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?

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi everyone, and welcome to our new member.

Thanks for your continued feedback and efforts while working on this matter. I wanted to share with you that our team has release a new firmware version for the Charge 5 which brings a fix for the battery drain issues. Take in mind this update is progressively rolling out so in case you don't see it yet, please check the Fitbit app in a few days. To learn more about it and share your feedback, check this thread.

Once again, I appreciate your patience and we'll keep working to improve our devices, as well as your experience with them.

[weishein]

@DavideFitbit can you guys for once, just send us a replacement for all the faulty trackers? You guys have been dragging this way past our warranty period. The new firmware is making it worst! This is after waiting for more than 6 months for some of us who pre-ordered this.

At this rate, you are losing more customers than gaining them. I don't think this will look good among your shareholders.

[Rodpud]

Right for 6 months waiting for a fix. Then they fix a gps issue when we all had gps turned off per instruction and still having the issue.   Mine worked once randomly for quite a few days next charge it’s back to not even one day it’s annoying as heck.  Nothing has been fixed 

[oshelot]

I've been monitoring my fitness progress w/Fitbit products since 2015. With the Aria and every model of the Charge along the way. I bought them for my family in hopes it would help them too. I've literally worn a Charge everyday for the last almost 7 years. Except for the last month and a half, because my C5 dies in 3 hours. And Google, the parent company of Fitbit, who made $68B in revenue during the last Q, can't suck it up and send all of us with issues new units. Seriously thinking I should give the Mi Band 7 a try.

BTW, I'm way below this starting point!! I give lots of credit to fitness tech.

[NewSuttonGirl]

Google bought Fitbit. Fitbit is an insignificant cog in that ecosystem so their shareholders probably wouldn’t even care about Fitbit’s horrific “customer service“ assuming they even know.

[KlausVanderson]

So I've done the update, it hasn't worked. I've contacted customer support about it and was oncr again told you sit tight. I told them I wanted a replacement and was told:

"Not the experience we want you to have. But since this issue is still being investigated by our team, we don't think replacement can resolve it. Our team is doing their best to have a resolution to this as soon as possible. we appreciate your patience."

So basically they think the same exact thing will happen with the new one if they replace it. But they're STILL SELLING THESE THINGS which is completely unethical.

[MsDraz]

Correct for that is the same information I received from support several
times. The best thing we can do is make a pest of ourselves until they
realize they need to treat this issue differently.

[Sunshine908]

Correct! I finally got a refund for my Charge 5 after being denied over and over. I really loved the product when it worked, and I actuall really miss having it on for counting steps and especially monitoring my sleep. I have not switched to another product yet. After all I went through for so many months with the customer service and product reliability failures- I just don’t know if I could trust them again. It’s unfortunate. Great while it lasted. I too was a loyal customer for 7 years.
Tish

Get Outlook for iOS<>

[themezman]

@Sunshine908if you find another product that is known to be reliable and has features like the Charge 5 does, please  post the info about it to this thread.

The number of Charge 5 customers, including myself, who have, in just the past couple of days, related their problems &  extreme happiness with the product &  Fitbit's Customer Service /Support is mind-boggling!

[themezman]

@MsDrazCould you confirm:

•  - what version of the firmware you were using, if you happen to know, when "for the handful of months my Fitbit charge 5 worked. It was a fine product"
•  -  what version you had installed when "then boom the update killed the battery"?
•  -  what version you updated to recently?
•  -  was it the recently released ver. 171.50 firmware that caused the battery drain, or had it occurred prior to the update

Like yours, my C5 worked fine for a couple of months using, I think, ver 149.11 until severe battery drain started happening, around May 222. 

I continued to use that ver and the prob continued to happen through right now, and, unlike with your C5, I have not installed the ver 171.50 update just released

So, unlike my experience, it seems to me, from what you said, that you never had the battery drain problem *until after you installed* the just-realeased firmware V 171.50, and I want to make sure that my understanding of that is correct.

(BTW: After reading the numerous user posts stating that the new version did not fix the battery drain (I haven't yet seen one yet saying that it did), as well as numerous posts saying that it caused new probs, I am not going to install it. Anyhow, It still is not available to me.)

  Thanks much in advance for the version Timeline iifo,if you can provide it.

[IppTak]

@themesman  FWIW, my problem started this week (I've owned it since Dec 2021), which tells me that this latest firmware CAUSED the issue. My watch was working fine until last week.  

Now, I do not know which version or what firmware I had before. Seeing that others have had the issue for at least a few months, one of the past software updates introduced the issue (but I was lucky to not have had it.)  This makes me wonder or wish I could rollback the software.

This obviously shows that they are aware of the problem but struggling to fix the problem. They have failed in multiple tries, so we shouldn't get our hopes up, I guess?

[Easytiger]

@DavideFitbit why have you edited my two posts into one? I posted two separate messages because they’re covering two separate topics. The first message was a reply to another post saying we have no choice but to accept the update due to a massive banner in the app forcing us to upgrade. The second post was asking how your post about the firmware upgrade can be the best answer/resolution within two minutes of releasing the update, when no one had installed it and in contradiction, appears to have made matters worse in totally wrecking customers’ devices? 

[MsDraz]

I started having the problem prior to the new firmware update. I personally
think it has to do with all the new features the Google Fitbit team has
added to the Fitbit Charge 5. I have uninstalled all extra features &
turned off notifications and etc... Followed all directions provided to me
by support and the device still can't hold a battery charge for any length
of time

[Donkap]

I tried the update and it didn’t stop the battery from discharging. You need to replace these defective charge 5’s!

[SBKaren]

So I was doing a general Google search for how to set up a charge 5 to optimize battery life, and came across this. 

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2004.htm

 

[JKOFFOTH]

There is nothing there after your … I came across this.

John

[tcat007]

No wonder my wife's Luxe has to be charged twice as often as my 5.  She gets 6-7 days, I get 10-11.  Still no update.

[LiJaHi]

@JKOFFOTH there is a link: https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2004.htm

[DarrylH]

I got the firmware update a few days ago and charged my device. First thing I noticed is the red light is still constantly on, the heart rate monitoring still doesn't work (which I believe is a green light). I wore it over night and checked the sleep tracker in the morning, but there was nothing there, and the charge level was around 50%.

The battery lasting longer is nice, getting around 24 hours total, but it's still not even close to enough, plus no sleep tracking or heart rate monitoring takes away the two things I bought it for. I think I'll give it another few charges to see if anything changes, then try get a refund or replacement however hard that may be.

[OKmamaJ]

Considering my $900 Pixel 6 Pro has a "known issue" that has been a problem since April (for me - but others have been having problems basically since it dropped in November)... I don't think they'd care anyway, regardless of Fitbit's value. What kind of smartphone has slower data speeds than a dialup modem? Google Pixel 6 Pro does.

But anyway, Google complaints aside...

Hubby got an Amazfit on Prime Day... I'm strongly considering switching, but waiting to see A: how it does at sleep tracking, and B: how this firmware update does when it's finally available for my C5. Because I really do like the FIT of my C5 and the thought of going back to something big or bulky is... Ugh. I primarily use it for sleep tracking, and the main reason I upgraded from the C2 to the C5 was because of how well the C5 fits.