Charge 5 heart rate massively inaccurate during exercise.

[Diablopilot]

Upgraded to the Charge 5 because my Charge 3 display stopped being bright ages ago. 

Charge 5 HR reads low sometime even at rest during a high intensity workout (150+bpm)

Massively disappointing, more so that I see mods here close threads complaining about the issue without any resolution. 

[Bug25]

Same thing happening to me and my husband. On a road trip (4 hours) our heart rates went so high then plummeted just as rapidly. Quite scary until we compared data. Charge 5 has lots of bugs. Driving is one of them. Amazingly did over 3000 steps while sitting down reading a book in car. Can’t do that while sitting down at home reading a book lol. 

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, welcome to the Fitbit Community forums, @Diablopilot. 

Thank you for sharing all your feedback and these details about the inconvenience you've been having with your Charge 5.

I've been informed that you already contacted the Customer Support team for further assistance with this. In this case, they will let you know how to proceed. 

@Bug25 If you haven't done so already, please follow the instructions in this article to improve the accuracy of heart rate information and check the information mentioned here about other factors that could affect your heart rate reading. In addition,  I recommend that you try restarting the device following these steps. 

Regarding the steps recorded while driving, unfortunately it is an expected device behavior at the moment for the device to count steps during a driving activity. There's currently no Driving Mode feature to avoid these extra steps. However, I do recommend that you vote for this idea posted in the Feature Suggestion board of the Community, since this is helpful for the team of developers to continue to track popularity and demand over time. 

Keep in mind that you can’t delete steps and floors; instead, you can log a non-step-based activity such as driving to override the steps or floors recorded; you can check this article for more information. Other users have also found useful to connect the device to the charger while driving, as this prevents the device from counting any steps, but this is more helpful for short drives.  

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback about this. The team of developers continues to work to improve the quality of products and services. 

See you around. 

[LiJaHi]

Hi Diablopilot, take a look at this youtube video by The Quantified Scientist, starting at 11:31 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPiYdJVjx-g

He compares the Fitbit Charge 5 with an EEG chest strap during four indoor spinning sessions, eight outdoor bikes rides, one skateboard ride and three weight lifting sessions. The fitbit performed best while spinning, followed by skateboarding. There was a lot of inaccuracy in the other two activities. You can compare your workout to the types of activity tested here to get an idea of how your fitbit might be expected to perform.

[DavideFitbit]

@LiJaHi Thank you for sharing this information! 

See  you around. 

[Jpez13]

I recently upgraded from a charge 4 to a charge 5 and either my fitness improved overnight or the heartrate readings are wildly incorrect. I just did a 40-minute high intensity plyometric workout with minute intervals of lunge jumps and my tracker showed my heart rate below 80 the entire time even though I was breathing hard and I could literally see my heart pounding through my shirt. I pretty much never get "active minutes" now unless I'm running. I used to give active minutes on long walks--the other day I did a 6.5 HOUR walk (I was on vacation) and only got NINE active zone minutes.