Charge 5 Battery Draining

[WMW66]

I have had my Fitbit Charge 5 for about a year and have had no issues. My battery life had been running 5-6 days. All of a sudden two days ago it is draining about 1% every couple of minutes. Needless to say that make it useless. I had made no changes to any settings. Any suggestions?

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity. 

[Gr4ndp4]

Hi, @Ed_Melb have you contacted Customer Support? See the link in the posts above.

Cheers

[MHB1]

I have the same issue.  I’ve turned off or uninstalled everything I don’t use but still poor battery life!

[WMW66]

See best answer for the solution. (Contact Fitbit chat)

[KC_sunshine]

My Luxe is going the same way, suddenly starting to drain rapidly last week. After reading messages on this forum, I've just chatted with customer support who said they'd monitor the performance of my luxe over a couple of days. I have a case number and have been advised to try tips on this page: 

 https://help.fitbit.com/articles/enUS/Helparticle/2004.htm 

Like others here, the sudden change seems to point to an issue with an update. Will see if they do anything beyond monitoring

[kookwart]

I had my charge 5 a few days ago. First time charging, gave me 4 days. After firmware update, I get less than 24 hours. What’s happening. It syncs with iPhone 

[Heliosong]

Mine presented the same problem over a week ago and after calling in to report the battery dying in less than 4 hrs initially, the troubleshooting worsened the problem to it dying immediately after being removed from the charger.

The company offered a “replacement”.
Be careful what you choose, when offered a “replacement” they will say it’s newly manufactured, but the device that showed up was scratched and filthy with oily smudges, hair and lint.

Of course your other option is to shell out more money for another device and Fitbit will only cover half of the cost.

Either way, it’s money lost.

[WMW66]

The replacement I received looked brand new.

[Wulfgarthegreat]

Mine arrived yesterday and was clearly new and in good condition. Has only lost 8% in the past day. The process took a while, but had a good result for me, looks like.

[BrettyIndaClub]

This just started with mine too.  100% usually lasted about 6 days, had 100% Thursday morning and it was dead by the time I got to work an hour and 15 minutes later.   Messed around resetting and thought maybe that was the problem, dead again within an hour and 15 minutes.  Glad to see they are helping people out here.  I'll post how my experience is too!

[Mall_Security]

I have the exact same issue... Fitbit Charge 5... not even a year old was working great and then a week or so ago it cannot even hold a charge for 24 hours. Assuming the Charge 5 is junk. This is getting old as my previous Fitbits have had the same issue. Stupid me for buying new ones and then complaining when the batteries die before a year. 😞

[willjoe]

If your Fitbit is losing battery, it's probably because a power-draining app or setting is turned on, like All-Day sync, constant notifications, or heartrate monitoring. You may also have too many apps running on your menu or you may be receiving silent alarms that are burning through your battery life.

Hope this helps

[KC_sunshine]

This makes sense. After an app update, my Luxe was draining in a few hours. After it had happened a couple of times, I checked the app for updates- which had signed me out. So my Luxe must have been trying to sync with the app endlessly without being able to find it. Since signing back in, it's back to normal drain rates. Thank you 👍

[Mall_Security]

I should mention that I turned off all possible functions and modules... rebooted the Fitbit and the phone multiple times, re-paired to the phone, resynced to the phone... signed into the app on the phone and the desktop pc... sync'd to the PC... but yet it still won't hold a charge for more than 6 hours. Tech support wants me to fully charge it and sync it multiple times per day and then measure the rate at which it dies... unfortunately, aint no one got time for that!  lol  Fitbit wins... I threw the Charge 5 in the trash and dropped another $125 for a new one. ugh.

[WMW66]

Check the solution and then try the online chat. They sent me a new Charge
5 and it works great.

[WMW66]

No. That's not it. A number of these Charge 5's are defective. The good
news is Fitbit will replace them free of charge.

[WMW66]

You just got the wrong person on the chat line. When I chatted with them
after ensuring I had tried all of the solutions you mentioned they sent me
a new Charge 5 free.

[KC_sunshine]

Mine is a LUXE, so I share this in case anyone has the same issue as me. I understand there are issues with faulty Charge 5s. Worth trying this before ditching your device for no good reason.

[Mall_Security]

Unfortunately, that is not the case for me or else the Fitbit customer service is total crap... I already bought a new one so I guess I'm an idiot. The good news is that we can toss out the old Fitbit every year and buy a new one cheaper than the price of a new Apple Watch. ha ha!

[WMW66]

Did you use the chat line?

[Mall_Security]

Yes, used the chat and the rep could not confirm that I had a Charge 5 (although he could see the last time I took a dump) lol  He wanted me to run a battery drain test for the next week and send them the results. Basically, charge the device to 100% and sync it 5 or 6 times a day until it ran out of battery for the next 7 days to confirm there is an issue. I told him that I'd be doing that exact same thing for the past 2 weeks due to the battery draining. As much as I'd like to be a beta tester for Fitbit I'd rather not pay for the privilege. Ha!   So, yeah, maybe someday Fitbit will hire an engineer to do what they are asking their customers to do?