I previously had a charge 2 which lasted 3 years, and was still working fine when the screen "crazed" earlier this year - not unusable, but annoying. Having loved the C2, the 3 seemed like a logical progression - I compared features to see if the 4 was worth the extra money and decided definitely not - an extra £50 essentially just for GPS that will drain the battery in 5 hours? No, I think not. Charge 3 purchased in May.
The first one had problems from the start - missing steps - and a LOT of steps at that. A reluctance to charge. Often a complete refusal to restart via the usual means. I tried several times to seek help here - and got totally ignored - something that seems to happen a fair bit, strangely enough! Eventually rang the UK customer support line and got sent a replacement device in September. The new one is still not perfect - again it is hit and miss with step counting although better than the first one. It often fails to charge on the first attempt at connecting to the charger in spite of the fact that it confirms that it should be charging. However, nothing too significant and I was going to live with it until the most recent app update...
The current version of the iOs App has left the activity tracking via the app unusable. I set it to track a walk - it records for a variable amount of time before cutting out and freezing the app. a bit of investigation on here showed that FitBit have known about this issue since at least March but haven't fixed it. I've asked for advice on here and again, have been ignored so far. (Out of interest - the thread I started also asked for a commitment from FitBit relating to the dimmed/black/white line screen problem as that is clearly a significant issue for an awful lot of people).
We're meant to be trying to get away from being a "throwaway society" due to environmental concerns - in the UK at least - however in spite of a sizeable UK market FitBit seem reluctant to get on board with this - seemingly considering that a year or two is a good lifespan for their products. Can you imagine buying any other form of watch and accepting that it would need replacing so often? I can't!
In summary - I liked the Charge 2 a lot. I wanted to like the Charge 3 as much, but so far it has let me down from day 1, and is unfit for purpose due to the app issue. An "activity tracker" that doesn't track activity....that just about says it all. (And I note also that so far none of those who posted praise early on have returned to say that 2 years on their devices are still going strong with no issues...)
