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?

[Jplains]

Nice to see a moderator with a response at least even though it doesn’t help.  My Fitbit won’t last 30 minutes after a full charge making it unusable.  Asking me to be patient and wait and keep updating is insulting.  Your company should be offering refunds or replacements with another model.  My unit is under warranty. Will you refund me my money since you have no solution?

[Bryant06]

Interesting, my charge 5 worked fine from January till about 1 1/2 weeks ago.  Then I could not charge it, reset it or reboot.  They sent me a replacement under warranty and I received it 7/9/22.  Same issue, in less than 24 hrs, I have recharged it 4 times, lasts only 1-2 hrs, called the help desk, told to reset it, called back the help desk and basically told they were working on it.  They mailed me a new one knowing they had issues.  I am sure it is their firmware update, why not revert back.  Then they had the audacity to send me a customer s

survey for feedback, to which I was more than happy to give.

[Nacho628]

Oh boy. A number of us had the same problem with the Inspire 2. We also agreed that it seemed to be a firmware update around the end of May that caused the problem -- although no one from Fitbit would confirm. I went ahead and bought the Charge 5 a few weeks ago because it was on sale at Costco. Just yesterday I noticed that the battery was almost dead within about 24 hours of being charged. Now I'm going to be diligent about logging the battery life on this device as well. Geez.

[Dmonti17]

Just upgraded on Saturday from an Inspire HR.  Did the firmware update while setting up. Went to bed with 77% charge, woke up with less than 25%.  Read everything yesterday morning, GPS was on dynamic, turned off all settings notifications.  Was down to 46% when I went to bed.  Woke up at 15%.

Gonna take it back and go back to my inspire hr if not fixed immediately.   Delete that firmware update and go back to the last one Fitbit. Easy

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My Charge 5 went down to 3%.  I did a reset and recharged.  So far, seems to be holding the charge better than the last two days

[jabob]

Went to Costco and even though they still carry the charge 5 for half the price that it sold for 5 to 6 months ago,  they would not replace with new watch. They said 90 day return policy and told me to call concierge service program and they would replace or repair. Called and after several hold they indicated they only have 90 days and this is a Fitbit issue and provided a phone number to Fitbit. I understand as Costco is consignment store and I agree this is a Fitbit issue. I will call the number today, but I don’t see Fitbit stepping up to the plate. 

[SunsetRunner]

Hey all you FitBit employees who monitor this chat.  Where are you?  Have you noticed that there are 20 people who are experiencing the battery life issue?  How about you DavideFitbit?  You answered several posts in June where people complained about the same issue?  

Fitbit needs to learn some of the basics of business.  It is five times harder to get an unhappy customer back verses securing a new customer.  Only one in twenty-five unhappy customers will complain.  The other 24 simply move onto to alternative products. Last point, 10% of unhappy customer will tell fifteen people not to do business with a bad company.  

Based upon what I have read in your Charge5 community, your business is going to suffer long-term.  Way to go!

[Jadelman]

I called customer support and was told an update would come out soon to fix the issue. I got an update Saturday and my Fitbit worked for a few hours so I thought I was done. Yesterday it crashed again and has been black screen ever since…

[jabob]

Thank you for sharing. I got the same response today. Hopefully, it will be rolled out soon with no glitches.

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I have to agree with you. Costco told me they had received complaints. Hopefully, others are calling if not responding on site.

[Gela1960]

I have both Apple Watch 5 and Fitbit Charge 5. Apple Watch has an 18 hour battery life. I have said to Fitbit that they should not sell it as having a 7 day battery. Just own it that the life is much shorter if you use all the bells and whistles.

Sent from my iPad

[KlausVanderson]

This has nothing to do with the problem that's going on though. My charge 5 routinely lasted almost a week, and then with no warning and without making any changes it would last less than a day. After the last charge the battery died in under 6 hours 

[tcat007]

Definitely random!  Mine did same, ok for a week or two then drained less than a day for a week, then I looked here.  Did the restart from charger and I've had five 12 hr. cycles since.  Something must kick it off...

[JaneFIT2015]

My Charge 5 is still not holding a charge for any amount of time! For about three weeks it would not charge at all. 

Then, one day, it charged up to 100%, I wore it for about 10 hours and it died again.  I've recharged and had it die within hours multiple times. This company is toying with my emotions.  I am so sick of it.  What are they doing about it???????   I tried to go through the chat feature, and that was useless.    

[JKOFFOTH]

This describes my C5 before it died. My suspicion is those owners of the Charge 5 who are experiencing very short lasting charges just give up and they would eventually have them die completely. I waited until it died and they replaced it. I would be very surprised if the so-called firmware update is going to fix the problem for anyone. If you follow the thread many users have had more than one replacement.
My previous C5 lasted for 9 months. The replacement came in May.

John k.

[mulva]

i'm so glad I kept my Charge 4.  I found it yesterday and am powering it up now.

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It's better than nothing.  Also, I found my old Charge 4 and am booting it now. I'll be using it again for now.

[Dmonti17]

Mine is finally holding its charge.  I let it go down to 3% battery. Then I restarted it on the settings and then charged it fully.  Yesterday it went from 100% to 96% for the entire day (I still have everything notification wise turned off).  Woke up this morning and it's at 95%

[Micodude]

Did you simply restart the device, or reset the factory settings? Also - did you restart the settings while it was still charging and was on 3%?

[Dmonti17]

Just the restart right after I plugged it in to recharge it.

[Bvsully]

Let us know if it continues to work. I had a few days where it held charge but that was short-lived. Maybe you'll have better results.

[J-W]

Mine did pretty much the exact same thing overnight.  Now it is a struggle to even charge it.  Even if I can get it to charge the battery is dead in under two hours.  

[Micodude]

So dunno if that may help - just saw that there is an update to the Fitbit app in my android - any idea if that might even slightly help?... Also - any idea how does a firmware update going to look like when its actually out? I assume its not going to be as an app update, so just asking for now.