Charge 5 battery is draining quickly

[Lina123]

I got my charge 5 in June 2023. It was working fine until recently (in December 2024 / January 2025) - sometimes the battery would only last 1 day. On 12/01/25, I charged my battery to 100%. Battery depleted by 13/01/2025 at 9:30am. I put the watch on charge and since then, the screen is non responsive. It shows the clock face occasionally if I tap the screen a lot, but won’t respond otherwise- can’t swipe the screen. I’ve tried restarting the watch with the charging cable, disconnected and reconnected bluetooth - no improvements.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[MarreFitbit]

Hi there, @Lina123. It's nice to see you around the Fitbit Community Forums. Thanks for bringing this to my attention and for the troubleshooting steps you've tried. I'm sorry to hear that the battery of your Charge 5 is still draining. I understand your concern, we're here to help you! 

I've seen you contacted our Support Team after posting here and they've already assisted you. If the steps that our team has provided did not work, please feel free to contact them back for further assistance. Since you already have a ticket open with them it'd be easier to continue the follow up on this matter with them directly. 

[Lina123]

I contacted the support team regarding the issues with the charge 5 yesterday. They were very helpful, however, the same issues have arose again today - the charge 5 became non responsive and the battery drained so quickly. I tried the techniques suggested by the support team, but nothing seems to be working. So frustrating 😞 

[CDNUser]

I am having the same issue with the same timing!  I have had my Charge 5 for a year (January 2024) and it was working perfectly until the first few days of January when all of a sudden the battery started depleting rapidly within hours.  It goes from 100% charge to 0% in only a few hours.  Until the end of December, one charge would typically last 4-5 days.  Nothing happened to my device.  I am very careful with it and have never had any issues.  I do not wear it in the shower or swimming or expose it to extreme temperatures.  I tried all of the 'fixes' I could find online including restarting it, un-pairing and re-pairing it.  Force stopping the app and resyncing it.  Uninstalling the app and reinstalling.  Restarting the device again.  After all of that, I noticed that the sensors are not working now either - which prevents it from auto waking as well.  It syncs to my phone and messages come through but the vibration doesn't work.  It's basically useless.  No heart rate monitoring, no step monitoring, and no notifications.  PLEASE HELP!

[CDNUser]

I also tried doing a factory reset (cleared user data), reinstalled the app, and completed set-up.  Still no sensors and battery is training 2-5% per hour. 

[Duncanmckie]

The same thing happened to me a few months ago, and I went through the same frustrating process of trying to fix the problem.  Nothing suggested here, or by the support group at Fitbit helped. Of course, we should remember that the support group are not developers or software experts.  I would like to see someone at that level respond to this issue which has been around for a couple of years without a positive remedy.  Frankly it's hard to see how moderators who refer you to support are very helpful.  They would be better used answering simple usage questions to which they know the answer.

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Exactly what happened to me. There's apparently no solution nor has anyone stepped up to deal with this who has the expertise needed.

[CDNUser]

I had the same issue and Customer Support said because it is 1 year old, it is now trash and I just need to buy a new one.  The Charge 5 is only meant to last as long as the 1 year warranty.  After that, they 'update' it causing the battery life to deplete immediately and fail the sensors.  I am very disappointed in FitBit.  My mom has had FitBits for years and never had one malfunction.  She bought this one as a birthday gift for me in December 2023.  It started failing 2 weeks ago after an update.  Prior to that I had zero issues.  It worked perfectly.  Great battery life.  Reliable step and heart rate tracking.  Notifications from all my apps.  Now it's a glorified watch that dies within a day.  What a waste.  I reported this to my mom (a loyal Fitbit customer for years).  She does not plan to buy another one - nor do I.  I just want my FitBit to work again.  I don't want to pay for a new one when this one was perfectly good! 

[Duncanmckie]

You dare not suggest that the takeover by Google contributed to this! Even though prior to that these mysterious issues were not happening.  I bought a Charge 6 to see if the problem might be solved.  It was, but the watch didn't display the sleep data reliably.  The charge 6 went back after multiple exchanges with support "experts" who had no idea what to do (reset, restart, blah blah blah).  If they think they can upsell to Google watches, they're wrong as the price point will lose them 80% of the Fitbit customer base who will start to use Chinese knock-offs rather than put out $400.