Fitbit Sense battery review

[SPGmd]

Last Sunday morning I charge my Fitbit cents up to 99%. I did not plugged it in until 4:15 PM Friday afternoon when my Fitbit sense’s battery was down to 8%. I did have a scare where my Fitbit didn't want to charge, but once I wiped the back with a damp cloth it started charging just fine. I'm going to see how long it takes to get the battery back up to 100%. (I imagine around two hours.)

This means I got five+ days out of Fitbit sense battery. Admittedly I was not using my Fitbit Sense heavily; it was largely being used as a watch and a step counter. I have the SpO2 app installed and I check my SpO2 and sleep info regularly. I am using the Fitbit purple 'SpO2 stack' watch face. I never used the GPS function during this time. I did get intermittent text message and phone call notifications, I responded to maybe five text messages over that time. I never take calls on my Fitbit. I did use the timer several times in those five days and I also did 2 EDA scans.

Overall this is about what I expected. If I was very economical I probably could stretch the battery out to six days. While my usage this week wasn't terribly heavy, this was not intentional. It was a busy work week and so I wasn't using the Fitbit as much as I sometimes do (or exercising as much as I should be).

At 6:15 PM, exactly 2 hours after putting it on the charger my Fitbit sense battery was at 100%.

[Guy_]

Thanks for the post.

I use the clock face SimpleClockDuo, as it records the charging time on the watch, and predicts when it will be fully charged.

It rarely takes much more than an hour.

Eg. 7% to 100% takes 1 hour 12 minutes.

So 2 hours seems quite long for a Sense.

[SPGmd]

I walked away from the watch (my charger is in my bathroom). So it may very well have taken less then 2 hours, I do not know. 

I am a little gun shy about using non-fitbit watch faces. I have used a few, and eventually have had problems with several. It is one of my biggest gripes about fitbit. There is very little oversight of the watch face makers and often they seem to end up making my watches buggy. I have had this issue with both my Sense and my previous ionic. 

[Guy_]

Ah, that explains the 2 hours then.

With your bad luck in watch faces, presumably Microsoft was just as troublesome! lol

Best stick with what comes out of the box, and forgo any additional options.

It must be said that the review team do a pretty good job now testing watch faces before approving them, but as with everything, nothing can be absolutely perfect in every conceivable context.

[Donna80]

I'd love to know the reason for the 2 day battery life issues with some devices vs those watches that seem to work for 5-6 days.

I opened the Fitbit Sense box, connected it with the app, charged it to 100% and unplugged it at 11am, and at 12 it was at 98%, and within 2 days it switched off out of power.

I left the screen setting as turn on with button press, and didn't use GPS, or the SPO2 watch face, and I didn't connect it to answer calls or anything like that. Even after uninstalling all the apps that could be removed and disabling everything I could, the battery life did not improve by more than a few hours.

It would be great to see a poll on the average battery life people are getting out the box.

[Guy_]

@Donna80 

My Sense was easily 6 days + out of the box, as it should be.

Probably yours is clearly faulty and should be replaced, rather than trying to find how/why its faulty, it just is unfortunately.

Presumably your firmware is 44.128.4.17

[Donna80]

Yes, it was. 

There seem to be so many cases of the two day battery life, and a lot of the posts from other users says theirs went from 6 days to 2 after the firmware update, which makes me wonder if it's a software issue or a hardware issue?

If it's definitely hardware I'd be happier about returning any new ones for a replacement until I get a working one with a working battery, but otherwise I don't want to use up all their good will on exchanges and end up stuck with another one with a reboot or screen fault again.

[Donna80]

Just received my replacement this morning.

Unboxed, updated, charged to 100%, put it on (no changes, and nothing extra set up), and one hour later it's at 94% battery.

I'm going to re-charge it and try again 😕

[Guy_]

@Donna80  Thanks for the good feedback, keep us posted. Looks like you received a faulty one.

In next post can you include Phone type and OS version, Fitbit App version and Watch version, as a reference point.