Hi all, as the title says, I’m struggling with my Stages Left sided PM dropping out when connected to my Garmin 935. I popped a new battery in the stages which helped a little bit, but still had a lot of dropping during my Oly last weekend. I wear it on my left wrist with no bottle in line of sight of PM-Watch. I updated the Stages firmware and the battery cover appears to be tight with the O-ring intact. Any ideas or do I need to just bite the bullet and get a cheap cycling comp like a Garmin 500?
What generation of Stages are you using? I have the gen 3 and have not had issues with it connecting to my garmin 920 on my wrist. From what I understand people did report issues with drop outs with the gen 1 and 2 which was apparently fixed with the gen 3. You could try a quick release for the 935 which would get the watch a bit closer to the PM and eliminate any interference your arm could be playing in the connectivity. Otherwise I would just contact Stages support and see what they have to say.
I don’t know anything about the Garmin 935, but I’m assuming you connect your PM (and any other sensors) via ANT? Do you see dropouts both indoors and outdoors? Do you have your phone connected to your 935 via BT?
I used to get occasional dropouts between my stages and my Edge 520. At the time I’d also have my phone hooked up to my 520 via BT.
A bit of googling at the time seemed to suggest that other wireless devices can interfere with the ANT communication, so I now try to minimize potential sources of interference.
Currently, when riding outdoors, I shut off BT on the 520 and on my phone. When indoors on the kickr, I also ditch the BT on my phone and either listen to tunes via speaker or wired earphones.
I don’t get dropouts any more (not with a good battery anyway). Coincidence?
You might also try ensuring a good connection in the battery housing of the power meter.
Early Stages units were a nightmare for this (I have one).
The 2 common fixes are to either prise out the spring behind the battery a bit or use a small piece of folded paper between the battery door and the battery.
Thanks for all the replies, gonna try these out over the coming days. It is a 1st or 2nd gen, can’t recall off top of my head.
I’ve only connected my PM to watch outdoors so far and had no other devices with me while riding. See the rare dropout when PM connected to laptop via ANT+, been using iPhone for TR last few days and none yet. My power also seems steadier. Might be me vs my power was drifting via ANT.
First try will be the battery cover adjustment! Saw others comment this as well. 
Hi, any joy fixing power drop outs with your 935? Having similar issue with a 735
Stages gen 1 and 2 are notorious for dropouts. Only solution is to change battery every ride, get gen 3 or position watch on non-drive side in line with crank and as close to it as possible
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I have the 820 (hate it) and it replaced my 510 (great unit but died). The 820 constantly dropped the power reading from my stages also. After a back and forth with Garmin and stages, Garmin finally admitted that their new models (new at that time) had to be closer to the power meter. Mine was located in front of the stem. Once I moved it on top of the stem it has never dropped again. Amazing how just a couple inches of placement difference would matter but it did.
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I had a Gen 2 stages and I couldn’t connect to my 735xt unless it was 2 inches away. Totally useless. I got lucky with my 520 and it worked fine. I now have vector 3 and they are perfect.
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Exactly the same as the OP here - my gen 1 stages works fine with my edge 520, but only really badly with my 935. You have to hold the watch an inch away to pair it, and then get frequent drop outs. I don’t use that combination much, I don’t think there is much you can do. If you want to use the watch and record power data while on the bike, I’d put a garmin in my pocket or tape it to the frame to record the power data.
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From what I’ve read the stages weak signal and Garmin watches poor aerial make for a bad combination.
for Gen 1 or 2 the placement of the head unit seems to be really important. I put mine on the stem (not out front) and it eliminated all drop outs.
Gen 3 works fine with the head unit out front.
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