Heart Rate abnormally spiking on Charge 5

[rk366]

Hi,

is anyone running into the heart rate sensor abnormally spiking(200+ heart rate) on Charge 5 while sitting at a desk repeatedly over multiple days. One day while sitting at my desk, I was able to notice HR over 180+ on my Charge 5 and I managed to  check with Fitbit Luxe on the other hand and Luxe showed around 80. I am thinking heart rate sensor on my Charge 5 is defective. 

Moderator edit: subject updated for clarity

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, welcome to the Fitbit Community forums, @rk366. 

I appreciate all the information that you've shared about this inconvenience with your Charge 5. 

That does seem a bit high if you're sitting down and there's no intense activity. 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. 

Have a good day. 

[ej-running]

This seems to be a Charge 5 (and maybe sometimes Charge 4) issue. Mine showed up only on my runs, but was consistently with a peak of 208-210, and an average of 180. I'm 55 and the runs were easy, mellow ones on which I felt just fine, so.....not likely.

After Jan. 22, this disappeared. Now I'm getting more reasonable peaks about 170, and average about 140. Meanwhile I incurred a lot of costs by going to a cardiologist, apparently utterly unnecessary!

[SunsetRunner]

I've also encountered this when running.  The way I seem to have stopped it is by wearing the device further up my wrist and quite tight.  I now get a more consistent reading.

[rk366]

I do go on longer runs 5-6 miles few times a week, didn't see anything abnormal with Heart Rate, while running. While running my heart rate max is around 170 to 185 bpm. I do see abnormal spikes(200+) consistently with Charge 5 while sitting at my desk. After seeing 8 spikes over 200+ in a single day, I was thinking of scheduling a doctor's appointment, then decided to verify heart rate data with Fitbit Luxe. 

I didn't see any abnormal spikes with Fitbit Luxe though. When i switched back to Charge 5, heart rate spikes came back( 3 ot 4 per day), while sitting at my desk

Looks like something is wrong with Charge 5 Heart Rate monitoring sensor, positioning of sensor within a larger device or the way Charge 5 is calculating Heart rate. Don't want to spend more time debugging this, I am now leaning towards returning Charge 5. 

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, thank you for confirming that you're still experiencing this problem with your Charge 5, @ej-running @SunsetRunner @rk366.  

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, this has been useful to other users who have experienced something similar. 

In addition, I recommend that you try restarting the device using the three pulse restart method mentioned here below, instead of the restart option found on the Charge 5 itself: 

1. Connect your device to the charging cable. For instructions, see How do I charge my Fitbit device?
2. Press the button located on the flat end of the charger 3 times (end of the USB cable), pausing for 1 second between presses. Then wait 10 seconds or until the Fitbit logo appears.

If you continue to experience the same problem with the heart rate information, please continue the communication with the Customer Support team for further assistance with this. Click here to get connected. 

Thank you for all the feedback and comments that you've provided so far. The team continues to work the quality of products and services. 

I'll be around. 

[rk366]

Hi Davidefitbit,

I have done all the things you have mentioned with my Charge 5. I still see abnormal spikes repeatedly. I am able to notice heart rate spiking to 180 while I was syncing charge 5 with my phone. Noticed that there is a slight gap between fitbit and my wrist as my hand was resting on my desk. This only happens with Charge 5 not with Luxe or Apple Watch 6. Luxe has never reported abnormal spikes. Seems to be  that the sensors on some of the charge 5 are faulty, you may want to ask your team to investigate sensors and/or the heart rate measurement algorithm further and provide focused guidance to deal with this instead of giving a run around to your customers

[DavideFitbit]

@rk366 Thank you for sharing all your feedback and comments about this issue. 

If you continue to experience the same problem with your heart rate and you already tried all the steps mentioned earlier to improve the accuracy, I do recommend that you continue the communication with the Customer Support team so they can provide you with the next steps. Click here to get connected

I appreciate all the feedback that you've provided so far about this issue. 

See you around. 

[drDaveH]

I just had the same issue for the first time on a charge 5, but I wore it loosely around my wrist.  I was jogging and it peaked at 178 and then slowly went down over the next two minutes.  No physical symptoms, and my usual resting heart rate is about 58.  Weird.  I'll wear it more tightly next time.

[kgabelsb]

I have had the same thing happening for the last 4 days.  During my morning walk/jog, it spikes to over 200 and normally in the past, it has been around 150.  I will try wearing it more tightly on my wrist.  I have been having problems with the Fitbit app not reporting Health Metrics so I thought that maybe the sensor might be starting to malfunction, so I got a Sense 2 thinking that the technology was newer and better.  Wrong!  I just returned it because it was reading almost 20 beats higher than the Charge 5 when sitting still.  I loved the watch and really wanted it to work, but I am wondering if there are still some issues with the technology and they should have done more testing before its release.  So, I am back to my Charge 5.  This one is about 2 years old so I am thinking that if I can't resolve this issue, I may need to replace it.  I keep threatening to go to Apple, but I have read that their sleep reporting isn't as good as Fitbits.  Which is one of the things most important to me.  However, I also keep begging Fitbit to change the Resting Heart Rate algorithm to not be a daily average, or whatever it is.  As others have reported, in the morning, I can be sitting still and show a heart rate less than what is shown for my Resting Heart Rate.  Whenever are they going to update this algorithm?????  End of rant ...

[DavideFitbit]

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

Thanks for confirming that you experienced the same problem with your Charge 5. 

Let me know if you're still having the same problem after you wear it tightly.  In addition, please make sure that you've tried all the steps mentioned here earlier. 

@kgabelsb I've been informed that you already contacted the Customer Support team for further assistance with this and it seems they've provided you with more information. In this case, they will let you know how to proceed. 

Thanks again for taking the time to share all your comments and feedback about this. 

I'll be around. 

[Shihtzu247]

I gave a charge 5 to my husband and he also experienced this inaccurate heart rate problem. He was sitting in our living room and the device showed his heart rate spiked up to 175. He is a heart patient so that was alarming. He put on my Inspire 2 and it showed his heart rate was only in the mid 60’s. I put on his charge 5 and it showed mine as 95!  My Inspire 2 had been showing me at 63. My husband then put his charge 5 on one hand and my inspire 2 on the other and they showed wildly different readings from each other. So, he will not be using this charge 5. We can’t afford to have inaccurate readings alarming our peace of mind following his heart surgery. 

[kgabelsb]

Shihtsu247,

So sorry to hear about your husband's scare with the heart rate spike.  My husband had a finger pulse oximeter that we would use to check his O2 as well as heart rate.  You might want to get one of those?  Also, one thing that seemed to help was using a soft cloth to clean the back of the watch, so you might try that.  I did also have wildly different readings between my old Charge 5 and the Sense 2 that I ended up returning.  The Charge 5 I have now seems "more stable".  Perhaps it is their algorithm?????

I followed all the troubleshooting steps recommended by Fitbit and nothing worked to stop the spike to over 200 when exercising on my old Charge 5.  Thinking maybe the sensor might be malfunctioning and my Charge 5 was a couple of years old, I went ahead and got a new one.  I am still having the same problem with this one, but it isn't as bad.  If I just walk, the heart rate stays in the 130 range.  When I jog, most of the time, it is in the 150 range, with still having some spikes to over 200, but not as much as before.  I have been walking the last 4 days and no spikes.  I want to go a week without spikes to see if that brings down the resting heart rate since I have seen that others say it is calculated on a week's worth of data.  After that, when I go back to jogging, I am going to open a ticket regarding the spikes and see if the engineers have any suggestions.

[JamoC]

Mate - Fitbit should not release AFIB detection until this is sorted, as you will get a lot of people worried, just saying. I woke up this morning and it said 156 on my charge 5, but my Wellue Sleep Apnea ring said 55. 

Big problems, and this is my 3rd C5.

[SallyOz]

I don’t run. I have a resting heart rate 58.  I was sedentary (a time when 58 bpm or below is usual) and my Fitbit showed my heart at 95. Which is intense activity (for me). I manually took my pulse at it was 56. Yes this device glitches. 

[OldRusty]

I'm getting this issue literally every few days on my Charge 5 at this point. A reboot of the watch seems to fix it, but the issue has gotten worse over time as it used to only happen once every few weeks, while now it's almost happening on a daily basis. I've seen it randomly read at 145 for 10 minutes or longer while simply sitting there when my actual heart rate is 70. I've also seen it while exercising do something similar, spiking up to over 220 while my peak heart rate in the real world is around 174 or 174.

Reboot always clears the issue, but re-syncing or shuffling bluetooth does not. I had a Charge 4 in the past and it rarely if ever saw this issue, so it seems to be either a faulty sensor or poorly coded software on the Fitbit side. The fact that it's been getting worse makes me think this is a software issue, but Fitibt is unlikely if ever to actually address bugs like this while most of their dev teams are dedicated to making next year's model. I quick scan on these forums and reddit however shows that this is a fairly widespread issue that Fitbit does not seem interested in acknowledging or addressing.

If it gets worse I suppose I could work with support, but I'd be curious to even see if an RMA and replacement watch fixes the issue. If it's software related, that will do nothing until they fix their code.

[kgabelsb]

Again, I had the problem with the spikes over 200 while jogging.  Walking didn't cause an issue but it also doesn't get my resting heart rate as low as it should be.  Although, that is another issue that Fitbit refuses to address - resting heart rate should not be an average of a week's worth of heart rates.

So, today, I opened a ticket with Customer Support.  They had me reboot and repair my Charge 5 to see if that would solve the problem with the spikes over 200.  As we all know, it won't, but I need to go through their process in order to try to get this to the software developers.  I was hopeful that the firmware update I got this week would fix it, but no luck.  

So, tomorrow, I will test again with jogging.

Oh yes, I can be sitting watching television at 8 pm in the evening and the Charge 5 will spike to 125 when it should be around 70.  So, there is a problem when at rest or during strenuous activity.  

Old Rusty, I doubt if a replacement would solve the problem.  The Charge 5 I have now is just a couple of months old and I specifically got it because my old Charge 5 was having this problem.  Although, I don't ever remember the at rest spikes.

[SallyOz]

I have dealt with premium support a few times. The only response (which feels automated) is instructions on how to reboot. When this as acknowledged as done and further detail provided, the interface hangs and you loop back to the beginning. I’ve given up.

Sent from my iPhone

[kgabelsb]

I did have the problem with both walking and jogging today.  And, a new problem occurred as well.  During one of the 1/2 mile walk periods, my heart rate registered 95, when it should have been about 125.  I did get 2 spikes to 205 and one spike to 165 when it should have been 125.  I chatted with Customer Support again and they are escalating the ticket to the next level:  "With this case, I'll be reaching out with our higher level of support who will get back to you via email. Rest assured that this case is fully noted."

So we will see what they say ...

One of the things I told the customer support person when he asked if I had tried wearing the Fitbit on my other wrist was that this is not a user problem.  This is either a sensor or software problem (thank you, OldRusty).

[DavideFitbit]

Hi everyone, thank you for confirming that you're still experiencing this inconvenience with your Charge 5 and that you already tried a few troubleshooting steps.  

In this case, if you already tried all the steps mentioned here earlier to improve the accuracy of heart rate information and you continue to experience the same problem, I recommend that you continue the communication with the Customer Support team for further assistance. They will let you know about the next steps. 

The best way to get help for this problem is to chat with us online or give us a call. You can click here to get connected.

See you around in the Community.