Looking for opinions on the Charge 6

[12397ry324877y4]

My Charge 4 is starting to die on me and I was wondering if it might be worth upgrading to the Charge 6. I've got a few issues with the 4 that I'm hoping haven't been passed down to the 6.

How is the screen wake on the Charge 6? With the Charge 4, I feel like around 60% of the time, the display turns on when I turn my wrist, but often I have to try multiple wrist turns or just give up and check my phone for the time. It's quite silly when digging a phone out of your pocket is often easier than getting your wrist watch to tell you the time. Strange times we live in.

How is the screen brightness on the Charge 6? With the Charge 4, I often had trouble reading the screen while outside during the day. Maybe I just had a defective unit, but the screen always seemed so dim. (No, sleep mode wasn't enabled.) Not to mention the display real estate is like 50% bezels on the Charge 4. Even back in 2020, it felt outdated. Now it feels like the same quality as a $20 Casio watch.

How responsive is the Charge 6 interface? The 4 was almost adequate, but not quite there. The normal behavior was somewhat slow and occasionally unresponsive. On some such occasions, it would be entirely unresponsive when trying to swipe in certain directions, like when attempting to access the device menu to restart it. Overall, the UI just felt really buggy and unpolished, even after so many updates.

Finally, how well does the Google Maps integration work? I'm seriously considering the Inspire 3 instead, but the Maps features turned my head, along with some other Google integration. The 10-day battery life of the Inspire 3 is a huge plus, and might entirely change my decision if Maps integration sucks on the Charge 6.

Do you have any grievances with the Charge 6? Let me know what your experience has been like.

[CrisVillaFitbit]

Hi, @12397ry324877y4 Welcome to the community, thanks for posting this interesting question in regards to the new Charge 6.

The new Charge 6 is called the Premium Fitness Tracker, since it includes several optimizations for you to use during your workout.

In response to all your questions, my best recommendation would be comparing both the Charge 6 and Charge 4 in this page, so you can see how the Charge 6 has been developed to its previous models. You can also use the Charge 6 manual to see more specifications in regards the screen and interface.

[Triletics]

@12397ry324877y4 it's not working for a runner. Here are some issues:

• distance always cut short
• GPS unstable in all modes, works sometimes in 'Phone' mode
• HR worst I've ever seen for running on any Fitbit. It picks up my cadence (steps per minute) as HR. Here's example from my today's run:

@CrisVillaFitbit one of those optimizations broke HR 🤷 tried with 3 different Charge 6 and all show the same behaviour when running with high cadence (180spm+).

[12397ry324877y4]

@Triletics 

Thanks for the honest review. That's a shame, running is one of the few things I'm somewhat good at. 😆

Have you tried any other Fitbit products besides the Charge 6? I'm considering the Inspire 3 instead.

[Z-Nine]

Disheartening to see. I just got my Charge 6. Seemed to work okay for my strength workout. I intend on doing a run tomorrow and I'll see if my data corroborates with what is happening to yours. I'll update when I can.

[Triletics]

@Z-Nine this may happen if you run with high cadence. I think one of those optimizations was not filtering out high frequency noise. Older Fitbit suffered from not detecting correctly high HR so now Charge 6 is much better at that but then if I run with cadence 190 to 200spm I "thinks" it's just high HR and doesn't filter it out. I run nearly with perfect rythm so most likely it mistakes it for HR. This will mostly happen to athlete-level runners. For me, the only way to get that working is changing way I run and that's not gonna happen. Won't compromise technique and form for the tracker.

[SCP73]

I purchased a Charge 6 on Oct 11. I am already having to get a replacement.  It was working well until yesterday I was wearing it at work and it suddenly became unresponsive, like the battery died.  Now after a full charge it still doesn't work even after resetting it mulitple times. I reached out to the chat support and they said I need a replacement. I guess these are pieces of junk if they quit working after two months!!  I hope my replacement lasts longer.  

[Z-Nine]

I do think it must be an issue with your style of running. It sucks the charge 6 isn't able to cater to your needs with the intense style of running you do.

I am a much more casual runner and just completed a short 35 minute run and the BPM and gps tracking seemed to work pretty well.

Here were my results. (Note the little spiking in the first half was due to having to stop for traffic)

 

[Triletics]

@Z-Nine do you know what cadence you run with? I'm curious because running with lower cadence could in fact hide the error if the HR would reach similar values (that can be only tested against the chest strap). Most casual runners run with something close to 160spm (+/- 10). I tried to lower my cadence but going less than 185spm is like a torture 🤣 the problem is that I haven't found a single user of Charge 6 (or Fitbit at all) who'd run with higher cadence to compare. I accepted that athletes are not a target audience for Fitbit products.

[MrBosco]

@Triletics Athletes should be a target audience.  All users of the device who bought it based on it's advertised functions should be properly, diligently catered to.

It's a bit like a car manufacturer selling a car that immediately breaks down if a formula 1 driver gets behind the wheel.  'You drive too well for this car, please buy a BMW'.

[Triletics]

@MrBosco Fitbits offers very little to athletes. Sports tracking very basic, not using any known model for training zones, no training supporting functions, no analytic tools. It's a very basic tracker and not a training tool for an athlete but would be nice if for once those basics were implemented such as they just work 🤷 running is probably the most basic activity to track that every competitor already got it right. Yet on Fitbit HR doesn't work, distance is always wrong, Charge 6 doesn't support manual laps (my old Sense does support it). It's not a sports watch but I think it could be fixed to tell cadence from HR. It just hasn't been tested on athlete-level runners.

[Z-Nine]

@Triletics I am definitely not enough of an advanced runner to know my exact cadence. Though your estimation of around 160 is likely accurate. During my run I maintained the same pace until towards the end, so I don't suspect inaccuracies in my BPM. It gradually increased while keeping the same pace so I think it was fine.

You do make a good point though. If I was running at an advanced athletic/competitive level I would be utilizing more specialized measurement equipment. Regardless though, I would hope at the very least the Fitbit would be able to give me an accurate heart rate reading.

@MrBoscoMy argument against your analogy is that an F1 racer would not practice on an F1 track with a standard BMW

[Triletics]

@Z-Nine sometimes Charge 6 gets right my HR and more likely during varied intensity workouts and less likely during steady easy or tempo runs. But then I have a problem with the distance on Charge 6. The difference is always beyond the tolerable margin of error. For example, 10km route is cut short by nearly 1km, although that depends on cadence, too). I think Fitbit works on the assumption that a runner maintains the same stride and changes cadence on the go which is true for casual runners. The skilled runner keeps cadence and modifies stride length to change pace. Then Fitbit algorithm falls apart. That would be fine but the error is the highest I experienced so far among all Fitbits I owned (Charge 2, Ionic, Sense, Sense 2). Even the infamous Sense 2 did a better job. I'm curious whether yet another "optimization" is responsible here 🤔 I borrowed 2 more Charge 6 and tested them side-by-side and all showed the same behaviour so not an individual device issue.

Just to picture my running technique (trail hill repeats workout, 6x long hill, 4x short with steep 16% finish), here's data from Stryd footpod. Charge 6 got HR spot on this one (doesn't happen often but it does 🤷) but distance and all other metrics are horribly wrong (GPS worked here, too, no broken waypoints in the TCX).

White is a stride length that closely follows pace (pace in my case depends on stride length as cadence is nearly constant, this is well visible here as pace and stride length are nearly overlapping). Regardless of the elevation grade and intensity, I keep my cadence at target (with some exceptions when it's more natural to increase it, ie. steep downhills).

Fitbit Charge 6 recorded this:

I'm happy the HR worked for once but look at the distance! 17.02km vs 14.39km. It's such a huge error that makes Charge 6 totally unfit for running. Another thing worth noticing is that it undercounts steps at the higher cadence I run (I did a few tests to confirm it). It says 16835 steps here. So let's count. The Stryd is a footpod so it counts actual steps (worn on my shoe). From cadence and time, I can get the real number of steps which is (for 91 minutes) 17645 steps. That may be responsible for cutting my distances short (another optimization? filtering out high-frequency steps? have no idea). One thing I need to remember is that these are hills and Stryd gives me 3D distance (which will be higher on the incline/decline than on a flat surface for the same horizontal distance) but that wouldn't account for over 2.5km difference. No way.

That would indicate that the more skilled a runner gets, the less accuracy (and consistency) is going to get out of Fitbit.

But there is one good thing. If you let Charge 6 to auto-detect swimming it will record HR and surprisingly, it does a great job in the water. Pity, that Fitbit didn't leave an option to enable the HR sensor while swimming because that works nearly flawlessly.

Update:

And today's steady run. Comparing chest strap HR (blue) and Charge 6 (orange), the cadence of 195spm:

If Fitbit wanted to fix it they could probably get any skilled runner to reproduce the issue (it's dead easy, happens almost every single run).

[Urleeryzr]

I went from a Fitbit 4 to a Fitbit 6. Unless I have totally missed something in settings, why am I not able to get Notificationss(Vibrations) for Texts and Emails on the Fitbit 6???  Was this eliminated!

[MrBosco]

---

@Urleeryzr wrote:

I went from a Fitbit 4 to a Fitbit 6. Unless I have totally missed something in settings, why am I not able to get Notificationss(Vibrations) for Texts and Emails on the Fitbit 6???  Was this eliminated!

---

Now that you mention it, my Charge 6 hasn't vibrated for phone notifications for some time.  I went in and re-checked my settings and nothing has changed.  I tested it by enabling email notifications and 'always vibrate' and sending myself an email.  While I do see the notification on the device it did not vibrate.

It used to work for me but it seems it no longer does.  The only thing that has changed in the meantime that I can think of is that the Android app was updated.  Perhaps a new bug in the app?

[Urleeryzr]

Thank you that. I didn't want to feel I was the only one out there with an
issue regarding the notification vibration.

[crisskimball]

I had my FitBit Charge 6 five days and it fell off my wrist 6 times.  It’s the original band and I tried both extensions. Yes I clicked it on.  It’s the watch not the band and Fitbit  Support would not replace unless I had a video of it falling off my wrist. Which is impossible because it randomly falls off in my home, at the salon, in my car etc So now I am returning it and probably will never buy another FitBit product. 

i only had it 6 days!