If you’re looking for a fitness tracker, go no further than the Fitbit Charge 5. For around $150 (£130, AU$270), you can have a smartwatch with nearly all of the same health and fitness capabilities as Fitbit’s more costly models like the Versa 3 and Sense.
The Charge 5 is a great smartphone if you don’t have a pressing need for a larger display, a voice assistant, or additional music storage. But, there is still a missing part. We’ve had access to a variety of data from our wrists thanks to fitness trackers and smartwatches for years, but most people still have trouble making sense of it.
When my HRV is high, what does that indicate? Should I try to force myself to exercise despite having had a terrible night’s rest? With their new Daily Readiness Score, Fitbit may finally be able to explain this phenomenon.
Based on your data, the Fitbit app will let you know if you’re in the mood for a vigorous workout or some quiet time with meditation. You may see this score and tailored recommendations with a Fitbit Premium subscription, which is available for a variety of Fitbit trackers and watches including the Charge 5.
More time with the score is required before I can make a determination as to its usefulness, but for now, there is more than enough here to suggest the Charge 5 without reservation to anyone looking for a tracker with GPS, an ECG, powerful sleep and exercise monitoring, and great battery life.
The Charge 5 is a Convenient And Lightweight Device.
A Colour AMOLED touchscreen and a new navigation system bring the Charge 5 up to speed with Fitbit’s most current smaller tracker, the Luxe, but on a larger scale. When compared to the Charge 4, which only had a monochrome screen, the screen is immediately superior.
When the brightness is turned all the way up, it’s also much simpler to see outside. If you want to have the screen on at all times, you won’t even have to look at your wrist to check the time.
The lack of buttons on this Charge makes it unique. Use the touchscreen to navigate, and swipe right or double-tap anyplace to return to the previous display. Having reviewed the Fitbit Luxe most recently, I can say that the Charge 5’s larger screen makes it much simpler to use. But, getting used to it may take some time. When compared to older Fitbit trackers, the responsiveness of the interface is a major improvement.
Unlike the Fitbit Luxe, I never have to strain my eyes or resort to using a magnifying glass just to read the notifications on the Apple Watch.
Includes ECG, Heart Rate Monitor, And Other Useful Health Data.
The Charge 5 is much more compact than any of Fitbit’s smartwatches, but that hasn’t prevented it from including all the same sensors. The device has an electrocardiogram app that can detect atrial fibrillation, a blood oxygen level sensor, a skin temperature sensor, and a heart rate monitor with high and low heart rate alarms (but no dedicated skin temperature sensor like on the Sense).
The Fitbit Sense introduced the electrodermal activity sensor, which may be used to monitor stress levels. To use, simply rest your fingers on the Charge 5’s sides for two to seven minutes.
It picks up on even the tiniest fluctuations in perspiration, and then tallies up the number of events that produced an EDA reaction. The theory goes that the more EDA reactions you have, the more stressed you might be.
When compared to the Sense’s way of measuring, which includes holding your palm over the screen, keeping your fingers to the sides ends up feeling a little awkward, but it also means you can see the display while you’re testing stress.
After factoring in physical activity and sleep duration, the scans produce a stress management score out of 100. The higher the score, the more effectively your body is able to manage stress.
The Charge 5’s stress tracking is superior than that of the Sense in my opinion because it isn’t the primary function of the device. You can use it alongside breathing or meditation sessions in the Fitbit app to see if you can gradually reduce your responses, and it’s simply another tool you can utilise to get a sense of your general well-being.
The EDA sensor is still more of a novelty than a necessary instrument. While Fitbit’s other trackers and smartwatches (through the Premium subscription service) can already calculate a stress score, the inclusion of the EDA sensor provides a clue as to the future direction of the company’s mindfulness initiatives.
It tracks sleep in the same way as other current Fitbit devices, and I really like the level of detail it provides, including information about sleep stages, restlessness, and pulse and breathing rates while you sleep. Again, everything adds up to a sleep score out of 100 so you can quickly and easily assess how well (or poorly) you slept.
You’ll need to pay the extra $10 a month for the Premium service if you want the deepest dives into the Charge 5. If you want access to features such as a breakdown of your sleep score, tracking of your skin temperature while you sleep, mindfulness sessions featuring content from Calm, workout routines, and nutritional recommendations, among other things, you’ll need to pay a monthly subscription fee after the initial six months are up.
Even if you don’t pay for Premium, you may still use the health metrics dashboard and get some basic information about your activity, stress, and sleep. After 14 nights of wearing the Charge 5 to bed, premium customers will receive a more comprehensive sleep profile and a so-called sleep animal.
The Daily Readiness Score Provided by Fitbit has the Potential to be Quite Useful.
The Daily Readiness Score is another perk of a Premium membership. It calculates your HRV based on your activity level and sleep quality to tell you if you should push yourself in the gym or take it easy today.
Depending on your score, it will also recommend a set of exercises or a period of meditation. It’s like Garmin’s body battery score, but with more tailored advice for you specifically. Garmin, in contrast to Fitbit, does not impose additional fees for this rating.
In November 2021, this function will be available on the Fitbit Charge 5, Sense, Versa 3, and Luxe. Wear your tracker or watch continuously for four days and nights after updating to the newest software and opting in to the experience in the Fitbit app to begin receiving a daily score.
Your score, out of a possible 100, is displayed alongside bar graphs showing your activity, sleep, and heart rate variability, and a daily active zone minute goal is also set for you. The app has given me scores between the mid-50s to high-70s, which is considered to be rather good. This means that I can engage in vigorous physical activity on a daily basis. Whether or if I genuinely wish to do so is another matter.
I was astonished by how high my score ended up being after a week of rather strenuous exercise, during which I went on many daily walks and bike rides. In all honesty, there were times when I wished I’d gotten a lower grade, if only to have the day off or to do something more pleasant like yoga.
I realised upon closer inspection that the high score was in part due to the quality of sleep I had the night before. The score indicated that my body was probably ready for daily hill climbs of an hour’s duration, even though I didn’t particularly feel like doing so.
As the Fitbit app claims it needs 14 days to fine-tune the score, I will have to continue using it for a while longer before I can evaluate its usefulness. Yet I can see how that would be useful in pushing me on when I don’t feel like it.
As Accurate a Fitness Recorder as You’d Expect From a Fitbit.
The Charge 5 isn’t just a step counter; it can keep tabs on more than 20 different exercises, from cycling to yoga, and it’s also swim-proof. Certain exercises can be detected automatically. Only six workouts may be stored on the Charge, but you can easily choose between them using the Fitbit app.
It has GPS like the Charge 4, so you can leave your phone at home and still track your outdoor workout progress. To conserve power, you can also configure the Charge 5 to use the GPS functionality of a nearby smartphone.
Locking onto a signal with the built-in GPS takes about 10–15 seconds, and in my tests, it provided consistently reliable route and distance data compared to a control phone. Goals such as time spent in the active zone or total distance covered might be established at the outset of a workout.
Fitbit’s method of determining vigorous exercise. During running, I found it encouraging that the Charge 5 beeps at you as you enter different heart-rate zones. This allowed me to gauge whether or not I was performing at my maximum capacity.
The Smarts Are on the Basic Side, But Maybe that’s All You Need.
The Charge 5’s compatibility with both Android and iOS keeps Fitbit ahead of Apple’s iOS-only Watch and Samsung’s Android-only Galaxy Watch 4. You may set it to alert you to incoming calls or texts and decide which apps can send you alerts directly to your wrist.
While the Charge 5 allows Android users to respond to notifications instantly, iPhone users can only view them on their wrist. Fitbit’s app lets you choose from a small handful of different clock faces.
Fitbit Pay allows for mobile payments, while Google Quick Pair expedites setup for Android devices. The Charge 5 does not have a music library, music controls, a speaker, or a microphone. That leaves you without a voice assistant or the ability to make quick calls from your wrist. For $179, however, I don’t mind if Fitbit foregoes those extras.
No external software is supported either. Seeing as how it’s a fitness tracker and not a smartwatch, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. In a July 2022 update, Fitbit introduced a “find my phone” app that will ring your device if it is within Bluetooth range.
The Fitbit Versa 3 with GPS costs $230, although the older Versa 2 can be had for $150 (the same price as the Charge 5) if you don’t need all the bells and whistles that the newer Versa 3 offers. None of those wristwatches has the EDA sensor found in the $300 Fitbit Sense, but both are capable of determining your stress level.
What is the Approximate Battery Life of the Fitbit Charge 5?
How far your watch can go is contingent on the settings you choose for its display. With the screen configured to rise to wake, you can expect to receive up to seven days of use for basic functions like alerts, step tracking, sleep monitoring, and some EDA scans.
Because I am a heavier user, I added a daily 30-minute GPS workout and still got four full days. Expect to get two full days out of the Charge 5 in this scenario, with the always-on display enabled.
The Fitbit Charge 5 is the Most Popular and Effective Model.
If you want all of Fitbit’s health and monitoring functions in a sleek, band-like form, the Charge 5 is a no-brainer at $179. Fitbit, which is now wholly owned by Google, releases the device at a pivotal juncture.
What will come of Google and Samsung’s plans to integrate WearOS remains to be seen. We’re curious to see how the Fitbit apps will look on the WearOS platform, or whether a WearOS-powered Fitbit watch will be released independently of the Charge 5.
What about simpler fitness trackers like the Fitbit Charge 5 running on Fitbit OS, will they be discontinued when Fitbit stats become available on WearOS? The future has the answer. With a price point that’s cheaper than other smartwatches, the Charge 5 is now the best Fitbit for the vast majority of consumers.
