I have had my edge 520 for a bit over a year now and while the battery life was good at the start it is now starting to get quite bad, only lasting ~5 hours. I have turned pretty much everything off on it and have tried doing a full reset.
So now I am wondering if I should look at a different head unit that has better battery life or look into replacing my battery for the 520. Ideally I would get something that can last ~10 hours or more reliably.
Might want to call Garmin, it shouldn’t have dropped that much in 1 year. My 520 battery is about 3 years old and uneven battery life, drops fast in cold weather but in warm weather I’m still getting 6-7 hours.
The 520 Plus looks interesting, but I’ve got my eye on the new Stages L50 after seeing the product manager post they will add support for Garmin Varia radar.
I’ve a 520 that only gives about 6 hours or so after 3-4 years. Your 1 year decline sounds a bit much. Might be worth looking at the garmin forums as there was some in depth user testing related to battery life with particular firmware updates. And then asking Garmin what they are going to do about it. 
I saw a short vid of dcrainmaker with some of the stages guys testing the new head units and they piqued my interest as a mildly disgruntled 520 user. Will wait for the in depth review and see what comes out the wash.
The 520 plus is the value play for Garmin. I like the 1030’s larger display, but even with 20% off at REI or Clever Training its really expensive.
At $350 the Stages L50 really caught my attention, with a large and bright color display, mapping, tons of data, config from phone/web/L50, and great support for training. Its what I was hoping the Wahoo Bolt would be, but isn’t.
@bbarrera @SeeEl thanks for the advice, I gave Garmin a call and they will do an RMA for me. Its a bit weird since I have only had the battery life decrease in the last few months.
The Stages L50 also looks quite interesting, will keep an eye on it for sure.
When considering the 520 plus you must take into account the current connectivity issues. According to the comments on garmin forums many seem to have issues with the connection between iphone and 520 plus.
Have you checked basics… I find that I sometimes have the backlight is on when I’m sure I haven’t set it… can’t really notice it other than the battery drains twice as fast! Would advise a factory reset and experiment again, even turning off one of the gps systems increases battery life…just some ideas.
Just read through the comments section on the dcrainmaker link. Most questions asked and answered. Let’s see when they drop.
Do you live somewhere cold? In Michigan, during the winter months, battery life sucks for me on all kinds of devices including Garmin, lights, etc.
The 520 was getting a bad wrap on the Garmin Forums around battery life. Mine declined a lot after a firmware update. In the end I went for a 1030. I would speak to Garmin and also check out the Garmin 520 forum.
Same here. One thing I learned that seems to help is to charge the Garmin by directly plugging in to an outlet. The USB charging that happens while connected to my desktop somehow doesn’t charge as completely even though the battery life indicator always shows 100% regardless of which method I use.
Battery lasts over 4 hours when charged through a wall outlet, vs 2 when charged via USB port
Looks like no issues with iOS 11, and it started with iOS 12. Since fixed. Garmin Forums
At least that’s what I’m reading
I’m glad Garmin is getting you fixed up. In case anyone else has battery issues I just swapped one in my 510 and it works great. Ordered it from battery clerk. You do have to have a precision torx driver set to get into them, but the swap is easy. I ended up soldering mine back in place, but you could use crimp connectors.
Try turning off bluetooth. It can drain the battery and you only really need it to do the sync.
Yeah. Something isn’t right. My 5-year-old edge 500 battery still lasts about 12 or so hours.