Fitbit Charge 5 Advanced Fitness & Health Tracker with Built-in GPS, Stress Management Tools, Sleep Tracking, 24/7
Sleep Tracking
Most Advanced Fitbit Tracker Outdoor Sports
PRICE: $118.95
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2022
This is the third Fitbit I’ve owned. I started with a Fitbit Charge 2, then Charge 3, and now the Charge 5.
PROS: The best thing about the Fitbit Charge 5 is its display. It’s the first Fitbit I’ve owned where the display can be read in even the brightest daylight. I don’t care whatsoever that it’s a color display. I’m simply happy to be able to use my watch to tell time again outdoors.
The next best thing about it (and all of the Fitbits) is the mobile app and website. I find these both to be well-designed and intuitive.
While other reviewers seem to disagree, I’ve found most of the basic measurements (steps, heart rate, sleep tracking, and minutes of exercise) seem to be accurate and consistent with other devices I own.
The ECG seems accurate as well. Though, here I have no other device with which to compare it.
I get about 8 days of battery life. However, this is with GPS disabled (out of privacy concerns).
All of the above reasons (and mostly the display) are why I’ve given it four stars.
CONS: First, the four-star rating is based on what matters most to me. A rating that includes things that matter less would drop this device to a three-star or even two-star rating.
The worst thing about this device is the lack of a physical button (or even a capacitive button) on the side of the watch. Because of this, you are limited to wrist rotation that works most of the time, swipes that often work, and taps that are often unreliable.
Allegedly, the watch is supposed to return to your chosen clock face with two rapid taps. In my experience, this works infrequently. I’ve literally sat there tapping the watch dozens of times without it doing so. This is far and away the most irritating thing about this watch.
Notifications on this watch are hit or (mostly) miss. About 25% of the time I get a phone call or text the watch correctly notifies me. The other 75% of the time these notifications are lost in the ether 🙂
The watch band that it comes with is horrible. Regrettably, the selection of replacement bands is only slightly better. I found one I can live with, but don’t like. Also, the latching mechanism for the bands is far less secure than on previous versions of the Fitbit Charge. Even with the factory original band, I have some degree of difficulty getting it to latch. With at least one third-party band, it would not latch AT ALL.
When I first received this watch, the ECG feature would not work. It kept requesting I (Bluetooth) pair my device with my phone (which was already done). After an annoying call with Fitbit customer service, I was informed that I needed to wait 72 hours before the ECG would work. I don’t mind the 72-hour wait. I do mind that this is not documented anywhere and that the error message says nothing about waiting.
The EDA scan gives me a number. The number may be accurate. It may not. Since there is no quantitative description of what numbers are good or bad, it seems somewhat useless to me.
The few clock faces (24) that are available are mostly terrible. They waste the limited real estate available on the face of the watch and distract with ill-chosen, poorly matching colors. Unlike the crisp, clean presentation of the website and mobile app, these clock faces seem designed by a three-year-old, with a short attention span, and a poor sense of color.
If you’ve come to rely on the stair counting from previous Fitbit Charge devices, this is gone. With the Charge 2, I previously like this feature. It gave a somewhat accurate count of stairs. With Charge 3, the number was so inaccurate, that it would sometimes register stairs as I walked across a flat room. I’m guessing rather than fix this bug, they decided to simply jettison the feature,
FINAL THOUGHTS: Overall, I’m comparatively happy with this watch. I desperately wish they would bring back the button on the side (or make the ECG/EDA sensors serve double duty as a capacitive button). Failing that, I hope that a future firmware update fixes the double-tapping gesture so that it actually works. I really hope that Fitbit hires a competent graphics designer for future clock faces. The current crop of faces (with one or two exceptions) is laughably bad. That, and it might be nice if they better documented the newer features (ECG/EDA) instead of leaving their users guessing.
Why We Picked It
The Fitbit Charge five gives an extra bang to your dollar than another fitness tracker we have examined.
This generation builds on its first-rate predecessors with an attractive AMOLED color contact display screen and steel case, along with several beneficial health tracking capabilities that have been formerly available only on Fitbit‘s more high-priced Sense smartwatch. These include an electrodermal hobby (EDA) sensor that tracks your frame’s response to strain and an electrocardiogram (ECG) app that tests for signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib) and an abnormal heart rhythm.
For fitness monitoring, the Charge 5 features 20 sport profiles (six of which you could add to the tool at a time), an integrated GPS so you do not want to bring your cellphone to music your path in the course of out-of-doors runs, and a 24/7 heart charge screen. Its SmartTrack function robotically acknowledges and facts positive exercises together with taking walks and going for walks, at the same time as its Active Zone Minutes metric motivates you to fulfill the American Heart Association’s recommendation of a hundred and fifty minutes of mild to intense pastime according to week. The Fitbit app offers plenty of submit-workout records, consisting of depth maps showing your tempo and heart charge zones at some point in your direction. On the protection front, Charge five can warn you in case your coronary heart price is unusually high or low.
When you put on it to mattress at night, it tracks the length and excellent of your close-eye, in addition to your sleep degrees (mild, deep, and REM). It also tracks a few extra superior overnight metrics, inclusive of breathing, heart price variability (HRV, a degree of your frightened system hobby, and a trademark of stress levels), skin temperature version (whether you were hotter or chillier as compared with your baseline), and SpO2.
Who It’s For
With pinnacle-notch fitness, sleep, and stress tracking capabilities, an attractive layout, and an affordable price, the Fitbit Charge 5 is the fine standalone fitness tracker for most people. It can assist and encourage you to meet your workout dreams, get to the mattress earlier, and comprise mindfulness into your every day recurring.
The Charge 5 works with both iPhone and Android gadgets, is water-immune to 164 ft, and offers as much as every week of battery life on a charge, which is quite impressive given its coloration contact display screen and slender layout. It supports the following workout shortcuts: motorbike, Bootcamp, circuit education, elliptical, golf, hike, c language exercise, kickboxing, martial arts, outside exercising, pilates, run, spinning, stairclimber, swim, tennis, treadmill, walk, weights, exercising (a standard-reason tracking mode), and yoga.
One quandary, however, is that Charge five lacks Spotify support. If you need to tune streaming controls for your wrist, appear some other place. Moreover, in case you’re new to fitness or do not see yourself tracking outside runs, motorbike rides, or hikes, remember a greater inexpensive wearable without an integrated GPS.
