Mostly posting this to possibly support others that are in the same situation. I've had 3 charge 5s:
- The first one lasted just under a year and it all of a sudden stopped being able to charge - it just died, so I got a replacement.
- The second one, a replacement, didn't last me a week, since it was defective - the GPS was always on (regardless of the settings on the watch) and the battery would drain in a matter of hours. So, they sent me another replacement.
- The third one, a replacement, has lasted for a little over a year. In late December 2023, one day the battery drained really fast, unexpectedly. I fully charged the watch and may have reset it as well (don't remember exactly), but batter life was still terrible. At one point I checked to see if the mobile app had been updated recently, and it hadn't, so I didn't think that was an issue. I noticed there was a firmware update available, so I updated the firmware, hoping that it would fix the issue. I've done a number of things to try to resolve it, even uninstalling the app from my phone and resetting the watch so I could start from scratch, and nothing has helped, it barely lasts a day now.
Currently, I'm lucky if I can get through a day without the battery dying, and that's not using it for any activity tracking - if I do that, it dies even faster. I've noticed that a lot of people are having batter issues after the latest firmware update, not sure if that has made my issue worse or not.
I really like this watch...when it works. In my experience, is seems to last about a year and then battery issues start to crop up and the watch becomes useless. My experience indicates there could be some kind of battery/hardware issue that contributes to it's death after about a year and I wouldn't recommend that anyone buy this watch (yes, the Charge 6 has replaced it), and I wouldn't recommend that anyone buy the Charge 6 either, since it's basically the same watch (from what I've read). Software updates could play into the battery life as well, but regardless, I didn't purchase this watch to have to deal with all of these headaches. One of the main reasons I purchased it was for the decent battery life, and that's no longer working correctly. I should be able to get years worth of life out of a watch like this. I have a cheap $30 "smart" watch I purchased 4 or 5 years ago and it still works fine, battery life is great, so if they can make it work for $30, they should be able to make it work at the Charge 5 price point as well.
It's time to say good-by to Fitbit, I'm not going to buy a new watch every year, even if they do offer me a discount for a "replacement". I don't want to have to put up with the headaches and hassles after about a year...if it lasts that long. I'm looking elsewhere for my next fitness tracker.
P.S. If, for some miraculous reason, battery life were to improve, or be fixed by a software update or some other "trick", I'd be happy to change my opinion, but I don't see that happening, this watch has already struck out 3 times for me.
