Why your watch stopped charging, and the two-minute fix
Most charging failures are not the cable or the battery. They are a dirty contact.
The short version
- Wipe the pins on the watch and the cable.
- Try a different USB port before blaming the cable.
- Use a dust plug if you sweat or swim.
Clean the contacts
Sweat leaves salt on the charging pins, and salt does not conduct well. Wipe the back of the watch and the cable's pins with a dry cloth, or a cotton bud with a little isopropyl alcohol, and let it dry.
On Garmin and Fitbit, this one step fixes most cables that look dead.
Rule out the port
Try a laptop port, a wall cube and a power bank. Some cheap cubes switch off when the current drops low, which a full watch battery can trigger.
If the cable works from one source but not another, the cable is fine.
Then check the cable
Look at the neck where the wire meets the plug. A kink or a white stress mark means the copper inside is tired. That is the moment to swap in a spare.
Keeping a dust plug in the port between charges, and a spare cable in the bag, means a failure is never a crisis.
