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?

[Smiley2958]

I understand - it is frustating

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I'm wondering if they need some kind of update to the system to correct all these problems

[SleepyxEquus]

I am pretty certain we will start to get a reply soon, “ This is a huge launch! Please give them time to work out the issues.” Meanwhile the people with the Sense, has been waiting for a year on something.

I haven’t had time to test it 100% yet, so I am still very skeptical about this one. 

[Ingy]

So definitely glitchy.  Since I had dropped to nearly 50% on the same day I received it I decided to charge it again before bed.  That was Friday.  It is now Monday night and three work outs later and I’m not yet at 50% so not sure what happened other than a second charge I did nothing.  If it goes four days I’ll be happy.  Anything else is gravy.

[MikeDarrach]

Yeah same here I'm on my second charge now day 3 and I'm only at 76% power I think the very first charge is a bad one

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There seems to be a glitch on the first I charged a 2nd time on Saturday morning it's now Monday and I'm only at 76% power

[Iverk]

I got my watch last Friday and charged it to 100%.  Since then I have been walking (using phone GPS), played table tennis a couple of times, been for a short cycle ride (again phone GPS) and used the alarm twice.  Today, Tuesday (4 days), my watch is at 56%.

[SleepyxEquus]

I charged mine yesterday middle of day, and walked, did my normal day stuff and slept it was at 97% than and this morning I am at 94%. So far, this battery seems to be good on the Charge I received. I changed my clock to the heavy stats clock face and it has all the normal stuff. 

[jasrot]

I don't see the "Heavy Stats" clock face as an option for the Charge 5.  Am I overlooking it?

[SleepyxEquus]

Sorry! I call it that 😂. It’s called Runliner. 

[SunsetRunner]

So I followed the advice on another thread and charged it again  from nearly dead to 100% and that was yesterday late afternoon and 20 hours later I am at 84% which seems like 20% a day which would be bang on 5 days so my battery now seems to be fine.

Let your battery run down and charge it up to 100% and see what happens 

[SharleneH]

Thanks for the recommendation. I already have done so. Have tried every
permutation of charging that I can think of and that has been recommended.
Battery died in the middle of the night last night. So much for monitoring
sleep.

The bottom line is that a brand new device shouldn't take this much
troubleshooting. Fitbit needs to stand behind the product and issue a
refund. I never had a single problem with my Charge 3 and I am hearing
from other members that the Charge 4 was equally reliable.

[Smiley2958]

Ill be glad when th

[SharleneH]

This is unbelievable.  I am still waiting to hear back from "higher support" regarding returning this horrible device (Charge 5) for a refund.  To add injury to insult, this morning I received an email from Allstate confirming a 2 year device protection plan for the Charge 5 to the tune of $39.99.  I neither ordered nor authorized this plan.  When I contacted Allstate, they indicated that the plan was initiated through Fitbit!  Has anyone else had this experience?

[DavideFitbit]

Hi everyone, thank you for your feedback and for all the information that you've provided about the inconvenience that you've been experiencing with the new Charge 5. 

It seems that many of you have already contacted the Customer Support team for further assistance with this. Before doing so, please make sure that you've exhausted all the standard troubleshooting steps found in this article to improve battery life. As many of you have pointed out, the Charge 5 should have a battery life of 7 days, and although battery life is affected by use or other settings and actual results may vary, it shouldn't last for only 1 or 2 days. 

Some of the feature that can drain the battery more rapidly are: 

• Built-in GPS (Charge 5 can have a battery life of up to 4 day when using this feature regularly, or up to 5 hours if you use it continuously).
• Always-on display (Charge 5 can have a battery life of up to 3 days when using this feature). 
• Using an Sp82 clock face (Fitbit points out in this article that you may have to charge your Fitbit device more often when collecting SpO2 data).

If you already followed the recommendations to improve battery life, considering how some features affect it, and you still consider the battery is draining too fast, I recommend that you reach out to our Customer Support team for further assistance. The best way to get help for this problem is to chat with us online or give us a call. Click here to get connected. 

Have a good day. 

[SleepyxEquus]

Honesty, I got better luck chatting with them on their chat system. Then I did with contacting them on the phone. I normally try to buy my Fitbit's through Amazon, but for this one I did not and better not have issues retuning it, if it does not workout for my fitness needs. 

[SunsetRunner]

I pre-ordered the Charge 5 on 9/1 and received it on 9/24. The battery is only lasting less than 24 hours before it needs to be charged and I haven't even used for exercising yet. I chatted online with someone yesterday and was told I'd receive an email about what can be done and I never received it. I called today and was emailed a label to return it. So now after waiting a month and using it for less than 4 days I'm am going to be without it for awhile. I gave my Charge 4 to a friend so now I'll be without any for as long as this replacement takes. I have had almost every Charge over the years and never had an issue like this before. It's ridiculous.

[SharleneH]

I first reached out through chat and was told it had to go through "higher
support" and then never heard back. After the issue with being charged for
a protection plan I did not order in addition to the difficulty with the
return, I did speak live to a CSA who was very helpful. Be aware, though,
that they will try to charge you for return shipping unless you
specifically state that the return is due to a defective device design.
Also, the protection plan order ended up being channeled through fraud
department, so I am in the process of disputing the charge through my
credit card.

[SleepyxEquus]

Yeah I won’t be paying to return the device, if the HRM is defective and not doing what it should be doing. They can spew all about the different algorithms all they want. I put it against a chest strap that is 100% accurate against anything. My ionic and Apple Watch are not far off from it, I wished my Ionic still worked tho. I would have not upgraded. I hope they work yours out. 

[Riverbear]

I didn't have any problem with my return? I used the Fitbit chat, told them about the battery issue, and they sent me the return label/instructions. So, thankfully that was easy. I then ordered a Charge 4 on Amazon and will be getting that tomorrow! I have officially given up on the Charge 5 after 4 days of frustration and trying every option they (and others on here) suggested. Last night with the battery at 5%, I charged it for 90 min to get it back to full. This morning it was at 70%, and 7 hours later, it's at 40%. That's about the same as the two days prior. I can't wait to get another Charge 4 and rid of this poorly designed item!

[SleepyxEquus]

I need to buy a charger for my charge 4 that I have and might give that a go. If the charge 5 doesn’t workout for my workouts. The battery on this, for mine anyways, seems to be doing fairly well. Went to bed at 97% woke up to 94% and it’s at 91% with me not doing much but working. Which is a desk job, so not much exercise or anything being used on it. So we will see, as I haven’t seen too much complaining about the HRM on it yet. 

[embiggenator]

I keep seeing posts from people complaining about the battery...I'm wondering if there's a bug causing this, or maybe some of these devices have defective batteries? I fully charged my Charge 5 about 20 hours ago, and have gone for a 3 mile run in which I was using the device's GPS...but my battery life is still at 86%.