Luxe battery is draining quickly

[greenrun]

New Luxe, a few weeks old, battery has been holding a charge for 5 days. Suddenly, it is draining in less than a day. Not using it differently or with different settings.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[MarreFitbit]

Hi there, @greenrun. Welcome to the Community Forums. Thanks for the details provided in your post about the issue with your Luxe. I understand where your concern is coming from. 

If you haven't done so yet, I'd recommend taking a look at the tips recommended in this help article Can I extend my Fitbit device's battery life?

Hope that helps. 

[213ninja]

What happened to my comment in this thread? 

[213ninja]

Never mind, I see where it was moved - because of the MFP aspect.

My primary issue at this point is battery drain. My Luxe has been lasting 5-7 days since purchase. All of a sudden over the last week or so it has only lasted me 1-2 days if that. I charged it to 100% yesterday and right now it is at 6%. This doesn’t suggest a need to adjust settings, this sudden impact is more indicative of a software defect, as we know battery hardware performance tends to degrade more slowly over time.

Please help.

[213ninja]

I should add that my battery indicator within the Fitbit app on my iPhone seems to be working as normal - it says I’m still at 82% - which tracks with normal usage. My Luxe device on the other hand says (now) 5% critical. It’s in some sort of low power state and I cannot click into the menu / settings anymore. Clearly there’s something wrong here. I have tried rebooting the device and my phone.

[greenrun]

Exactly. It isn't a setting issue if I didn't change the settings and it used to work fine. Until you mentioned the discrepancy between app and device, I didn't notice it, but mine now says 86% on the app and 77% on the device. Everything else is synced so why wouldn't these align? When it dropped low on my device, I got an email notice to recharge, but didn't think to look at what the charge percentage was on my app. Will try that next time.

[213ninja]

Thanks Green, since we aren't hearing a ton of good feedback yet, I look forward to hearing your experience.

Here's some photos of mine taken moments apart...

<a href="https://imgur.com/BJh5Ckk"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/BJh5Ckk.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="https://imgur.com/Bq6HMF8"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/Bq6HMF8.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>

[greenrun]

Thanks 213ninja. I didn't respond right away because I was just monitoring what mine is doing--suddenly it is working fine again. It's inexplicable, I didn't change any settings, didn't change what I was doing, didn't expose it to any different environmental conditions, nothing. The app and device are within about 2% of each other, and about half drained after three days. Alas, I assume this "normal" functionality is temporary.

[213ninja]

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately I’m still affected. I charged it to 100% yesterday evening and it died by noon today.

I am assuming based on your last reply that this is going to be a no, but I just wanted to confirm. Did you notice any update to your device or the Fitbit app over the past few days which may have resolved it? Or perhaps, MyFitnessPal (not sure if you use that or sync it, but it seems they had an issue going on).

I do appreciate your time, Green.

🙌

[greenrun]

Haven't noticed any updates, though I'm not sure how/where I would see that? I don't use MyFitnessPal.

One thing I just remembered though is that, when it was draining quickly, it also frequently went to the view that would set a timer or stopwatch, though I never navigated to that, it just opened there when I looked at the device. It would take a lot of effort to get off that screen. I attributed it to the fact that the battery was down so it was glitchy, but maybe I have the causality backward. Did you have anything like this?

[213ninja]

I did not notice the device getting hung up on certain menus - but thanks for the added details. All of it sounds like a software issue to me though…

Hopefully mine clears up because charging daily is really getting old 😞

[Skmiller]

There is clearly something wrong with the Luxe line that Fitbit is unwilling to acknowledge. I had that same issue with mine in October. Bought it in August, worked fine for 2 months, then started burning through battery. They let me trade it for a replacement, which arrived just a few weeks ago (had to send the original one in, then they shipped a new one). Out of the box, the new had rapid battery drain. I filed another ticket and they replaced that one without having to deal with a trade. The new one arrived Friday (3 days ago). Out of the box, it suffers from rapid battery drain. It's so bad that a charge in the morning won't last 24 hours. I took it off the charger about 10:30 AM yesterday and by 6:30 AM today, it was dead. Putting it on the charger, it proports to rapidly charge to 99%, but will not charge to 100%. 

Fitbit either has a batch of Luxe's with bad hardware, or they have a firmware/software bug that's causing this. Instead of acknowledging it however, they pretend like they don't know it's going on, referring us repeatedly to jump through their help pages to fix an issue that clearly cannot be fixed by the end user. 

I'm going to start another support ticket, but really I just want my money back if they can't produce a product that actually works. I can't get my money back though, since I bought from Amazon and the return window closed in September. 

[213ninja]

Thanks for sharing your experience SK. Sounds like the same issue I’m dealing with. And I too was leaning toward either a firmware update or an app update - something has them out of sync in terms of battery life, and it just feels like a service running a heavy load. As I mentioned above, which seems to align with your experience, this issue began very suddenly (I had been operating at 5-7 days for several months) - not consistent with battery degradation which happens slowly over time - also not consistent with sub-optimal settings as FB has implied, since I haven’t changed any settings, and frankly any setting that causes the battery to die in a day is defective in my eyes.

Hopefully they’ll acknowledge it soon.

[213ninja]

I ended up submitting a support ticket to Fitbit Support via Twitter. They were quite response and sent me an RMA link within an hour or two. I received the replacement device today. My original is still dying within 24hrs.

I’ve been wearing the replacement device a few hours and haven’t noticed any significant drain yet. I’ll continue to monitor.

I did want to point out that my replacement device is running the old firmware, whereas my original device is running the latest version.

I’ll link some images to the versions. I’ll keep an eye on the battery drain and try to refrain from accidentally updating the firmware on the replacement device because frankly, I’m concerned it’s going to cause the same battery drain issue…

Original Luxe

https://imgur.com/a/m3WS3Ky

Replacement Luxe 

https://imgur.com/a/k0eV0Rg

[greenrun]

Glad you have a working device! 

How do you avoid updates? This is my third Fitbit (first Luxe) and I don't recall ever being prompted to update anything--is it automatic so you have to take steps to avoid, or is it something you do affirmatively?

[213ninja]

I honestly don’t know if I can fully avoid it being forced into updating. At the moment I have a banner and a button available to click (see screenshot above). I usually just click them immediately when I see them, assuming the update will be an improvement.

It may auto-update at some point though and if so… fingers crossed 🤞 

[Skmiller]

They RMAd mine as well. And I sent them both of my basically non-functional ones. I've switched back to my Versa 2 for the time being.

[Skmiller]

This is the kicker right here. As soon as I turned on my last two Luxes and synced them, it forced the firmware update. If I could have rolled back or stopped that update, I would have, as I really, really think that's the issue. 

[213ninja]

Thanks SK that was something I had been curious about with your story. So you didn’t have the chance to test your replacements on the old firmware…that sucks.

I don’t recall changing any settings but so far I have been able to defer the firmware update. The button is there but I have avoided it. 

I’m still at 92% from a full charge yesterday afternoon so I believe this unit is good to go as of this moment.

I will follow up here if the firmware updates automatically - or if I decide to get brave and test it out. I guess worse case scenario if I do update the firmware and it breaks, I can get FB support involved again but with pretty concrete proof the firmware is a problem. If that is the case, I’m shocked it hasn’t been acknowledged…