Is anybody else severely disappointed with the Charge 5??

[Welzy]

Having had the Charge 5 bought as an Xmas gift from my wife as an upgrade to my Alta HR, I can’t help feeling it was a waste of her money. It has the potential to be great but 10 weeks in my synopsis is as follows:

Pros: 

- great aesthetics - screen clarity and strap are a notable improvement

-  ECG is a good feature - although I’m not an expert in cardiology and not sure of it’s accuracy

- battery charge is good lasting about 7 days or so, although I do use it efficiently (no ‘always on’ screen or GPS)

Cons:

- activity distance tracking (for me, running) is terrible. It is massively inaccurate when the Charge 5 uses my iPhones GPS and more so when it uses the trackers in-built GPS. I have noticed between 250m and 950m variance which is completely unacceptable. These distances were compared against known accurate measured routes. (For comparison the iPhone using Strava app is within 10m - 50m accuracy)

- Heart Rate does not seem at all accurate either. I say this because during a run, my Alta HR used to show a steady upward trend which you’d completely expect as your cardio increases, but the Charge 5 shows a number of peaks and troughs during the same exercise which do not seem commensurate with the work effort (yes I have tried repositioning and slackening the band)

- inability to remove the Payments app. I don’t need it and it would remove that extra swipe if I could only remove it!!

- notifications are not as customisable as the Alta HR. I want a simple vibrate on a call and that’s it (my iPhone is always on silent and the Fitbit vibration alerts me to a call) but the Charge 5 seems to alert you to everything or nothing!?! 

The sleep monitoring does seem pretty good and provides similar output to those of the Alta HR. I believe sleep tracking is a strength of Fitbit.

All in all, I am really disappointed with this product after wearing a Fitbit tracker daily for over 6 years. I am likely to sell this and purchase something with greater GPS accuracy and HR capabilities unless a new firmware version comes out soon to remedy the above.

In the meantime I will use my iPhone and Strava to log my runs and may invest in a separate £40 heart monitor to wear when exercising.

Hope people find this useful….

[SunsetRunner]

I bought my charge 5 for Christmas as well and very disappointed. I also noticed the inaccuracies but my biggest issue is the lack of app compatibility. Not near as many apps as the versa. Unfortunately I just opened it today because I had difficulty parting with my versa. Way past 45 days to return so I hope I can sell it to someone who may be happy with it. Substandard for Fitbit.

[brandon05w]

Same issues here regarding GPS!  The reason I bought the Charge 5 was for onboard GPS and it's not dependable at all as it's always connecting and when it does connect it's in/out which gives me inaccurate readings. I reached out to Fitbit but all they do is recommend I wear my watch loose which would affect my HR and don't walk under trees or near tall buildings. None of which I do. I really wanted to love this watch as there are things that I really do like. Battery life, ECG, accurate steps but for me it's the GPS. I don't want to carry my phone with me as I exercise which was the whole purpose of me getting the watch. 

[FCD]

A little late here but I just updated to a Charge 5 from a Charge 2.  I'm not crazy about some of the new "enhancements". 

I liked tracking floors but that is gone.

I prefer 'active minutes" that can be displayed on my dashboard over "active zone minutes".  I'm not as young as I once was and can't run much. I can walk fairly long distances (15 to 20k steps a day).

It's more and more difficult to turn off sleep stages. I prefer the older sleep tracking