Charge 5 battery draining too fast

[SharleneH]

I have had the new Charge 5 for 2 days. The battery discharges within a day. GPS is off, the phone is not set to always on. In looking over the troubleshooting instructions from Fitbit, it seems that you essentially have to disable all of the features that were selling points of this device in order to get decent battery life. Even my ancient Charge 3 got 6 days on one charge! Has anyone with this battery problem found a solution other than disabling everything?

[LedMatrix]

If I was still at 82% on my Charge 5 after 2 days, I'd be ecstatic!

By the end of Day 2 I'm typically down to 30-35%.

[chaos_engine]

Honestly, how can Fitbit sit here and tell dozens of experienced smart watch/fitness tracker users that this is normal? The batteries on these things are clearly defective. Mine went from draining normally to losing more than 50% of its battery in less than 10 hours. NOT NORMAL. The stupid article you’re all pushing isn’t helpful. 

Fitbit released a bogus product and rather than admitting it and correcting it, they’re going to claim it’s user error. Crappy response from a crappy company. 

[Mopoka]

Hi!

After my 3rd email to support team, I received one of these replies, which solved my problem.

"Press the button located on the flat end of the charger 3 times, pausing for 1 second between presses. Then wait 10 seconds or until the Fitbit logo appears."

I charged my watch 100% after that.

Have you tried this yet? Mine also drained very quickly, but after I did what they wrote, my Cahrge 5 drained 8% in 2 days, even though I trained with it (I didn't use GPS). FitBit app is also running in background.

I hope it stays that way

My settings are:

GPS: phone

Screen wake: manual

Brightness: Dim

Heart rate: on

Notifications: all off (calls, messages)

Reminder to move: on

SpO2: on

Clock face: Triangulate

I hope I could help.

[CharlieB310]

My battery was terrible on the Charge 5 after purchase and was thinking of returning it a few days later. Before proceeding I reset the device manually via the settings menu, and since then battery life is dramatically better!

Albeit with all battery saving settings applied, I've only used about a 1% point an hour/2hrs since the reset!

[shimsim]

Could you edit this 'best answer' to explain what customers should do after they have tried all these steps and continue to experience poor battery life. I have followed all of them but am now seeing erratic behaviour. Everythng seemed fine for the first 24 hours with only 10% battery drop, which seemed right as I'm not using GPS, notifications etc and really only care about the daily calorie and heart rate monitoring (I hardly even use the screen) but on the 2nd day is suddenly dropped below 50% and within a further 6 hours dropped to 25%

[SunsetRunner]

I am on day 2 with my new Fitbit Charge 5. I think it is really misleading to say the battery life for the Charge 5 is 7 days, but I have to disable all of the features of the watch to reach that metric, specifically the GPS, which was my main motivation along with the longer battery life to upgrade to this watch. I charged my Charge 5 to 100% last night and after one day of use I was at 27%. Horrible. I switched display to manual, changed GPS to pair with phone, and deleted the SPO2 app.

Overall, I'm really upset I decided to try and stay with Fitbit vs. switching to a different watch brand. It's my own fault, as I have had 2 other Fitbits, and they both have screens that started dying on me 1 - 1.5 years after purchase. In both cases, I believe the screen stopped working due to water, even though both watches were supposedly water/swim proof.

It's like you just don't care about your loyal users at all. Very misleading feature marketing. Plus, the watch faces for the Charge 5 are laughable. I'm charging my Fitbit now and will see how it does tomorrow after disabling basically all the functionality of the watch. Seriously though, this is probably the end of our relationship. You guys just don't get it, but ultimately, I'm the fool for continuing to give you my money. Lesson learned.

[Mopoka]

Hi! 

Try this steps:

1. Connect your device to the charging cable. 
2. Press the button located on the flat end of the charger 3 times, pausing for 1 second between presses. Then wait 10 seconds or until the Fitbit logo appears.

It was the same for me with the Charge 5. After doing this👆🏻, it has been working normally ever since. I charged my Charge 5  7 days ago and it still has 44% (I trained with it several times).

[weishein]

I had actually tried pressing the charger 3 times. It basically reboot the device. My battery drainage still the same. Night before, charged it to 100%. Wear it to sleep. By the time I wake up, about 6-7 hours later, my battery is down to 70%. Some days are even worst. If I don't charge the device after waking up before going to work. By the time I reach home in the evening, it'll be around 30-40%. This device really really sucks! I have never been so disappointed with Fitbit before. And I've been a loyal customer for more than 5 years now. Charge 5 is really making me thinking about another brand.

[SunsetRunner]

Your experience and the ones mentioned by others are both right. My friend and I both have Charge 5's bought at the same place and both had battery issues, I followed the steps here at her house and sorted mine but the same steps did nothing for my friends device. the quality control of the Fitbits are very hit and miss with it being 50-50 if you get a good device or a lemon.

My advice is to either chase for a refund and get a different brand, mindful that all the smartwatches like the Apple Watch and the Galaxy watch are not really fit for purpose as you have to charge them daily (while you sleep, so lose a lot of key data). Garmin forums seem to have lots of unhappy people discussing their mainstream consumer watches with only the seriously pricey high end running and sports watches seeming to be bullet proof.

Your other option is a warranty replacement and hope that you luck into a robust device this time but you can be 2 or 3 times unlucky in the Fitbit world and no one would blame you for walking away.

[GJT]

The only answer is turn everything off to get the battery life I have been used to on my charge 4. I never got anywhere with Fitbit on a solution as they continually asked me to do different diagnostic tests. All of which failed. 

but they refused to replace or even accept it back for testing. 

I spoke with the retailer I bought it from and they sent a replacement to be honest I haven’t opened the package as I have my charge 4 back on. 

This very much is a case of not fit for purpose and I have contacted UK trading standards to investigate.

customer services are so curt while on the phone with a representative telling me I’m well within my rights to go with another brand.   

Thank goodness Fitbit don’t sell cars as the would probably advertise it as 

100 MPG  and in small wording “ as long as not used’

fed up 

[shimsim]

I'm still within my first week of using the charge 5 and I've had to charge it 3 times, that is without even using the GPS, minimal screen usage, no notifications, etc, etc. Battery life is one issue, but I'm seeing this in conjunction with another issue and that is the way the battery life is non-linear. What I mean by that is the way the battery is draining is very inconsistent. For example, full charge right before going to bed, wake up, its hardly dropped, maybe just 2-5%. At the end of the next day its at maybe 70-80%. Go to bed again, this time when I wake up its at 50%, so overnight (in the exact same situation) its dropped 20-30% compared with just 2-5%, then towards the end of the day the battery completely dies on me. Even if you want to argue about the difference being caused by daytime usage, how can you explain such a large discrepancy at night? 

What concerns me the most when reading through this forum is the way support is being handled, with everyone getting the generic reset device switch or try turning this feature off. Clearly there is a problem with some devices and rather than taking responsibility, we get this runaround, presumably while Fitbit tries to push out a patch or resolve this issue at the manufacturing level.

As with everyone else here, deeply disappointed, I've been with Fitbit since the first charge device, loved the idea of a product that would give me more data about my health without the unnecessary bloat of a smartwatch. I have years of data and for the most part, I think Fitbit do a good job with presenting the data, but hardware has always been an issue and I'm struggling now to justify this new failure. 

[robert_bloor]

Agree with your comments. I found after doing a reset and no longer using the ECG the battery life and drainage stabilized

[GJT]

I tried everything that was asked of me including resets and turning off functions. Still 2days max. 

I have an Apple Watch so don’t use the ECG on the Fitbit.  

Just really disappointed with this charge 5 and more to the point the curt response from customer services 

[weishein]

Actually, we all should post these grievances in the social media accompanying with some hashtags, ie #fitbit #charge5 #sucks

When more new potential customers know about this defective device, ideally, Fitbit will do something about it.

Complaining about it in here, not gonna help much. We are all "victims". Like some users said, Fitbit is not helping much at all right now.

[psynch]

I have had my Charge 5 for 3 days.  After initially charging the device to 100%, it lasted 24-30 hours before draining to 0%.  I charged it again to 100% and after about 20 hours, it's down to 54%.  I have to still go through the settings to try and reduce power usage, but out of the box, I would have expected a battery life of at least 7-10 days.

[SunsetRunner]

Looks like the Pixel Watch will have Fitbit integration. The Fitbit ecosystem is all that is keeping me here so better quality hardware from Google tied into that ecosystem is a no-brainer for all of us when it shows!

Pixel Watch Fitbit 

[BigPhilWalks]

After buying my Charge 5 the battery drained very quickly. I read that it is MUCH better if I restart it, which I did, It’s early days for me yet but the problem seems to be fixed,  I’ve only lost 8% in a day now.  So do a Restart from your Settings option. It worked for me…so far!

[dz1234]

Well, I'm a frustrated charge 4 owner and I went to the charge 5 discussion to see if the problems have been fixed in the newer charge. I can tell you that this discussion about the battery is convincing me to go to Garmin. 

[shimsim]

That's what I initially thought but I can't get more than 48 hours between full charge and totally dead. It's great for the first 24 hours, the battery hardly drains, not more than 10% loss, but then on the second day, it rapidly drops. This is without using GPS, screen set to quick timeout, no notifications, I am intentionally avoiding using for anything other than tracking heart rate and movement. I've done multiple resets and full charge cycles, evening leaving it charging overnight but I get the same 2-day life with this strange non-linear battery life, great on the first day, then rapid decline to zero on the second day.

[SunsetRunner]

As an update, after disabling basically everything, and resetting the watch, it is now draining only 10% each day. So it's an improvement, but I still feel like it was deceptive marketing to state battery life based on having to disable most of the major functionality of the watch, specifically the GPS.