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Charge 5 wouldn’t accurately read my heart rate

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my charge 4 broke. Structural failure. The part that holds the bands on cracked and fell apart. That was a good device.

 

so I went and replaced it with what is currently on the market. The charge 5.

 

it wouldn’t accurately read my heart rate. It was consistently about 20 BPM too low. I am not new to Fitbit.

 

so, they decided to replace it which was a pretty good move. It took almost a month. Which really sucked actually. Because I had no way to track zone minutes. 

fast forward to this week where I finally have a Fitbit again.

 

And it still doesn’t work right!

 

it’s got this huge lag when it is trying to measure your heart rate. It takes five or 10 minutes to start registering your proper heart rate. So you lose those zone minutes. Further, it’s not crediting me for a lot of zone minutes in my custom zone.

 

and lastly, I go and do these exercise, earning zone minutes, and it doesn’t even register as one of the exercise days in the exercise screen. Nothing. Today I have 48 zone minutes. That’s exercise right? Not according to the new Fitbit. It shows no exercise today at all.

 

this thing is a pile of garbage. I highly recommend not getting one. They do not work. None of the features work anymore. Since they changed to the Fitbit 5, it does not work. Even when they send you a brand new one it does not work.

 

on top of all of this, They are now taking away my trophies? No more community? Are they trying to go out of business? Is that the plan?

 

I suggest not using this company anymore.

 

Moderator edit: subject updated for clarity

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I have found that zone minutes a lot of the time don't actually count as exercise. For example I could be sitting a test or going to a job interview and a little anxious raising my heartrate and earning zone minutes but not actually doing movement that could in any way count as  exercise but still having a raised heartrate. 

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To me, that’s kind of understandable. It’s just going off heart rate. That’s how it figures out if you are doing zone minutes or not. I’ve had that happen. And I don’t mind it. It used to happen on my other Fitbit when I had a good one. One that would actually track my heart rate properly.

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Agree! I had the same thing happen. Had a charge 2, loved it. It finally died after a few years of doing everything in it, and I got a Charge 5. Right off the bat, the heart monitor didn't work. I was sent a replacement that sometimes works, sometimes does not, and I had to buy a replacement band because the original one made my arm peel and stink after a couple of hours. 

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