Fitbit Charge 5 Advanced Fitness & Health Tracker with Built-in GPS, Stress Management Tools, Sleep Tracking, 24/7 Heart Rate and More, Lunar…
$111.99
Last updated on April 2, 2024 12:51 am Details
- Optimize your workout routine with a Daily Readiness Score that reveals if you’re ready to exercise or should focus on recovery (Requires Fitbit Premium membership)
- Get a daily Stress Management Score showing your body’s response to stress and take steps to improve your levels with an on-wrist EDA sensor mindfulness session
- With the Health Metrics dashboard, track SpO2, heart rate variability, skin temperature variation and more (Not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition and should not be relied on for any medical purposes. It is intended to provide information that can help you manage your well-being)
- See your real-time pace & distance without your phone using built-in GPS during outdoor activity, then see a map of your workout route in the Fitbit app
- Includes a 6-month Premium membership complete with personalized insights, advanced analytics, guided programs and more (New & returning Premium users only. Valid payment method required. Content and features may change)
- Your stats come to life on a new color touchscreen that’s two times brighter than Charge 4 in daylight, all with up to 7-day battery (varies with use and other factors)
- Track calorie burn and optimize workouts with 24/7 heart rate tracking and Active Zone Minutes, which guide you toward your desired intensity level
- Get a better understanding of your sleep quality with a daily Sleep Score and graphs of your time in light, deep and REM sleep—then see how you can improve your sleep and wake up feeling energized
- Use the 20 exercise modes to set personal goals for runs, rides, strength training and more, then get real-time stats to help you keep the pace or maintain your target heart rate zone
Specification: Fitbit Charge 5 Advanced Fitness & Health Tracker with Built-in GPS, Stress Management Tools, Sleep Tracking, 24/7 Heart Rate and More, Lunar…
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8 reviews for Fitbit Charge 5 Advanced Fitness & Health Tracker with Built-in GPS, Stress Management Tools, Sleep Tracking, 24/7 Heart Rate and More, Lunar…
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Fitbit Charge 5 Advanced Fitness & Health Tracker with Built-in GPS, Stress Management Tools, Sleep Tracking, 24/7 Heart Rate and More, Lunar…
$111.99
Alex –
UPDADE 4 (final):
Fitbit introduced the recovery score as part of the premium service (means monthly fees). It’s not as good as I’d hoped. Very generic and seems to rely on resting heart rate and HRV only. It’s a bit of a disappointment. I am keeping the 3-star rating. There are better health monitors out there, but this one is well-rounded. (and priced) enough to be a contender.
UPDATE 3: I am just going to sum things up after two weeks of use.
PROs:
*Great screen, can be easily viewed in very sunny conditions.
*Great for working out. Provides extensive metrics as you work out and seems accurate.
*Very good sleep tracking. Silent alarms (can be setup to avoid waking you up from a deep sleep).
*Decent heart rate monitor. Step tracker. Calorie count, etc. All these inherent features work well.
*Holds charge forever.
CONs:
*No recovery rate metrics, as promised by Fitbit yet.
*The screen is blinding at night. No way to tone down the brightness.
*No longer counts stairs climbed for some reason.
*Does not have actual body temperature readings.
I’ve learned how to estimate my recovery rate, based on resting heart rate, sleep quality and HRV. Still, wish that metrics was provided by Fitbit, as promised.
UPDATE2: Look like they made the black version FULLY RETURNABLE for whatever reason, so buy in confidence.
One more issue to report: the screen does not seem to have an ambient light sensor and the “sleep mode” does not automatically turn on. I find myself waking up in the middle of the night to a blinding screen that lights up the room. Not great!
UPDATE1: some have mentioned problems with the device being non-returnable. I followed up with Amazon on the issue. It is returnable, IF you experience performance issues or the device itself is defective or otherwise problematic. It seems like all versions but Black are fully returnable, so it must be a glitch. Talk to Amazon, if you experience an issue. They are extremely helpful.
I am now into the 4th day of testing and it looks like there is some calibration going on in the background, as readings are getting a bit more accurate. I wish the temperature sensor would provide nominal values instead of an evaluation on how much it changed from the day before. I hope Fitbit hurries up and releases the Readiness Score feature.
These are my initial impressions and I will update this review, as my experience living with Charge 5 allows me to better evaluate it. I have and regularly use Biostrap and Apple Watch. I am mostly interested in my sleep and recovery data and Apple Watch doesn’t do any of that, while Biostrap is useless for tracking workout. You cannot have it all, apparently. I was hoping that this Charge 5 can reasonably handle both tasks in one device.
To my great disappointment, Fitbit released Charge 5 without the promised Daily Readiness Score, which would basically indicate your recovery score after you wake up in the morning, telling you how your body is really doing, and whether you should go hard or easy on yourself for the rest of the day. It’s a great way to modulate your workouts and properly recover without overstressing your body. The Biostrap is excellent for that very reason (see some of my dashboard pics). That’s what I wanted out of this Fitbit and they didn’t deliver. There isn’t even a timeline for when the feature will be available.
Another missing feature is the ECG, but I am neither here or there on that one. Charge 5 also no longer shows you how many stairs you’ve climbed, which is disappointing, since Charge 4 did. After using it for two days, I am noticing that sleep time recognition isn’t accurate. My Biostrap gets it right, down to a minute, while Charge 5 can be off by hours. Better turn it on yourself in the settings before bedtime.
Speaking of settings are adjustments…the lack of physical buttons means that you’ll be scrolling up/down/left/right on a small screen all day long. It can get frustrating and menus aren’t all that logically laid out. Another things that’s poorly laid out is the dashboard, which is supposed to give you a snapshot of your metrics at a glance. You have to go through multiple screens (and some are not easy to find) in the app to get to various points of data. All of that should be viewable on one screen. AND you must use the phone app to view detailed info. Most of it isn’t available on the web interface.
As it stand today, I would rather spend extra $20 and get an Apple Watch SE, which would be a superior tool in just about every respect until Fitbit delivers on the Daily Readiness Score. I’ll have to see how my experience with Charge 5 evolves, but I am giving it very generous 3 start for now…
McD –
Great watch, does everything I need it to do for me to get into shape and observe how my body is doing. The only downside is half the mobile features are behind a paywall which is in my opinion extremely greedy on the side of FitBit. If I pay for a fitness tracker at least give me access to the tracking information and keep your guided meditation/ workout guides behind the paywall. I get the feeling the guided stuff is not worth the premium paywall otherwise why hold half of what you bought the device for hostage, comes across as greedy.
Cash –
1) THEY REMOVED THE ALTIMETER (stair tracker)
I was starting to love the extra data features until I started looking for my flights climbed… and it’s gone! It no longer tracks your flights climbed! Which, as an avid Hiker, is extremely important to me! I’m returning it and going back to my charge 2. (And YEA, it’s returnable, they accepted and refunded me)
The only reason I keep Fitbit even though I have an Apple Watch is bc the altimeter, battery and sleep tracking are superior to apple. However, now that they removed the altimeter I just can’t justify keeping the 5!!!!
2) I don’t like that you can’t customize the colors of the different watch faces. I don’t want bright neon colors on my wrist in order to see all the stats on the main screen.
3) I upgraded from the 2, so I’m not sure when this charged, but I don’t like that I have to now use the watch to set my silent alarms instead of just busting the Fitbit app. It takes so much longer to set up.
4) the side bars are finicky, sometimes they don’t register that you’re pressing them while taking ecg reading.
5) the screen scratches VERY easily!
Conclusion: all in all, if it had an altimeter I would have kept it; if they bring it back on the 6, I’ll buy that. My favorite workout is stair climbing and hiking, so the altimeter is important to me.
Original 9/27/21
It took over 3 hours to finally finish the update. It kept stopping midway through. Going to sync or change the clock face and it keeps saying connection lost non-stop. I’ve already reset and reconnected everything. My only guess is that they rolled out the charge 5 without the app being ready for it? Not sure but super annoying to (4 hours later) still not be able to complete set up
Amazon Customer –
The fitbit charge 5 is not eligible for return even if you have amazon prime(For safety reasons, items containing flammable liquids or gases can’t be returned to Amazon) so only buy this with the knowledge that you will not get your money back if anything goes wrong. If you have no plans on paying for the fitbit premium subscription then do not buy this as they are very careful not to tell you that half the features of the watch don’t work without it. The health metrics dashboard is part of the subscription so without that you don’t get SpO2 monitoring, heart rate variability, skin temperature variation, breathing rate during sleep or 14 out of the supposed 20 exercise routines. There is more outside of the withheld features like not being able to turn off gps(the options are dynamic, using the gps built into the watch and just your phone), location services, being auto enrolled into some social club, fitbit selling the data they collect even though it’s not a free product(you MUST agree to this in order to setup the watch) and by default having the watch set to send you all sorts of emails but I guess I get upset about that more than other people these days. If you are still ok with that then I can say the watch itself is comfortable to wear. The screen is a bit slow to respond and the image is on the soft side but it’s bright enough that sunshine doesn’t bother me. I do have a lot of missed inputs(I can swipe 5 or so times before the watch reacts) and also it will register incorrect inputs like moving down when I swipe right. A smaller gripe is that fitbit can’t seem to decide on what material the charge 5 is made from. The amazon page says it’s stainless steel but the fitbit website where I originally found this on still says it’s made of aluminum. The watch is lightweight though. This is about all I have to offer now. I’m stuck with a watch that won’t do half of what I bought it for and in my mind amazon is beyond complacent. Until very recently amazon owned fitbit which makes it seem like this scenario was intentional. I have a product that won’t work unless I pay essentially a rental fee(formerly to amazon) and I can’t return the near useless product because it’s now considered to be “hazardous” by amazon. I actually bought the charge 5 as a second chance for fitbit after directly buying a charge 4 from amazon(no third party) and RETURNING IT IMMEDIATELY as I payed for a new watch but was instead sent a used model with a screen that was scratched to heck and gunk left on the sensors from the last customer. I doubt that the charge 5 is somehow way more dangerous than the charge 4 and therefore is unsafe to take back to the warehouse. Both watches were safe enough for the warehouse to send them to me and amazon tried to scam me with the charge 4 but I was able to send that back so the way I see it now is that they just factored that into a predatory business model. I have one last thing before I forget. If you didn’t know you can look around the add to cart button and under it you will find the amazon return policy. On first glance you will see that it says REFUND OR REPLACEMENT AVAILABLE but make sure you hover the mouse over it because that is not actually amazon saying that it can be returned. I honestly don’t remember if I ever noticed that before but I certainly will remember from now on.
Oumbagirl –
Like the watch design and size – after all, its a fitbit. Did have an earlier model which gave up after 2.5 years so their longevity os service could be improved. The Set up required several attempts as there is an update that I found to be problematic to upload and I am involved with tech every day! eventually updated firmware but with no discernable changes to what I had done before in terms of process… Made me think of 1990’s computers where sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. all in all now working but long term user reliability and effectiveness will need to be proved in order for me to increase my rating. I bought the Chrarge 5 due to it having a heart arrhythmia recording function but as yet have not been able to access such. it may be that the program is still new and to be introduced in a future update. it would be good to hear others opinion of this tracker especially with regard to this function. linking third party apps to this particular fitbit I also found somewhat problematic and time consuming. All in all this advertised all singing and new feature version needs the firm ware and software glitches sorting out sooner than later in my humble opinion. for an IT novice or perhaps an older person buying it for its advertised tracking benefits re heart etc it is just too complicated and unstable at the present time in my experience. Stay with a bog standard blood pressure monitor that also reads the heart arrhythmia too!
Ryan –
Device Looks/Comfort:
The device looks nice, it seems to be built well and the strap is fine, it didnt build up sweat, rub or make my skin feel itchy as other watches have. It is comfy to wear however with all hardware it is managed with software. my issues with this device come from software and the FitBit support teams.
Software:
— No ECG on launch and still no released at the time of writing this.
— FitBit studio. There is no way for developers to customise watch faces, create their own faces or make apps as FitBit refuse to add this functionality to charge series.
–Sp02 not on clock faces
— No constant stress monitoring
Support Teams:
– After talking to support teams they had no idea about a majority of questions i had, Its like they have no been trained on anything other than to tell users to reset and repair the device upon any issues that occur.
– They didnt know about the charge 5 device in depth or know what the studio was.
– After alot of hassle i was finally able to get in contact with a “specialist team” to discuss it. However you cant live chat this “team” or talk to them on the phone. The only way to contact them is via email in which you get a reply maybe 1 once a day if you are lucky, reply instantly as an email comes in ? well you still will wait till tomorrow for a response.
— Talking to the “specialist team” was more frustrating than the regular support team. They made the conversation go in circles requesting information and then dismissing , misunderstanding, or providing false directions whilst im being direct and clear in my questions and/or requests. eventually they referred me to the community forum, expecting them to help me instead. The community however have no involvement in this software, so cannot help, and the only part of some use in the forum is the feedback/feature suggestions. Except it really is no use at all, They reply to every suggestion with the same copy and pasted message subtituting the users name and thread issue to thank them for the suggestion, and to see how many “votes” the community give it. Then you dont hear any follow up on it.
Device Usage:
– All data collected has to go through Fitbits server. So having extra data analysis, such as your sleep score + Deep/Rem/Awake times, will require you to purchase a premium subscription.
– Always need to have it connected to your phone, As the device cant store the data for very long, so forget about long runs using built in gps while leaving phone at home.
– 23 clock faces are avaliable in the app, you must use the app to swap faces, you cant do this from the device and no extra faces are avaliable to download or be created, with no interest from FitBit to create more even though there is many community requests for this and no interest from FitBit to give studio access to create your own. The current faces in many opinions are ugly (with the styles and/or colours used) and/or dont show all the info many want at the same time. majority needing to tap threw the data to display or leave out some data points all together.
– ECG isnt avaliable, but is advertised, somewhat discretly, as coming soon and even then wont be avaliable in some countries.
– No control for music including spotify
tldr;
Pros:
+ Comfy and no noticable, even wearing 24/7
+ Battery life, Can get many days usage without worrying it will die
+ Responsive screen
+ Build quality
+ Charges fairly quickly with a magnetic charger
+ Apps on device seem to work as intended, i did not experience crashing or glitches.
Cons:
– No Sp02 reading on faces, This is done seperatly in an app, But i dont believe its live data, I think it just shows the latest data from the last nights readings, as this is recorded with the sleep data.
– Stress monitoring is done by making you hold the sides of the device for 3mins. It often will complain about this, by not detecting you are holding the sides, interrupting the 3mins and needing to resume or restart the readings. Then finishing with asking you how you feel. This seems as if it is trying to learn ? why doesnt this just give a predictive stress level constantly ? who knows why they decided to do this is anyones guess.
– No ECG app
– No Fitbit studio support, This is not a device for developers.
– Premium subscription is needed for indepth/extra data for some sensors and for more than just live data.
– Limited to stock, ugly clock faces
– No music control
– Limited storage for sensors/gps, always needs to sync with phone.
– FitBit has the Worst support teams i have ever encountered on a “premium” device
For me having this as a basic tracker was fine but i firmly believe when you buy a device then it is yours, having restrictions that limit your usage and experience is very much a dealbreaker. Having to try deal with support was a nightmare and further reinforced me having to look elsewhere.
I requested a refund on this product as a result.
Eric Tittley –
I bought the Charge 5 because it was capable of ECG measurements. But it turns out this is a function that won’t be available until an upcoming update (to the firmware? the App?) in the coming months. That’s ambiguous. It’s also false advertising.
UPDATE: ECG functionality has been added as of mid-November.
mcbirne –
Leider hat das Charge 5 keinen Etagenzähler mehr und man kann auch keine Anrufe mit einer SMS Nachricht abweisen. Das ging beim Charge 4 alles. Dazu kommt ein höherer Preis als beim Charg 4 damals.
Außerdem kann man bei Fitbit seit geraumer Zeit nur noch auf ältere Daten zugreifen, wenn man eine kostenpflichtige Premiummitgliedschaft abschließt.
Daher wechsel ich zu Garmin. Das Charge 5 ging zurück.