As I previously posted:
Exactly the same has happened to me. Charge2 Working normally, then suddenly went completely blank. Green lights, step counting, connection to phone and other functions all still working. When i attempt a restart I see a brief display of 8 vertical dots on the display (as one gets after a firmware upgrade) , then it goes blank again, suggesting that the failure isnt actually the screen but the electronics driving it. Fitbit device is 2+years old. Support offered 25% off a new Charge3 - can do better on Amazon<g>
So lets try again.
Thank you for your upbeat response, I am offering these comments in a constructive spirit of a repeat customer, who is disappointed to see that FitBit seems to have an issue on display life that they need to address more proactively;
Let's summarize the issues:
- There appears to be a significant number of failures occurring of the displays on Fitbit Charge products (ie everything else is working but it is the screen that has died) . I note that there are over 200 posts reporting the same problem on this thread alone, plus many more on other threads - if you search on "blank screen" on fitbit community, you get back over 3,000 hits , many of which have "same for me" responses from others.
- The screen failure problem also occurs on newer products such as Charge 3
- Fitbit knows about this problem and has known about it for some years (as widely evidenced on the Fitbit community site) but hasn’t made a clear acknowledgement of the problem (if it is a problem); as a result lots of people are wasting time trying to resuscitate half working devices.
- Fitbit is honouring its warranty for failures within the minimum period as is legally required to do so (1yr US, 2 Yrs Europe), but for products out of warranty, are only offering a 25% discount on products bought direct from the Fitbit website (amazon is often cheaper)
But why should anyone buy a replacement Fitbit if the replacement is at risk of imminent failure too?
To answer this in a way that is fair to Fitbit one needs to consider several questions:
- How long should a personal tracker in regular use last? Clearly less than a 1 year would be poor value - little more than throwaway - and an ecological crime . Two years would be slightly better value but still an ecological sin. Five years would be pretty solid value. Three or four years would be somewhere in between. The nearest comparison is perhaps a watch: even cheap electronic watches, which endure a similar 24x7 environment of movement and sweat, last five to ten years. In a solid state device there is little to go wrong - usually it is the battery cycles that limit life. In my 20 years of owning some 10 mobile phones, I can say they all died from either screen or battery failure.
- How long does a Fitbit last on average? Just from the anecdotal data on websites, 3-18 months seems typical 18, months 2+ years quite common, 3+years v rare For example https://techstyles.com.au/how-long-does-a-fitbit-last/sports-technology/ . See also reply comments on https://uk.pcmag.com/fitness-trackers/159/the-best-fitness-trackers. It seems that product failure is common,.so right now the average life seems to be "as long, or a little longer, than the warranty period". If we look at some published stats for 2019, we can make some inferences. See https://www.statista.com/statistics/472591/fitbit-devices-sold/ There are certainly millions of units sold: 13 million in 2018. But there appear to be lots of dead devices too. 70 million fitbit products were sold 2014-18 - for 27m active users in 2018,. Very crudely, that's over 2.5 devices per active user, i.e. so either products are being replaced at less than two year intervals, or disappointed users are defecting in droves (or a bit of both).
- How does Fitbit durability compare with other brands? From a quick random internet trawl, It doesn’t look like they are notably worse - Apple Watches are said to last only about 24 months. No manufacturer is bragging about their tracker durability. If Fitbit build quality is as good /almost as good as others, then Fitbit should be happy to publish some stats. (Since they have regular data coming in from all their active devices I imagine Fitbit has pretty good data) This would also help set expectations among customers. But if they have a quality problem compared to other brands, they should address it - and in the meantime offer a better warranty program to compensate.
- Is there a particular problem with the fitbit display unit? Perhaps a variety of different component breakages all present as a blank screen , but the particular common point of note seems to be that all the other functions appear to be working (step counting, bluetooth coms, green lights heart monitor etc) . Henry Ford would have said (a) either all the other parts are being made to too high a spec <g> or (b) the display unit is being made to too low a spec . The support guy I chatted too (or possibly bot, it was hard to tell<g>) said there were "millions of devices" and that only a small percentage have screen failures. Well if there are millions of devices out there, their engineers must also have good data on the mean time to failure of different components, and they could easily dispel any misperceptions about sick screens by publishing some comparative statistics of causes of device mortality. Otherwise the "fitbit has a dud display" rumor will continue to grow.
As a customer I want to have some sense what my real costs of ownership are - ie not just the purchase price but also the expected life . If I'm told at the start that I should expect to replace my product in 18months / two years because it will wear out from intense use (as say with spectacles ) -I can live with that as long as I know it beforehand. If I'm on a budget I'll plan to buy two cheap units rather than one expensive one.
So my challenge to Fitbit is: be upfront about these numbers or issues and
- Give some guidance on expected product life (Hey you guys might even be the best of breed) so we can buy wisely and be less disappointed by death. of our pet device
- Publish Some honest stats on Fitbit display failure versus other modes of failure so we can all see that the "Fitbit has a dud display rumour" is untrue
- Publish a clear advisory "if you see these symptoms, your device is worn out, live with it" so customers don’t waste their time (and your support team's time)
- Put product durability on the table as a competitive feature (for consumer value, customer satisfaction and ecological reasons) and work on improving it.
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