Fitbit Charge 5 In-Depth Review

Fitbit’s new Charge 5 aims to take their most well-known wearable series and catapult it forward with a revamped AMOLED display that doesn’t feel like a TI-82 graphing calculator that previous Fitbit Charge units have had, while still trying to maintain the comparatively long battery life that Fitbit units are well known for. All while at the same time pulling in the majority of the Fitbit Versa 3 and Fitbit Sense advanced health metrics from those units released a year ago.

And in many ways, the company actually succeeds here. In using the Charge 5 for almost two weeks now, I’ve got a pretty strong grasp on where it works well, and where it (really) struggles. Though, some of the most widely anticipated features from Fitbit – the Daily Readiness Score & Workout/Recovery Suggestions – aren’t live yet. It’s not clear when they will be, other than “coming soon”. So we’ll set those features aside for later testing – as they’re arguably the most important new feature on not just the Charge 5, but across Fitbit’s lineup once released.

Within this review I cover all the newness first, followed by basic usage – then athletic usage in sports. And while I’ll probably spoil this review somewhat, I’d very strongly encourage you to read the sport accuracy sections. The Charge 5 makes some painful tradeoffs I’ve not seen in over a decade of testing wearable devices. For some folks, these tradeoffs might not matter – though I’d argue at this price point they absolutely should.

Finally, note that Fitbit sent over a media loaner Charge 5 to test. As usual, I’ll get that back to them here shortly. Along with the second device they dropped off, after problems arose with the first device. I’ll go out and pick up my own to continue testing the new features once they arrive. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter which makes the site ad-free, while also getting access to a mostly weekly video series behind the scenes of the DCR Cave. And of course, it makes you awesome.

With that, let’s talk newness.

What’s New:

Here’s the simplified round-up of new features or changes coming to the Fitbit Charge 5:

– New AMOLED color touchscreen display
– New display is 2X brighter than Charge 4 display
– Added an always-on display mode (both for daily use and workout only use)
– Adds Daily Readiness score (requires Fitbit Premium, not available till later this year – not on-wrist)
– Adds workout & recovery recommendations based on daily readiness score (requires Fitbit Premium, not available till later this year)
– Adds high and low heart rate notifications (outside of workouts)
– Adds EDA (Electrodermal Activity) measurement for stress tracking
– Adds ECG sensors/functionality (not available till later this year)
– Adding AFIB detection, PDF export for doctors (not available at launch)
– Battery life claimed at 7 days
– Still has built-in GPS workout tracking
– Still has all the usual Fitbit activity tracking (steps/sleep/24×7 HR/etc)
– Still has sleep score, sleep stages, smart wake alarm (and Premium subscription adds more depth in metrics)
– Price is $ 179 USD (includes 6-months membership to Fitbit Premium)
– 10% thinner than Charge 4

Of course, some of these items above don’t fully cover the extent of the underlying features, for example the Daily Readiness score is a culmination of multiple features, including taking HRV measurement. Unfortunately, that feature – along with the workout/recovery recommendations feature, isn’t yet available on the Charge 5. Nor is the ECG functionality. All of those are “coming soon” but Fitbit hasn’t defined an exact date. (Update: Actually, Fitbit’s own app now says these features are to be expected in “an update in the comings months”)

 

Now notably, there are also features missing from the Charge 5 that the Charge 4 had. These include:

– No Spotify music control anymore (previously you could control your phone’s Spotify music)
– No more weather app (you could see the weather at a glance)
– No more guided breathing/relaxation sessions on the device itself (these are moved to the app)

My bet is that we’ll see these added at some point. The Charge 5 appears to support a more slimmed-down version of the apps that Fitbit has on their watches (Versa/Sense), and thus my guess is that like the other features here, these simply didn’t make the cut for launch.

Also, note that Fitbit won’t be including sleep snoring tracking with the Charge 5. Fitbit says the reason for that is that it lacks a microphone. And while that’s true, one would note that didn’t stop Samsung (and other companies implementing it) by simply using your phone when plugged in on your bedside table.

At this point, most of the newness you’ll see on the Charge 5 is more hardware than software. It’s clear (obviously) that Fitbit’s shift from one underlying platform (and probably older codebase) to an entirely new platform required them to cut out some features and delay others until later. Historically speaking Fitbit has a mixed track record on implementing promised features. However, in the last 18 months or so they’ve got pretty good about hitting their timeframes for features that didn’t make launch day. Hopefully, that continues here as well.

In The Box:

Fitbit has one version of the Charge 5 – gone are the various Special Editions of years past. That means that everyone gets contactless payments, and as I’d soon discover – everyone gets a band that doesn’t suck.

Inside the box you’ll find the Charge 5 lookin’ up at ya, with its extra longer strap and power cord hanging out below deck:

Here’s everything laid out:

As is customary, Fitbit has managed to create yet another charging cable. There’s no tech company that likes creating new charging cables more than Fitbit. I feel like there must be one person at Fitbit HQ who spends the full year trying to come up with a slightly different charging cable than the previous year. Undoubtedly there are presentations about it, deep discussion, napkin renders shown off in a narrated Kickstarter-like video…all the usual new product launch goodness. And then the video ends with building ‘epic’ music, a new charging cable is unveiled from the shadows.

Like an on-stage Apple product launch, except literally “One more thing…”.

Look, I’m not asking for USB-C connectivity or wireless charging here. I’m just asking for Fitbit to manage to keep just a single charging cable for more than one year. Any charging cable. I don’t even care which one – just pick one and keep it. If Samsung, Garmin, Apple, Polar, Suunto, and everyone else can keep the same cable for upwards of half a decade at a time, then so can Fitbit for more than 12 months. After all – they literally had a dozen different options of their own to choose from.

In any event – the good news: The band is so much better than the Charge 4. Worlds better. It feels more flexible, fits better, and the material isn’t as stiff. It’s great.

Note though that the Charge 4 (below left) and Charge 5 (below right) bands are very much *NOT* interchangeable. In fact, the attachment systems are directly inverted on the Charge 5 compared to the Charge 4.

With that, let’s start using it.

The Basics:

As you’ve probably surmised, the Charge 5’s AMOLED display is a touchscreen. All interactions occur via this touchscreen, save holding the sides for certain health measurements (such as the EDA scan, and down the road the ECG capabilities). Fitbit says this new AMOLED touchscreen is 50% brighter than the previous Charge 4 – and frankly, I think that’s probably an understatement. The previous Charge 4 was very difficult to use outdoors in bright sunlight, whereas the Charge 5 is silly easy on sunny days to read during a workout.

Touch responsiveness is generally quite good. Even with sweat on the screen, or water droplets from rain, I didn’t have any major issues navigating the user interface. While taking a shower can cause some issues with touchscreen devices, it wasn’t an issue for me on the Charge 5. Only once did I find the Charge 5 had started to self-navigate the menus. And that’s easily solved with a water-lock option if you want it:

The display has three brightness levels you can tweak if you want, as well as differing timeout options. By default, the Charge 5 will turn off the display when you’re not looking at it, and then as you raise your wrist, it’ll turn on the display. Historically I’ve had so-so performance from Fitbit devices in how fast it recognizes the wrist-raise, but the Charge 5’s algorithms/hardware is easily the best device Fitbit has made in that realm. It’s just a smidge below where Apple’s gesture/wrist-raise recognition is, but is still very good.

Most importantly though, is that if you use the Charge 5’s new always-on mode, then the display stays on the entire time. When you put your wrist down, the display will dim (but still totally readable), and then when you raise your wrist it’ll significantly brighten up. This mode substantially reduces your battery life though to a claimed 2 days, versus the claimed 7 days (though, I never got anywhere near 7 days in the default not-always-on mode).

Additionally, there’s an option within the always-on display mode to have the display turn off at night between specified hours. By default that’s 10PM to 6AM. During those hours it’ll act like the normal mode does, and turn off the display to save battery.

Now, back on the main display, this is where you see your stats for the day. You can tap it to iterate through key stats like steps, calories, heart rate, and active zone minutes. It’ll show a progress bar of those stats along the side.

 

If you swipe up, you’ll get a dashboard of these same metrics:

Keep swiping up you’ll iterate through a few more metrics, including your remaining activity that hour, then your heart rate:

 

After that you’ve got sleep and your sleep score. I’ve seen a handful of days where the sleep score takes hours to populate here, despite showing up on the Fitbit app. Other days it shows up near immediately. Fitbit says this is because the sleep score is computed cloud-side, and thus has to sync back to the device – which sometimes doesn’t happen immediately.

After that is SpO2. This shows your SpO2 reading from the prior night. Well…most times. Other times, not so much.

Following that metric there’s the total days you’ve exercised this week. None of these metrics allow a deeper dive by taping on them, unfortunately, something that’s pretty much the norm for every other tracker on the market.

You can pull data from the Fitbit app though instead. And the app allows you to dive deeper into any of these metrics, looking at historical data and all:

 

For example, on sleep tracking, you’ll get sleep phases, exact times you went to sleep and more. Note that I can’t compare the validity of these sleep phases to any other data points, so I don’t know if they’re accurate or not. Though, I will say the sleep times were accurate in all cases. Further, it did properly pickup naps as well, and contributes those towards my total sleep for the day.

  

Back on the device, if you swipe to the right you can see your smartphone notifications. On my iPhone, I can’t respond to any of these, though I can clear them.

Swipe again and you’ll get to the exercise menu, which I’ll cover in the next section.

After that you’ve got timers and alarms you can set. Then swipe once last time and you’ve got the EDA Scan. EDA stands for electrodermal activity, which will measure your electrodermal activity (roughly another word for galvanic skin response). That then feeds into the stress management dashboard pieces. Essentially they’re measuring the micro changes in electrical resistance of the skin based on things like sweat. This data is then combined with other factors like heart rate or blood pressure. There are different durations you can run it in, but Fitbit defaults to a 3-minute scan when you open it up:

You’ll hold both sides of the Charge 5, and then it’ll start the countdown timer. These types of tests are my favorite, because I just have to sit there and do nothing. Well, technically it’ll tell you to “just breathe” – I guess in case you were thinking of not breathing or something.

Once it’s done it’ll vibrate and then you’ll tell it how stressed you are:

 

At the same time I’ll show you how many EDA responses it got. This number seems to always be 23-24 for me, but apparently, a lower number is best. It’ll also show your starting and ending heart rate. Somehow my ending heart rate always increased, which is kinda odd (as in almost every other do-nothing tests, it’ll decrease).

 

In any event, you can then open up the app then to look at your larger stress management picture:

 

The stress management score (1-100) has three components, which I noticed changed slightly in makeup from a year ago with the Sense & Versa:

Responsiveness (up to 30 points): This comes from all the sensor data, including heart rate variability (HRV) data, resting HR data (and two metrics based on that), and then the skin EDA data from the EDA skin.

Exertion (up to 40 points): This looks at daily steps, weekly activity norms, and fitness fatigue score

Sleep Patterns (up to 30 points): This looks at REM & Deep Sleep from the night before, sleep debt over time, and restlessness during the night.

So ultimately, the ‘Responsiveness’ portion of the score is the piece that comes from the EDA scan you just did. Whereas all the other data actually comes from things outside the EDA scan.  This is a little weird that all of this is rolled under a Stress Management score, when only one component is actually theoretically stress, and the others are exertion and sleep. I suspect in some ways, that’s what the Daily Readiness score is attempting to mitigate – once its released. Though, that’ll ultimately mean you’ve got three scores to balance:

– Stress Management Score
– Sleep Score
– Daily Readiness score

Some of these scores, like the Daily Readiness Score, will only be available for paid Fitbit subscribers.

Beyond that, you’ll get plenty of data from within the app on other metrics like resting heart rate (RHR), breathing rate, heart rate variability (HRV), SpO2, and skin temperature. Though, free users will only see up to 7 days of data on some of these metrics. Whereas paid subscribers will get longer historical data.

  

For the most part, data like resting heart rate and breathing rate aligned well with data that I have from a Garmin and Whoop 3.0 device that I wear daily/nightly. Data such as HRV/Breathing Rate/SpO2/Skin Temp/RHR are all taken at night while you sleep – rather than during the day.

And almost all of this data is derived from the optical heart rate (HR) sensor on the back:

That optical HR sensor has a green light that’s illuminated for regular heart rate readings, and a red light that’ll be illuminated for SpO2 readings. From the outside, this appears to be the exact same sensor that’s in the Charge 4. However, as you’ll see in the accuracy section – I have my doubts about that. Though, one can get dramatically different results on the same sensor if a company varies how much power they deliver to the sensor as well as the case design around it. For example, by lowering power to the sensor they’ll save battery for a brighter display, but usually at the cost of workout accuracy.

Speaking of the case design, finally, the band itself. This is swappable. As noted the original/stock band is great, but you can also use other bands from Fitbit. You simply press the little button/tab and the band will pop out. It’d be impossible to pop-out while wearing, as the latch has to be undone from inside the strap.

Fitbit makes other bands of course, and I tested out the sports band as well.

It was nice, and a slight upgrade from the regular band. Though, nothing I’d go out of my way to pickup.

Sports & Workout Tracking:

The Charge 5 carries virtually all of the same features as the Charge 4 in terms of sports and fitness tracking. It was largely a lateral move from one device to the next, rather than an increase of features (or, loss of features). However, the most important aspect of the Charge 5 from a sports & fitness aspect is that you can actually clearly see the display/screen on a sunny day. Previously with the Charge 4 that was rather difficult.

To begin, you’ll swipe over to the exercise menu. It’s here you can choose which sport profile to use. The Charge 5 allows up to 6 sport profiles at once on the device, though you can change those profiles from the app. Honestly, I’m not super clear why it needed to be limited to six. Other companies support upwards of 15-20 profiles on the device itself (and then you change/add more on the app). Obviously, there’s a balance between ease of navigation in the menu and lots of profiles, but I’d think that somewhere in the 10-15 range would be totally fine here UI-wise.

You can see within the exercise shortcuts menu on the app which ones are currently setup on my watch, and which ones I can add:

 

As with the Charge 4, you can’t customize the data pages on any of these sport profiles. The only customization some sport profiles allow is whether or not to enable auto laps, and then if so – exactly how that lap occurs:

 

Once you’ve selected a sport profile on the Charge 5, you can then choose to add a goal. Your choices there are Zone Minutes, Distance, Time, and Calories. As you complete the activity it’ll show you progress towards that goal.

The other options for a workout-related to settings, which are toggled from the device. These include:

A) Heart Rate Zone Notifications: You’ll be notified when you go from one zone (e.g. Fat Burning) to the next (e.g. Cardio)
B) GPS: Simply on or off (you can also toggle which GPS source to use in the main settings, either: automatic, phone, or built-in)
C) Auto Pause: Whether or not to pause the recording when you stop
D) Run Detect: This will detect when you’re running and offer to start an activity
E) Always-On Display: This will enable the always-on display for just that sport mode, and then return back to normal settings after the workout

With all that setup, we’ll wait for GPS and start our run. In my case I’ve set the Charge 5 to use the built-in GPS rather than my phone. It’ll default to using your phone if that’s within range (connected via Bluetooth). Note that it’ll show the GPS status at the top of the screen, so you’ll want to make sure it’s fully connected. Fitbit also recommends waiting an additional 30 seconds after initial connection to confirm strong lock.

Once out and rolling, you’ll get your distance (and GPS status) shown on top, followed by a changeable middle metric, and then your total time on the bottom:

If you tap the middle of the screen, that middle metric will iterate through various data points, including: Heart rate (with Zone), Pace (current), Average Pace, Activity Time, Time of Day, Steps (in activity), Distance, Active Zone Minutes, and Calories. If in other workout types, the data fields will vary slightly.

If you’ve got auto-lap setup, then it’ll buzz each time the auto-lap triggers. In this case the default is using distance, and since I’m set to miles, so I’m getting laps every mile.

One of the metrics you’ll see throughout the Charge 5 (including the previous Charge 4) is Active Zone minutes, based on heart rate zones.

Essentially this is partially a rebranding the American Heart Association and World Health Organization’s goal of 150 minutes of exercise per week. Other wearables have long done this based on the same 150 minute goal. These Active Zone minutes are based on a combination of age and heart rate, whereby in higher (more painful) zones you get more minute credits than in lower zones. It’s like earning frequent flyer miles, whereby more expensive tickets get more miles. Here’s an example chart from that support page explaining how it works:

I don’t think it’s a bad concept, and that segues right into the next bit which is the next Heart Rate Zone definitions. You’ll see these zones in numerous places throughout the device, usually next to that triple-up-arrow icon you see in the chart above (which means Active Zones). For example, while in a workout you’ll get notifications each time you change zones. You can lightly customize the upper and lower bounds of the more intense zones within settings on the app (tap your profile pic in the app, then ‘Activity & Wellness’, then Heart Settings, then Heart Rat zones):

 

As you shift between different intensities during a workout, you’ll get a notification with the new zone name. I’ve found these can be slightly finicky to make go away though. In other words, the notifications stay on the screen too long, and don’t always disappear immediately when I tap them.

In any case, you’ll also see these zones within the Fitbit app on GPS tracks afterwards, as well as in the summary page for the active zone minutes:

 

Speaking of which, upon completion of your workout you’ll get a small summary screen on the Charge 5 itself:

But most data will come from the app afterwards. These workouts can also sync to platforms like Strava, which is how I configured mine. Here’s a look at one workout’s summary details:

  

From a battery standpoint using built-in GPS, I seem to be floating in the 15-18%/hour range (with always-on off), which is a bit better than I saw with the Charge 4. I didn’t track every single workout though, nor the differences between always-on and not-always-on in terms of exact burn rates. I suspect if you’re concerned about whether or not this unit will last the duration of a longer workout (e.g. 3-5hrs), then honestly, this probably isn’t the right device for you.

Speaking of concerns, let’s shift to accuracy. Because that goes hand in hand with sports and fitness. After all, once Fitbit rolls out the readiness score and workout/recovery recommendations in the next few months, if the heart rate and other metrics aren’t accurate – then those recommendations will be off too (substantially so in some cases).

GPS & Heart Rate Accuracy:

Normally I’d start this section with a stock template on how I do testing for accuracy. But this time we’re going to do things differently. Not the testing, but the explaining. I tested here just like I’ve done for every other device.

Simply put – the Fitbit Charge 5 exhibits workout issues I haven’t seen in more than a decade of wearables testing. While the device contains built-in GPS and a built-in optical heart rate sensor, it doesn’t seem capable to get accurate data out of both those components at once. You have to choose between accurate GPS data, or accurate heart rate data.

How do you choose? By loosening the band. If the band is too snug, the GPS will loose signal (for the duration of the workout) – though heart rate accuracy is sometimes passable. If the band is too loose, you’ll lose heart rate accuracy – but GPS will stay locked on just fine.

No, I’m not kidding.

I’ve had late night conference calls packed with Fitbit engineers and employees to discuss this issue, and ultimately, this seems to be how the device is designed. The GPS chipset is under the display, towards the bottom of the device. That by itself is fine and normal, after all – it’s the antenna that matters. As with most wearables these days, the antenna forms a part of the case. As you tighten the band, the Charge 5 loses it’s view of the sky, and GPS drops out.

Instead, Fitbit recommends the Charge 5 be worn so loose that you can slide one full finger under the unit between your wrist and the Charge 5. Of course, to the surprise of nobody – doing that means heart rate accuracy becomes a non-starter. No company, including Fitbit themselves, have ever recommended a device be worn that loosely. In fact, even Fitbits own Charge 5 reviewer guide still states to wear is snuggly.

In fact – Fitbit was actually the first company to include tightening instructions in their media kits and reviewers guides years ago, an attempt to have reviewers not screw up accuracy testing.

I’ve got boatloads of data at this point. I’ve even got runs where I went out and subdivided the run into trying different strap tightness levels to validate theories – finding the exact point on the band where GPS gets lost. However, the best way to illustrate this is a single run I did two days ago.

As for other runs, here’s one from yesterday – the band initially did OK on this tighter setting. Then about 8-10 minutes into the workout it lost connectivity. It never found it again:

You can see the actual route of the other devices (the green below is the Fitbit Charge 5), and even crossing gigantic open meadows slowly didn’t find GPS again.

And one from a few hours ago, this time with the sport band and on the other wrist. As soon as I tightened the band to get good heart rate, GPS went out the window (blue line where I actually went). It maintained it for about 30 seconds, and then lost it for the rest of the run.

And of course, on this run, the pattern was the same as others – heart rate with looser band settings was bad/non-responsive, but GPS was fine. As soon as I tightened up the band, the HR lock was great – and the GPS disappeared.

Now, there is some middle-ground if you don’t apply any intensity at all. For example, this run was mostly steady-state, and in this case as long as I didn’t increase or decrease intensity it was fine, otherwise you can see it’d lose the plot almost every time. But this is the *SINGULAR* workout in near-daily runs the last almost two weeks that has resulted in anything semi-passable.

Most others look like this:

And corresponding GPS that looks like this, complete with vast swaths of the run skipped:

Now mind you, if we were to set aside the GPS entirely – and looking at heart rate, when nice and snug I can get good results for most things that don’t involve sub-1-minute sprints/intervals. For example, check out this Peloton workout from yesterday with fairly high intensities:

Of course, indoor cycling is arguably the easiest thing for optical heart rate sensors to lock correctly. There’s no pounding of the pavement by your feed to distract the signal (cadence lock is a common issue in running, including for the Charge 5).

And certainly, I understand that with a smaller device companies will struggle to have more accurate heart rate across all activities. Some companies mitigate this by allowing connectivity to external heart rate sensor (Fitbit doesn’t). But actually, that’s not really where my main issue is. As shown, when I tighten the band enough, I can generally get mostly OK results for all but the hardest/shortest intervals.

It’s the fact that when I tighten it I simply lose GPS altogether that’s my major concern. Especially since it doesn’t generally alert you when it loses GPS – so it’s not something you find out about till you get back after your workout. And in fact, there were numerous cases where it said it had GPS lock during a workout portion (since I was constantly checking), only to later not have plotted that at all.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for accuracy, this probably isn’t the tracker for you. Or at least, it’s not for me.

(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy sections were created using the DCR Analyzer tool.  It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, GPS tracks and plenty more. You can use it as well for your own gadget comparisons, more details here.)

Wrap-Up:

For day to day use, the Fitbit Charge 5 manages to take all the best aspects of the Charge series and apply a super clean and brilliant display, with an easy to user interface – all driven by the usual Fitbit app/cloud platform that people have used for more than a decade. While battery life doesn’t seem quite as good as in the past, it’s likely good enough for most people.

Unfortunately, while it works great as a daily tracker, it falls apart for workout tracking. Having to make a choice between functional GPS and functional heart rate doesn’t seem like a typical caveat that users should have to contend with when buying the most expensive activity tracking band on the market. Nor should users have to fiddle to find the *just right* hole on their band that GPS doesn’t drop-out. Sure, I can understand the difficulties in finding super accurate heart rate in a device this size. But I can’t grasp that simply tightening a band causes GPS to drop-out.

And ultimately, I think Fitbit knows this is a problem. At no point during our conference calls did Fitbit express and significant surprise at the loss of GPS. Instead, it was always about mitigation (keep loosening the band). A second device Fitbit sent over yielded identical results. As did their suggestions to try the sport band, along with different results. Ultimately, the pattern was repeatable on every outdoor activity: Choose between GPS or heart rate.

Now of course, if you always run/ride/hike/etc with your phone, then the GPS problem largely goes away (as it’ll use your phones GPS instead). And in that case you can simply tighten the strap per Fitbit’s on recommendations, and doing so will result in mostly OK heart rate results. Same goes if you plan to use the unit for indoor workouts, such as in a gym – where GPS doesn’t matter.

Still, it’s hard to reconcile the significant GPS signal issues here with a company that’s generally put out solid products. With that, thanks for reading.

Product Reviews – DC Rainmaker