Fitbit Sense battery life

[Bradster77]

Received my Fitbit Sense on Thursday and it is Saturday. I charged it to full when I received it, and then began to wear it Thursday afternoon. Yesterday I noticed it was losing battery quite quickly, so I charged it yesterday during my shower. Now today I look and it's already down to 64%. I am anticipating that it will require charging on a daily basis at this rate, what happened to the advertised 6+ days of battery life? I read another post which was closed due to this being a known problem with the iPhone, and was guided to make my own post if I experienced this on Android, and I certainly am. What should I do? Tinker with the settings or reduce the features to achieve the advertised battery lifespan? Or do I have a defective unit?

Moderator edit: format 

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, welcome to the Fitbit Community forums, @Bradster77.

I appreciate all this information that you've shared about the inconvenience that you've been having with your Sense watch. 

Before considering other options, please make sure that you've followed the steps provided in this article. In addition, try to perform a restart following the steps listed here, as this has been useful for other users experiencing something similar: 

The battery can last up to 6+ days; because battery life is affected by use and other settings, actual results may vary, but the battery shouldn't be draining only after one or two days. Keep in mind that some of the feature that can drain the battery more rapidly are: 

• Built-in GPS. 
• Always-on display (Sense can have a battery life of up to 2 days when using this feature). 
• Using an Sp82 clock face (Fitbit points out in this article that you may have to charge your Fitbit device more often when collecting SpO2 data).

Hope this helps, I'll be around. 

[Clove6060]

The main culprit is snore report.  Make sure it is off.

Rap the sleep tile. Tap the wheel cog top right. Scroll down to bottom and make sure snore report is disabled. It drains around 20% a night. Other than that below is some nice suggestions. Turn off the features you do not use. 

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Sense/How-to-resolve-the-Major-issues-causing-short-battery-life/m-p...

[Bradster77]

Thanks for your help! I will try these options listed in the article and
see how it goes, I hadn't used gps as no exercise sessions and I don't have
always on display but I have reduced the brightness to dim from the default
normal (both are plenty bright). I will report back after monitoring the
battery life for a few days with these changes. Have a good day!

[Clove6060]

Make sure snore report is off that is a big drainer.

at least 20% over night.

[Bradster77]

I think you are correct, but that is unfortunate for me, this was a major feature that attracted me to the sense and I wouldn't dream of turning it off, I'd sooner return the sense and get a versa 3 and pocket the 100$ price difference if the sense battery isn't up to the task. I have not used the GPS and noticed that for some reason the snore report failed for the past 4 nights in a row and as anticipated the battery has lasted a lot longer than my first 2 days when snore report did work. so I will probably just have to accept either the battery last up to 3 days or the sense is not featuring snore report. But now I have a new problem, despite daily charge top-up my snore report failed 4x in a row, coincidentally every night since making this post to inquire on the battery life). It says snore report is turned on and my battery is above 80% pretty much at all times. Bedroom is perfectly silent just like it was on the first 2 nights when snore report worked. Not a great first impression of the Fitbit sense, do you have any suggestions to get the snore report working again? I can live with daily charge top-ups while I'm showering but if features completely stop working like this I probably can't rely on this device. 

[DavideFitbit]

@Bradster77 Thank you for your reply and for all these updates you've provided. 

The score detection option is indeed one of the features that will impact your device’s battery life. It is recommended to charge your device to at least 40% before going to bed when you use this feature. Please keep in mind the following: 

• If there’s too much background noise, your device’s microphone can’t pick up snoring. For best results, don’t play white noise or other ambient sounds during sleep.
• Your device isn’t able to identify whether snoring comes from you, someone sleeping nearby, or even a pet.
• You must wear your Fitbit device during sleep to collect snore and noise data.
• Your sleep must be at least 3 hours long in order to receive a Snore & Noise Report
• We only use the microphone to register noise level and snores. We don’t save any audio recordings.

In addition, if this feature is not working properly, make sure to try restarting your watch following these steps. Let me know about the outcome. 

Thanks again for taking the time to share all your comments and feedback about the watch. The team is constantly working to improve the quality of products and services and your feedback is a big part of that process. 

I'll be around. 

[nk777 · Accepted solution]

I bought fitbit sense over versa, only to use Snore report feature. My experience with battery with snore report, 3 days on a new device, and after 3 months battery performance degraded to 2 months.  Also note that I am not actively using it for step counter (as last 2 years mostly working from home), no GPS, no Wifi (my Sense had fault). Despite this the battery was not living upto expectations or as advertised like 6 days.

Customer support will reply saying you need to switch of all features to get better battery life, but why don't they understand "Ships are not built to be docked at harbor".  Correct advertising is the need instead of misleading the customer with tall.

For snore report, I used iPhone apps like "SnoreLab" which did a very nice job, even recording snoring intervals. Another troublesome statistic is that 20% of time in sleep report shows as awake, which is really not the case.

Warranty terms are customer unfriendly as well. Return within 45 days to get full refund. For replacement, terms says they can send refurbished or recertified items, while we paid full price for a new working item as advertised.

[Bradster77]

Davide, this is the same solution as my other problem, and restarting the watch has had no effect on the broken snore report. It worked on night 1 and night 2 but on day3 I made this post to inquire about the poor battery life and it has not worked a single night since that time. I even wore it for two nights at a totally different location as I was travelling and sleeping in a small private room with no fans or white noise (like at all, it was a cottage retreat and completely silent at night). I am honestly wondering if the feature was disabled remotely by your team as a result of my posting the battery problem, in a misguided attempt to make my battery experience better. I hope this is not the case but can't really think of any other likely cause as I've read every help article on the site about snore report and tried every suggested solution to get it working. At this point I am considering the watch to be defective, and I will be requesting a full refund unless someone at Fitbit is able to share a solution that enables the snore report to function. 

[DavideFitbit]

@Bradster77 Thank you for sharing that you already tried all the troubleshooting steps suggested earlier.  

In this case, since you already tried the basic steps shared in the forums and you continue to have the same issue with the report, I recommend that you get in touch with the Customer Support team so they can provide you with the next steps  You can click here to chat with us online or give us a call.

Thanks again for sharing all your feedback and comments about this. 

[Clearlipstick]

I was seriously keen on buying the Fitbit sense. Not now. As soon as I see the typical "Thank you for your feedback, contact us privately, away from public eyes, so we can dismiss you. I run. I urge others to recognise this telltale sign too.