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?

[SunsetRunner]

Join the club.  Fitbit doesn't seem to care, unfortunately. They have you try different things, none of which work. I complained this morning and they stated that someone would contact me via email to help.me further. So we shall see. I have had mine since November 30th. The first day it drained almost completely in a day. I did a reset and have done one ever since which helps a little. I might get to the 4th day where it drains down from 50% down to 18% in a matter of a few hours. 

[Thunderstorm93]

I had the same problem with the battery in the beginning and I had it since December 28 2021 all I did was reboot the Fitbit Charge 5 and now it holding it change a lot better now, 

Just reboot your Fitbit it should fix the battery problem that what I did, yesterday I change it to 100% after rebooting it and now I’m at 91%, if I hadn’t reboot it I would be at about 40% so by rebooting the Fitbit charge 5 really helps 

[DavideFitbit]

Hi everyone, and welcome to the new users in the Community forums. 

Thank you for all the information provided about the inconvenience you been having with your Charge 5 and the troubleshooting steps that you already tried. 

From the information you provided earlier, it seems that most users have already tried all the basic troubleshooting steps listed here that could helpful to resolve problems with the battery draining too fast. In addition, I would also recommend that you try a restart procedure using the three pulse restart method described here below, as this has been useful for other users experiencing something similar: 

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, pausing for 1 second between presses. Then wait 10 seconds or until the Fitbit logo appears.

If you already tried all the steps mentioned earlier and you're still experiencing the same inconvenience, I recommend that you continue the communication with the Support team so they can let you know how to proceed or what options are available for you. You can get in touch with them here. 

Thank you for taking the time to share all your feedback about this as well, all your comments regarding this inconvenience are greatly appreciated and Fitbit continues to monitor the situation. 

Have a good day. 

[shimsim]

@Thunderstorm93I'm happy to hear that the restart worked for you and perhaps it does for many others but not for everyone. If you read back over the last 2 pages you will see my personal experience as well as others that are still not getting anywhere near the battery life that others are. Not just that, but there is a related or maybe additional issue we are seeing and that is the rapid battery depletion on the last day (anywhere from 50% to dead in a single day). This doesn't matter if you only get 2 days or 5 days of life, it will hold a charge very well for the first few days (or day) then rapidly drain on the last day, even overnight when you are not using it. Restarting and even a full factory reset is not fixing this issue.

Those of us who continue to post here (even after its been marked as answered), do so because

1. restart does not always fix the problem

2. is some cases it helps extend the battery life (beyond 2 days) but it's still worse than it should be (less than 5 days with extremely minimal usage)

3. the battery status is not being reported accurately or is being depleted in a very unusual way (~10% per day on the first days, then a sudden and rapid ~50% drop on the last day)

[shimsim]

@DavideFitbit I think I was writing my message at the same time as you posted, so didn't see it. I hope that Fitbit support team have an updated procedure in place to address customers with this specific issue as some people are being left frustrated from what I have read. I will be contacting support after the holidays to find out what I can do about getting a properly functioning device

Thanks

[SunsetRunner]

I have done all of the above and nothing works. On the 3rd or 4th day it drops from 50% down to 18% in a few hours. Not acceptable.

---------

Your experience has been exactly like mine. Nothing really works and the rapid drop in just a few hours. 

[Petecdavis]

I had battery issues for 1st week where it would only last about 24 hours.

I then switched GPS to Phone and did following:

1. Completely discharged battery.

2. Charged fully.

3. Restarted Device.

Battery is now only losing 10% charge per day!

[Abcrisger]

How many days did the battery last?

[Petecdavis]

Currently on day 4 and at 64% charged. Hopefully it will not rapidly discharge now, I’ll just have to wait and see!

[Bike-man]

I’m into this by 2 weeks.  My rapid discharging problem started after I used the gps feature while cycling.  Fitbit support suggested a restart of the Charge 5.  Did that and seems much better.  95% from last nights full charge 8+ hours ago.  Could it be that the gps feature does not turn off after selecting an exercise option?  I didn’t buy the watch for that feature so I will stay away from using it for now.  

[SunsetRunner]

Have done that multiple times. Gets to the 4th day and then drops from around 50% and then down to 18% in a matter of a few hours. Recently I charged it completely on Thursday night. This is the start of the third day and it's down to 77% at 10 am. We shall see how it goes today.

[SunsetRunner]

On day 3 I am down to 77% st 10 am. We shall see how it goes today. Usually by the 4th day it drains down to 50% and then drops down to.18% in a few hours.

[Ash0R01]

Thanks for all the info you've compiled - it's come in really helpful as I'm facing similar issue after receiving the Charge 5 on Boxing day. 

Unfortunately, it would appear that the battery issues are either hardware related i.e. bad batch of battery or a software issue specifically as battery drain hits you out of nowhere. My battery drain seems to drain most during sleep (30%)

Personally I shy away from 1st Gen Tech devices as there are often 'teething' issues. The Charge 5's issues are far from teething - they're unacceptable.

I'm surprised that they felt it was ok to release the tracker with its current state of battery issues. 

[SunsetRunner]

You are welcome! I agree with all that you have said. My battery drain seems to happen late in the day, usually early evening hours, and it drops by 30% also. Very weird. They definitely should not have released it yet or should be willing to replace it with a new one. I am in contact with customer service via email so we shall see how.far I get. I already fold them that I have done all of their suggestions multiple times with the same results so please don't tell me to do it again. Fitbit was bought out by Google, I think, hence part of the issue. The original company was much more responsive and customer oriented. The new one isn't.  They may not like me saying that, but it's true. I have owned several Fitbit s over the years and have not had the issues with them that I have had with this one.

[Ash0R01]

@SunsetRunner thanks again! I think albeit Google acquired Fitbit, the Charge 5 is likely to have been in the Product Roadmap before/during the acquisition.

Combined this with the fact that the acquisition only finished in Jan 2021 and we haven't seen any GOOG hardware/software/algo integrations into Fitbit, this is perhaps more a case of Fitbit rushing to get Charge 5 to market before Black Friday/Xmas.

There are likely some manufacturing/Quality control issues arising from COVID and disruption to supply chain.

Same goes for customer service - anecdotally, I've experienced significant decline in customer service due to remote working. 

I suspect (purely anecdotal again) due to working from home, customer service agents (in general, not specific to Fitbit) are multi-tasking for multiple companies, thereby customers getting mostly a template response rather than a specific answer.

Separately, I would also like to thank @shimsim for being persistent in his approach and providing information on the battery drain issue and the various solutions they've tried.

[Bike-man]

I’m a relative newcomer to this issue.   What surprised me was that I got 8 days out of the initial charge.   Do all Charge 5’s have same issue or is this isolated to a certain lot or production run?    Hard for me to believe that all Charge 5’s have the same battery issue.  Got mine from Amazon.  If the issue persists I will be returning it.    

[Ash0R01]

@Bike-man - it's too early to say whether all Charge 5 have this issue. It also depends on frame of reference - someone coming from a charge 4 would notice the low battery life straightaway whereas if it's someone's first Fitbit, they may chalk the battery drain to initial use/tinkering.

Mine's from Amazon UK if that helps 

[shimsim]

@Bike-man Unlikely to the GPS related, all the testing I did was without enabling the GPS once. I wanted to rule out any obvious high drain features such as always-on display or GPS, so I basically avoided using it for anything other than HR monitoring. I still faced the same issues of short battery life + rapid battery drain. its really interesting that you managed to get 8 days the first time then started to experience this issue. I had thought it might be defective batteries but your experience would suggest it's a hardware/firmware glitch. If it's firmware then it's good news, they might be able to push out a patch for this, but anything else would mean a replacement is the only fix.

@Ash0R01 You are welcome, hoping that the more detail people provide (not just chiming with the basic info or repeating the same restart 'fix' that doesn't work) will help others in the same boat. It's incredibly frustrating and somewhat amplified by the lack of openness from Fitbit.

I don't think it matters where it was purchased from, mine was Best Buy USA, presume it's a batch issue so just depends on how many batches have shipped with this issue, probably completely random and not specifically where you purchased it from.

[Alex_Lane]

Agree.

I tried everything. In the end, returned for a replacement that was shipped from Germany.

New device is really good! Turn most things on (not screen auto - drives me mad!) and battery lasts for ages. Can’t even remember the last time I charged. Use GPS on phone. SP02 on etc. 20k steps a day.

Faulty batteries.

[shimsim]

@Alex_Lane would be good to know how many days you actually get, also ...... more interested to know where the device was manufactured? I am wondering if they are all made in China or if there are also being manufactured elsewhere. Thanks