Charge 5 battery issues

[K.Z.]

 My Fitbit Charge 5 was working ok and the battery would last about 5 days to a week. Then suddenly, yesterday (03 Feb 2025), the battery display went from 100% to 4% within 3 hours after taking it off the charger saying the battery was critically low and needed to be recharged.
So I connected it to its charger. 
An hour later I synced it with the app and on the app, it showed a 100% charge. Which was strange since if it had been really down to 4% should not have recharged that quickly.
Then, throughout the day it seemed to lose varying percentages of battery power. A few times it went down between 10% to 40% in an hour.
I tried restarting it within the Charge 5 menu, as well as resetting with the button on the charging cable. No luck. It even displays a loss of several percentage points when on the charger after just resetting it with the charging cable button.
It almost looks more like a software issue than a battery one. Especially since there was no gradual battery deterioration before this started, and the drain and recharge seem so erratic. 
I just checked it again, and while typing a reply to another post it went down from 100% when I took it off the charger down to 92%. And it couldn't have been more than 10 minutes. And right now, maybe 5 minutes later it is down to 90%.
I tried looking through the help section but nothing was helpful since it basically just advises to restart/reset which I have done and which didn't help at all. Not sure what else to do.
I think for as much as these Fitbits cost they should last for more than a couple of years.

If anyone has any fixes, please let me know. 

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[MarreFitbit]

Hi there, @K.Z.. 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 about the battery issues with your Charge 5. I understand your concern, I will do my best to help you with this!

Please note that there are some issues that affect this, being which power source is used and how clean the contacts are and how well the charger is seated. If you are charging your Versa 3 on the wall socket, try using another CE certified USB adapter for low energy devices.

If you haven't done so yet, I'd recommend following the tips and recommendations provided here Why isn't my Fitbit device's battery charging?

If the battery keeps draining after the above, please see Can I extend my Fitbit device's battery life? 

[K.Z.]

Thanks, I have done all those. But no luck.
The battery seems to be charging. It's just that suddenly it is draining extremely fast, and inconsistently. And it does not really seem to be due to battery deterioration since that generally shows up more gradually. As I wrote, this went from the battery lasting about 5 days to a week to this sudden problem overnight.

[MarreFitbit]

@K.Z. Thanks for getting back and for the details provided. 

Please bear in mind that as all rechargeable batteries age, they deteriorate to some extent and an older device will need to be charged more often than a new one. The best way of minimizing this effect is to avoid deep discharges of the battery. To maximize the overall life of your Fitbit device's battery, ideally keep it between 20-80%.  Many people find that a daily battery boost works best ( e.g. giving it a 15 minutes charge while you are showering in the morning).

To better assist you, please make sure you've tried the tips and recommendations provided here. 

[Pelotine]

Exact same thing happening to me. Only started in the last two days. My Charge 6 is less than a year old and been absolutely fine up to now. 

[K.Z.]

Another thing that the Fitbit does is that when it asks you to charge due to low battery, say at 4%, or even not able to display the screen, and then it is connected to the charger and the screen lights up it can display a battery level of 40%, 60%, or whatever. Even when it has been on the charger fot less than a minute. And the displayed battery level remains the same when you disconnect from the charger right away. And the level shown is the same in the app when you sync. 
Of course, then it starts displaying rapid battery loss again. But it should not have gone up that much,recharged from nothing to 50% or so in less than a minute in the first place, not if the battery was actually drained. 
It's as if the software has a problem monitoring/reading the correct battery level and shutting things down when it thinks it is low. Whether it is or not. In addition to the battery sometimes losing 10% in a few minutes. Or at least appearing to.

[Anida]

My charge5 battery too is suddenly draining very fast, 2 last days it's dead by 1pm. So annoying. 

[Pelotine]

I restarted it yesterday and seems ok now - definitely a problem with the software rather than the actual battery

[RiekoC]

Hello @K.Z. , @Anida

When my Charge 5 started having rapid battery loss, I restarted and recharged my device multiple times over several days. As soon as I saw a rapid drop in battery, I restarted my Charge 5 and put it on the charger until it was back to 100%, often doing this multiple times in a day. Eventually, this process got my device "unstuck" and the battery went back to lasting 6-7 days. Although there's no guarantee that this will work for you, it might be worth a try.

---

Hello @Pelotine 

Glad to see that the restart seems to have helped with your rapid loss of battery. If you start seeing the battery rapidly draining again, you might try the troubleshooting I posted.

[K.Z.]

Thanks RiekoC ,

I have been trying that, but so far no luck. I'll keep trying though. 
Unfortunately, it has also started doing some other weird things like the screen intermittently looking sort of hazy/yellowish or greenish, and/or flickering. And the battery levels sometimes change up or down within minutes. Including going from displaying 76% to shutting itself off because it thinks it has no charge, and then when connecting to the charger displaying "battery not charging". But then a bit later later coming on again and displaying battery at 70% or even 90%. It's as if the software has gotten screwy and does not know what's going on.
I have been resetting it through the screen as well as with the charging cable with no luck. I may try resetting it to factory settings. Not holding out much hope though.
It seems to be turning into an expensive tiny paperweight.

[RiekoC]

Hello @K.Z. 

Sorry to see that you're still having problems with your Charge 5.

Although I'm not sure that this will help, there's another non-standard troubleshooting step that you could try. A Charge 5 user was able to restore his device by exposing it to freezer temps. If you want to give this method a try, here's the thread (<-- click link) where he described the steps he took.