Fitbit Charge 5 Review | Should You Still Buy it in 2024?

After having this for two months I think this is a complete must-have for anybody who’s looking to upgrade their older Fitbit or anybody who’s looking to join the Fitbit family, before reviewing the Fitbit charge 5 I had previously reviewer the Fitbit charge 4 for about awhile ago and honestly it’s completely a different experience and it feels like a completely different device because it is. 

The most obvious thing about the Fitbit charge 5 is the new screen, the overall look of the display is beautiful, the new colors are just nice and bright so one can see while outdoors, compare to old the Fitbit charge that was hard to see outdoors and one had to cup it whenever you’re walking outside or doing any sort of activities outside and trying to check your time, now it has a fully colored display and bright screens, so it’s easy to see it outdoors especially with the always-on display which is a game changer, it’s just easy to see that instead of having to flick your wrist, the screen is just always on.

They have a new “find my feature” that is done with an upgrade where you can swipe down and just turn on “find my iPhone” and it plays this loud tune, they have new quiet modes which really helps with the always-on-display feature, so if you want to use they quiet modes especially the sleep mode which you’ll be able to just have it so that the always-on-display is off during a certain time, but you can also have it during times where you’re at work or whatever or you need the Do Not Disturb mode to be turned on but you don’t want to have it on and switch it off manually or you don’t want distractions from 9 A.M to 12 P.M everyday you can set it as a setting on your quiet mode. 

The new displays also comes a new configuration of how to navigate through the watch, everything is just easy when you’re navigating through the Fitbit Charge 5 smartwatch. You’re just going to swipe left or right to find whatever you need and it just cycles through endlessly, so you don’t have to swipe back again once you get to the end of a list you just continue swiping which is nice.

 Fitbit charge 5 promised seven days of battery life, it’s about more like six days of battery life in my opinion and that’s if you’re not working out, just be mindful that if you are doing certain things the battery life will change and it varies so that’s why it’s said up to seven days of battery life but honestly if it can last more than one day like it’s gonna be great. The best thing here is that the watch don’t need to be charged daily.

With Fitbit you always will be able to see emojis even on the Fitbit charge 4 even though it’s black and white, now you get to see photo color emojis and they do a really great job replicating the Emojis into their system so that you can see them appropriately when you’re reading a text. 

Another amazing thing about the Fitbit charge 4 is the sleep tracking feature is great and really easy, it tracks it really accurate but it’s much better with the Fitbit charge 5 it feels a bit more accurate.

Fitbit has an amazing app experience so if you haven’t had a Fitbit smartwatch yet, the app experience even without its premium upgrade, it’s really still a top tier that’s where you’re going to see your sleep tracking scores and all this stuffs available on that app as well as your workouts records, your heart rate monitors. You don’t need a Fitbit premium upgrade to make that useful, but having the Fitbit premium does add a bit more to your Fitbit experience but it’s not really necessary.

There are some things that the Fitbit charge 5 misses out and one of those things was that little home button that’s on the Fitbit charge 4 or even the charge 2. Almost all of the previous Fitbit models had a haptic button on the side that just acted as that home button and that was something that was so used by people and it’s not a huge deal it’s just a preference thing but now you can always double tap the screen at any point to go to home and over return to your clock face but a lot of users still missed the button.

If you have an iPhone you still cannot respond to your text messages or anything like that or even do quick replies at all you can only read your text messages or see things and if you have an Android phone especially with Google pixel phones it’s proven that you’ll be able to reply only with like certain quick replies. I don’t think you can text or say anything so it’s not a smart watch replacement by any means if you want a Fitbit and Android experience you definitely should go for the Google Pixel watch, it’s proven that it’s not completely like Fitbit but it’s almost the same, but the Google Pixel watch is just one of the best looking smartwatches out there.

As my perspective as an Apple user and a Fitbit user, it’s honestly a beautiful looking watch and you should watch the GPS because there’s been people having issues that it won’t pick up their GPS even with their phone connected or what whatever and apparently has to do with the tightness of the band. 

So compared to the Fitbit charge 4 it’s like I said earlier, a complete upgrade, it feels like a completely different device when the Fitbit charge 3 and 4 look almost identical to each other and almost are identical to each other the Fitbit charge 5 just feels like a completely new device with an amazing colored screen the brightness enabling users to be able to see while outdoors.

Like I said earlier, something that I really appreciate from this Fitbit charge 5 is that it’s always-on-display is such a clutch feature. The watch does exceed a ton of expectations especially from it’s amazing predecessor, so I would like to recommend this absolutely for anyone who is looking to upgrade from an older Fitbit watch or anyone who is looking to purchase their first Fitbit and try that out without spending too much money on Amazon, by buying a brand new Fitbit charge 5 you will get six months of the Fitbit premium freely.