Battery depleting after 3 hours Charge 5

[kava0]

I bought my Charge 5 a few days over exactly a year ago. It has worked perfectly fine this entire time. Two days ago, I charged it due to standard low battery. It typically lasts me a few days. It used to last me around a week, then over the past few months it lasted about 3 days. Woke up with the Fitbit battery completely drained. Thought I must have charged it wrong. Charged it back up, and it died within 3 hours. It has been repeatedly dying to a black screen since then. I factory reset it and also did the 3 button press on the charging cable like other posts suggested. I made sure all of my settings were not draining the battery life. Still no good. This was sudden and random, and I didn’t do anything to trigger it. 

Moderator edit: subject updated for clarity

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, thanks for all the details that you've shared about this issue with your Charge 5, @kava0.  

Keep in mind there are a few features that would make the battery drain faster than usual, even in one day. In general, it is recommended to follow the recommendations listed in this article to improve or extend battery life. 

If this doesn't apply to you, another step that has been helpful for other users having battery draining problems is the three pulse restart procedure using the charging cable: 

1. Connect your device to the charging cable. For instructions, see How do I charge my Fitbit device?
2. Press the button located on the flat end of the charger 3 times within 8 seconds, holding each press for about 1 second.
3. Wait 10 seconds or until the Fitbit logo appears.
4. If the device doesn’t restart, wait 15 seconds to try again.

[Mblazar]

The same thing is happening to me. My change lasts about 6 days but yesterday II woke up and it was dead. I charged it up all day and put it on for bed. Within 3 minutes it was down 5%. This morning it was at 4% and dead. I opened a ticket, I suggest you do as well. My app updated right before this happened. Maybe a coincidence, but it is the only change to my setup. 

The same thing happened to my wife’s Sense 2 and overnight it is down to 7%. She updated her app yesterday as well. I think this is an app issue. 

I've deleted the app, rebooted my phone, added the app, and after 20 minutes my Charge 5 is down to 82%. I asked for my ticket to be escalated and rather than try to investigate, troubleshoot, or look into app issues, I've just been sent a blanket, "Sorry for the inconvenience, here's a coupon for 35% off of a new Fitbit." I bought this 15 months ago. Up until yesterday, the battery was great and based on what I'm reading, better than probably 95% of people with a Charge 5. I generally got ~6 days on a charge. As of yesterday, and again, right AFTER an app update, my battery drains in under 3 hours. This is terrible and disappointing customer service. Even though I really wear a tracker for fitness, it might be time to switch to an Apple Watch. Charging every day or two might be inconvenient, but at least Apple's customer service has been better than this when I have a problem with my phone. I have had 4? maybe 5 Fitbits. I've replaced multiple Charges over the years due to them bricking or having issues with the app. I think it's time to move on to something more reliable.

[Norwood]

I am in the same boat as you.Was at the gym and it went totally black.Highly frustrated.

how do you do this for a charge 5 ? we don't have any buttons to push

[Mblazar]

If you're asking how do you reboot the Charge 5, the moderator posted this above.

1. Connect your device to the charging cable.
2. Press the button located on the flat end of the charger 3 times within 8 seconds, holding each press for about 1 second.
3. Wait 10 seconds or until the Fitbit logo appears.
4. If the device doesn’t restart, wait 15 seconds to try again.

[nauyang]

I've had the same issue starting a few weeks ago. I tried the hard reset, and everything I've seen online. My Charge 5 started acting up before the 6-month mark. The battery used to last me a week, now it's either overnight or the battery is dead in the morning and my alarm doesn't go off... or at best, maybe 2-3 days. After one hour, my battery will go from 100% to 80%. It's still under the one-year warranty, can I get a replacement?

[kava0]

The charger that came with the FitBit when I bought it has a small circular button near the base that connects to the wall plug. However, resetting the syncs did not solve the problem. 

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Hello, I did complete all of this. That was a suggested solution to fix the Fitbit not holding charge on other posts with the exact same issue. Upon researching many other posts, I am seeing dozens of users with the exact same problem. The battery depletes within 3 hours of 100% charge. 

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I’m in the same boat, although my timeframe that it started acting up was a year. I’ve seen other posts with the same issue where certain users were able to get a discount on future products, but it depended on the user representative that they talked to. 

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I did that multiple times, but that didn’t fix the issue. The battery still depletes completely within 3 hours. That was merely a suggestion to fix the issue, but it did not solve it. There are dozens of users with the exact same issue, and they can be found in the forums here. It seems many of them were not able to get a replacement, and that FitBit doesn’t acknowledge this issue. I did find a few articles dated from 2022 about the issue, then they supposedly “fixed” it, but there are so many users complaining about the same issue recently. 

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That seems to be the general consensus from so many users. Terrible customer service and refusal of the company to acknowledge this issue. I keep seeing the same blanket copy and paste “solutions” from moderators on multiple posts with the same issue. Clearly something is wrong and the lack of action from the company is worse than the actual issue at hand. Also, I didn’t update the app prior to this happening, but I do suspect it is software related. 

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Same. Once it happened twice in one day I realized it wasn’t a mistake on my end. 

[SunsetRunner]

There's a button on the charging cable itself - near where you plug it in! (took me ages to find it)