Sense seems finicky

[Chromechinchill]

I've noticed a lot of issues with my Sense that seem to be related to the scanner. It doesn't track my sleep well. If I wake up at all, it stops recording. So when I wake up I have 3 or 4 chunks of an hour or more instead of my whole night. Sometimes not even that.

My Sense also struggles to charge. It seems like it doesn't register the charger or something. I've tried cleaning the sensor with water, gentle soap like an oil-free facial cleanser (like it recommends), and soap. I keep my wrists clean and take it off after I workout or put on lotion. It's such a fricken pain in the butt. I feel like it's so delicate and finicky and just an overall hassle. I miss my Versa😭😭

[Chromechinchill]

Also, the "6+ day" battery life is an absolute joke. It lasts 2 days. I charged it to 100% at 6pm, it's now 1am and it's at 85% and that's with me just sitting here not touching it at all. It goes down 2% every hour. 

[eezeepee]

Welcome to the Fitbit community.

Sleep tracking is based on motion. When you review your time asleep, you're seeing a big pink bars? Can you share a screenshot? I've never seen it off by many many hours like you're stating. 

Tapping the pink or blue tells you how much time is in it. I truly did wake up at that time and it was pretty accurate for how many minutes.

https://youtu.be/IqtkUoVcpFs 

It's actually been objectively tested compared to EEG readings and the Sense and other Fitbit devices are actually very good at sleep tracking. Although there is a post here of people having issues with it even tracking at all.

Charging connection is a topic that there are a good number of posts about. Sounds like you take care of your watch well. You've cleaned the prongs on the charger too? I get the slow charging notification every time but it's fast chargers more than 9 times out of 10. Sometimes it's a simple take it off the charger and pop it back on to get it and when it does fast charge, it's gets to >90% in about 45 minutes for me.

Battery life, for any device, is dependant on your settings and usage. 6+ is definitely an optimal, not the average. With these settings I can get a solid, whole 4 days:

Brightness dim, screen wake motion and button, always on display off, snore & noise detection off, SpO2 on.

Day 1

5:00 AM - 99%

9:45 AM - 93%

5:00 PM - 87%

9:45 PM - 84%

Day 2

5:00 AM - 77%

9:45 AM - 74%

5:00 PM - 68%

9:45 PM - 61%

Day 3

5:00 AM - 53%

9:45 AM - 49%

5:00 PM - 44%

9:45 PM - 41%

Day 4

5:00 AM - 30%

9:45 AM - 23%

5:00 PM - 17%

9:45 PM - 14%

Day 5

6:45 AM - 5%

Snore and noise detection overnight is the largest drain as I usually see around 20% overnight with it on and 6-8% with it off. I turned it off after using it for over a week and snore and noise was consistently 0% or minimal. SpO2 also does drains but I kept it on as it's part of the Health Metrics. I'm pretty sure if I turned it off, I would get at least 5 whole days. Mind you, my Fitbit Sense is from August 2020. What have your settings been? Do you also turn on sleep mode? Tossing and turning can trigger the screen to turn on. It wouldn't be a huge drain but it's something

[Chromechinchill]

The problem is I've already gone through and corrected my sleep logs. So they don't look how they do when Fitbit just logs it itself. Usually what it does is give me the blue and pink bars like it does when it only tracks a few hours, but in like 3 logs for one night. I'll delete the later two and update the first chunk to have my full log and then it'll have just the pink bars but the right 2/3 of it is empty because it hasn't updated yet. It usually takes a couple days and then it fully updates and looks normal. I don't understand why it doesn't just do that in the first place. I don't want a retroactive sleep log. I don't want to know on Tuesday how I slept last Saturday. 

It also effects my readiness score and health metrics. If it added up each chunk and put the total into those scores then I wouldn't be upset. But it doesn't. It takes the first 2 hours and just slaps that in there and calls it good enough. 

And I know they're very good at sleep tracking. My Versa 2 was amazing. It's a Tesla compared to the unicycle that is the Sense. 

I have cleaned the charger. And this is my process when I charge my Sense: 

Attach charger. 

Wait for charging notification, a buzz, literally any indication that it's charging. 

Nothing. 

Reattach charger. 

Nothing. 

Clean the sensor and the charger. 

Try again. 

Nothing. 

Repeat 3-5x. 

Finally get a charging notification. Leave it to charge. 

Come back in an hour and find it's still at 4% or whatever it was when I started charging it. 

Try again. 

Nope. 

Try another outlet. 

Nope. 

Try again. 

Oh hey, it has chosen to grace me with actually charging. Takes 3 hours to fully charge. 

The thing that really frustrates me is that the Versa 2, with any settings, lasted me at least 4 days, and it advertises 6+ days. The fact that I get MAYBE 2 from the Sense and it advertises that the battery life is the same is crazy. 

The bottom line is that I want to throw on my Fitbit and have it do its job. I don't want to have to treat it with the reverence of someone restoring the Mona Lisa just to get it to do anything. It doesn't matter when it came out, either. Launching it when it was this buggy is a bad call, especially since it's been more than a year since it's launch. 

[eezeepee]

@Chromechinchill I hear your frustrations and I would totally be just the same if I was having the same issues.

Do you at least have last night's information to share or you already adjusted it? Have you tried a restart or factory resetting?

Are you using the same charging block as the one the Versa 2 was using? Have you tried a different charging block?

The Versa 2 didn't ship with Snore and Noise detection and I believe it's only a beta version. Again, what are your settings? Simply turning it off will get you the similar battery life as what you had with the Versa 2, 4 days. I was stating when I got mine because that means it's had 1.5 years of use and the battery has had some degradation, meaning it's not the same capacity as when it was first turned on.

[Chromechinchill]

I adjusted it this morning. 😕

And I don't have snore detection on but I'm not sure about the other settings. How do I check those? 

And it's a different block. But I've used a few different ones and it hasn't changed it. 

Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, I've only had my Sense for like a month. I had my Versa 2, and a Charge before that, for several years and the battery life was great. 

[eezeepee]

All the other settings that I've mentioned are on the watch itself in the settings app.