New Charge 6 step count ridiculously inaccurate

[GTP20]

I just received a new Charge 6 two days ago and I'm very frustrated with the inaccurate step count.

Yesterday I wore it all day with the fitness tracker it is replacing, after 4 hours, old device was at 1286, Charge 6 was at 5680 steps.

Today I'm wearing both Charge 6 and an old Charge 2.  After 4 hours, Charge 2 is at 1332, Charge 6 is at 6670.

I can't find any options to calibrate this thing and have no idea why its so sensitive (it has added 46 steps while sitting at my desk typing this).

Support chat told me to set the stride length, which is not a solution.  Should I just return this?  I have not been checking the other metrics, I don't think I can trust this device at all.

[Rugger57]

I have the exact same issue. Matter of fact as per my point this morning when I put it on it already showed 3850 steps! No way it is accurate! 

[Pickleballgirl1]

Did they say anything about earning ZONE MINUTES?? Whatever that BS is, it’s June 29, just talked to support- he gave me wrong directions #1 time. 2nd time instructions were unclear, and spoken fast. I truly got the impression that he was very new, and knew very little…poorly trained.   HEY FITBIT!! Pay attention!!!

[Olivia70]

What fixed it for me was switching wrist to dominant in settings (even though i wear the watch on my non-dominant hand).
It seems the watch has a very sensitive pedometer. It took me at least a month to get the watch to count the steps correctly. The calibration was probably needed there at the beginning to make it count properly. I am now very satisfied with all functions, especially the heart rate monitor.

[Pickleballgirl1]

Hi there Olivia70!! I thought I tried the dominant vs non dominant arm-- but... did not try your suggestion, Thanks! Gonna try that now!!  😊

[dismith67]

Hi Olivia - before you switched wrist settings, were your steps being overstated or understated?  My watch is on my non-dominant wrist and I'm not getting credit for all my steps or distance.  I walked with a friend yesterday and had 2000 less steps than her, and less distance.  Same thing happened this morning.  I mapped the route on MapMyRun and the distance matched my friend's watch distance.  Mine was almost a mile short.

[Olivia70]

They were overstated

[Angelia21]

To review my first Fitbit (charge 6) and having worn the watch for about 8 months now I’m still really disappointed with it - steps are still inaccurate - strap gets very sweaty and even smelly on wrist, have to change wrists as I get itchy spot from it - I really only use it for telling the time - I was excited when I got it, but I have only been disappointed with it since. I had a cheap one before this and it was superb in step accuracy in comparison. I won’t be purchasing a Fitbit again 🫤

[TGG303]

I switched out the strap to a magnetic one, I really do not like the straps they use at all, I just got a charge 6 and while its working well I am not sure what it is doing to My Fitness Pal, today I've done less than 1500 steps but earned 608 extra calories? but the fitbit says I've only burned just under 800? Plus weirdly its not counting floors anymore which is odd.

[bobdob]

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@TGG303 wrote:

I switched out the strap to a magnetic one, I really do not like the straps they use at all, I just got a charge 6 and while its working well I am not sure what it is doing to My Fitness Pal, today I've done less than 1500 steps but earned 608 extra calories? but the fitbit says I've only burned just under 800? Plus weirdly its not counting floors anymore which is odd.

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Ok firstly, the charge 6 does not have the ability to count floors, so that's not odd 🙂

As for myfitnesspal, are you seeing different behavior than with a previous fitbit? Or maybe you haven't really paid much attention to it? Right now mine is showing 1079 exercise calories and I have 692 steps (and fitbit says I have burned 633 calories so far). I know that MFP is a little quirky in how it estimates your full day burn but the details say fitbit reported 1721 calories burned as of now... which is not what my fitbit says! So maybe there is some issue going on there.

[TGG303]

I have used both MFP and fitbits for about 10 years now, and yes I do pay attention to it as its how i lost 5 stone in weight.   I have a base calorie amount that unless I earn the extra calories from doing a run, walk, hike or lifting weights I dont go over the set amount. My fitbit is linked to the MFP app.

As of right now aka 3pm I've done 3539 steps with MFP telling me Ive earned 458 extra, fitbit says I have used 1080 calories.

If I looks at last Friday when I had a charge 4 I did 13833 steps, using 2324 calories and MFP earned me 542 extra, so something funky is going on with this 6.

After I posted the above I did go and look at the specs for the 6 and discovered there is no altimeter which seems an odd backwards step but far enough.

[bobdob]

I don't think the Charge 6 is necessarily doing it unless your calorie count is showing way high in the fitbit app, not just MFP. I went back and picked a day in June and the calorie count from the fitbit app matched the end-of-day count in MFP. Same all the way up to August 9 when I got a new phone and fitbit unexpectedly stopped syncing with MFP.

Unfortunately since I just re-connected them this morning so I can't look at anytime between August 9 and yesterday. If you look at your end-of-day stat from yesterday is it accurate?

[KathyDepp]

Omg I just said the same thing to my friend this thing is counting way too many steps!  I almost hit 10k and I haven’t in 7 years

[KathyDepp]

There’s way too many of us now! They have to address this. They all can’t be bad. @Fitbit fox this please!

[PaulK1]

Same issue here. Had a charge 6 from 3 days and it overestimate the steps a lot, 1000 steps are counted as 3000. Very disappointed 

[bfeijter]

I bought the fitbit charge 6 a couple a days ago. Same issue. It is rediculous. I can sit still behind my deks the whole day and somehow end up with thousands of steps. So we are not talking a lil in-accuracy here. I do 3 to 5000 steps a day just sitting still and walking to the bathroom now and then.

The whole point of this thing is that i know i sit to much. And i want to work on that. 

I have changed the setting to dominatent wrist, where it on my non dominant wrist and increased my step "stride" to over 1meter. 
Still rediculously inaccurate. What a waste of money.

[Star55]

So to get to the stride length you have to go to exercise days when you open the exercise days tab at the top right you’re gonna hit the menu where the three dots are go to activity settings and scroll all the way down

[McLovinHawaii]

Today:

Garmin Fenix 7 pro: 14600 steps and 3146cal.

Fitbit Charge 6: 19621 steps and 3867cal.

Sleep is also very curious.

Deleted notifications on my Iphone will be shown on the charge 6 SOMETIMES still as unread!

In summary, charge 6 will go back, one week of lost and just frustrating time 😞

[9v9z9f]

I'm having a similar issue. My charge 6 is showing my calories are -165 for some reason. Can anyone tell me why?

[robworkingout]

I have set the tracker up tobe on my dominant wrist but I have place my tracker on my left wrist which isn’t my dominant wrist. This doesn’t reduce the sensitivity of the charge tracker but I think the app does have offset to try average out the difference. Ultimately these devices are designed to be sensitive because they track movement which in turn burn calories. You would definitely see a big difference from a old tracker to a updated tracker. Iv learned just to reduce steps by around 3k but ultimately this depends on what Iv done that day.  To me movement is more important and that is how I really interpret steps. 

[Thomasincali]

It’s trash. Just send it back. 

I messed with this for five months and eventually threw it away since I couldn’t return it. It’s trash. 

Moderator edit: merged reply