the stock cable.
Unrelated.
Meaning, from a USB spec standpoint, it basically charges. That’s all your Garmin knows. Charge comes in, per the voltage that the watch requests. It doesn’t ‘sully’ it, either it charges or not. The only variant is if you had some incredibly low USB power block, but even then that’d only impact the charging speed (and since Garmin watches have such low charging parameters, you’d be talking a USB block from the 2000-2005 era at worst – and even then you’d probably never notice how slow it was charging since most of those are still 0.5a).
Point is, the connector is totally unrelated to the watch draining itself. As noted above, anytime I see a crazy drain scenario it’s either:
A) Some CIQ app goes rogue
B) GPS goes rogue and stays on in the background quietly till it turns off the watch
C) Long-shot case of PulseOx somehow staying on the entire time, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that
In short, give it another whirl, pretty sure it’s just an unrelated fluke.
Cheers!
Happened twice, and only ever with the dongle. My suspicion, and I am certainly not a usb expert, was not rapid draining (the second time the battery died on a rather long hike, so GPS was on and that’s accounted for) but rather that some power-negotiation weirdness of connecting a usb-A watch (Fenix 6) with a usb-C (via the dongle) made it think it was charged 100% when it wasn’t anywhere near that.
I am no expert, but whatever it was, it only ever happened with the dongle.
or you know…Garmin could just go to a standard charging port.
Can you clarify what exactly is a “standard charging port”? As outlined above, USB-C is definitely not viable for this use case (due to waterproofing issues, gunk in the ports, etc… – companies have tried, and failed very hard. It just doesn’t work in real life). You could go with wireless charging, but as outlined just above yours, that’s much slower unless you go proprietary. Which, doesn’t seem to solve the problem you’re mentioning.
I’ll give Garmin credit though – they’ve stuck with this charging connector now for about 8 years now. For better or worse, I’d honestly rather something I have to replace every year or two, then something I can’t find in a pinch.
(And yes, I see you’re back with your always changing usernames.)
Anyone know if there’s something similar for the clip style used on the Forerunner 645? Thanks in advance.
Thanks!
I’ve been using this with a 2 inch USB C cable to charge my Fenix 6X on ultra-light long distance backpacking trips. It’s great!
I used to use one. Almost caused a fire. The USB and the adapter are now fused (melted) together. . My sheets started to melt and the mattress was warm. Not sure if it’s the same company as the one in the article. Stick with Garmin brand products.
Franky, that story seems pretty unlikely. Less than 1AMP of USB draw isn’t going to cause anything to fuse together.
Hi, If there is discussion about some sort of accessories stuff, any recommendation for ANT+ USB stick – I am using the Garmin one, but still experiencing signal drop or wrong reading. I am preferably looking for USB-C baut USB-A is fine as well :-). Thanks for any comments
I wasn’t aware of any USB-C ANT+ sticks. Most just use adapters (note: if using it with an Apple product, I strongly recommend buying Apple’s stupidly overpriced adapter, mainly because I continue to see occasionally quirky issues with various devices on non-Apple adapters. No idea why, but…FYI.)
In any event, as long as you get one of the ‘m’ series ones, which are the ones that support 8 channels, and basically the final gen USB sticks, that’s what matters (link to thisisant.com) Garmin sells them directly, but they’re like twice as expensive (or more). This one has been popular for a while though, and is like $11: link to amzn.to
Thank you for advice – really appreciate it
I’m considering buying one these to charge my 955 in my wrist during an Ultra Trail that will last more than I would want to.
I think the round support would provide a better base but will get much more volume. Do you think the small adapter will provide a stable enough electrical connection with the watch attached to my wrist? It looks like it may lean on one side and may cut connection. My watch lately is becoming vey peaky, even with the garmin official cable. Maybe time for a rust cleaning
Good tip. I will order a couple – both as back-up and for use in ultra events.
In addition, I think it would be very usefull, and pretty easy for someone to develop and sell a “puck-shaped” powerbank” that would fit under and charge Garmin watches “on the run”.
As you mention, Garmin watches use very little power and the internal batteries aver very small – even in X-versions like Enduro 2. Thus, a “Powerbank Puck” could be as little as a couple of millimetres thick and still provide plenty of power to fully charge the watch a couple of times.