Charge 5 is a battery life downgrade from Charge 4

[grconcepcion]

I wore a charge 4 for a year and the battery life was exceptional. In the 365+ days that I wore it, charging it was only an issue maybe once or twice when I had gotten complacent and not looked at it for up to a week and it had died on my wrist. Unfortunately I slipped recently and cracked the screen on my Charge 4 so i decided it would be a good time to upgrade to a charge 5.

How wrong I was. Design and unit overall is great, i have no problem with that, my issue is that the battery life is a serious regression from the charge 4. The one thing I care about in my fitness tracker is the need to not have to charge it EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. To me, that is a deal breaker. My Charge 4 had to be recharged approximately once a week.

When I first put on my charge 5, it was 100% charge, but by the end of the day it was in the 50%'s, and by the next morning it was below 20%. Wow, what a terrible design I thought to myself. I searched online and found many issues regarding battery life, several stating that you need to factory reset, or simply restart the watch and it would be fine. I restarted the watch, and to my AMAZEMENT, the charge lasted for 3+ days.

OK, so the watch just needs to be turned on and off now and again. not the end of the world.

Well, after wearing the watch for more than 2 months, I can say that every time I set the watch to track a run, it will stay in what seems to be some sort of "active state" and if I don't reset the watch immediately after tracking an exercise, the battery will drain itself by the end of the day.

Unfortunately i don't always remember to reboot the watch after a run, so in the 2months that i've worn this watch, i've already lost more than 2 weeks worth of metrics due to drained battery. 14 / 60 = ~23% of my days have been missed whereas with the charge 4 i missed fewer than 2 / 365 = <0.005% of my days.

Completely unacceptable. I won't be buying anymore Fitbit products as they seem like a regression from the previous set bar.

[SunsetRunner]

Hi @grconcepcion - Sorry to hear of your experience with the Charge 5. First of all, you should not be doing a factory reset unless directed to do so by Support. But the restart is always a good idea when a problem pops up. And I know you have done a lot of research but here is a Help Page link to how to extend your battery life. It might be worth looking it over, just in case.  Finally, here are my two cents (for what it’s worth) … I’ve used Fitbits ever since the second one came out. Rather than worry about how many days a battery will last, I simply charge my device while I’m in the shower. I’ve never run out of battery with this method. 

I don’t have an answer as to your other issue. Hopefully someone else here will have a suggestion. Or you can contact Fitbit Support.

[grconcepcion]

It seems as though you didn't completely read my post. Needing to charge it daily is a deal breaker for me. Having to take it off my wrist once a day guarantees that there are days where I will forget to put it back on.

Completely unacceptable for a product where the previous version had a battery that lasted for an entire week.

[Baltoscott]

@grconcepcion -- check settings to see that you don't have "always on" turned on. That cuts battery life by about half; from 5 days or more to around 2. There are other settings you can adjust in the link that @SunsetRunner provided.  

Regarding your runs, are you going through and exiting out of the activity once done?  Your post makes me wonder if GPS is still running in some circumstances.  Also, you get much better battery life if you set GPS to phone or dynamic rather than device. I personally think the CH5 is too small of a device to have a builtin GPS because the battery is so small.  But a lot of people asked for it which I guess is why Fitbit built it.  But if battery is the more important thing to you, rely on your phones GPS like with the CH4.

[Rich_Laue]

Fitbit also recommends charging after a GPS recorded run. 

[fionac]

My battery lasts 5-8 days depending on whether I'm using GPS or not.  If I use the integrated GPS, it loses a lot - maybe 20-30% over a 5 mile run; if I use connected it's 10% over the same distance.  If I'm only tracking runs with the Garmin, the battery lasts 8 days.  If your battery is losing all power in 24 hours, I'd suggest that, if you've done all the restarting and stuff, that it's a duff battery and the device needs replacing. 

If that's the case, it's not all Charge 5's that are duff, just yours (and anyone else with the same problem, which seems to be too many).