Fitbit Charge 4 Fitness Tracker – Black

I bought this as a replacement for my old Charge 2 which was pretty beaten up after 4 years of use. Some of the upgrades are more modest than others. Personally I like how the screen resolution is higher than their previous offerings and they’ve added a shade or two of gray. It’s very easy on the eyes.

As for the fitness tracking features, I haven’t put them through any hard tests but they seem to be as accurate as ever.

The Charge 4 works just fine with the app on my phone even though my old Charge 2 is also still paired. In fact I can wear my old Charge 2 at work and then wear my Charge 4 the rest of the time, and everything synch up and works just fine. So big points to Fitbit when it comes to connectivity!

One word of warning: You may see a weird graphical aberration in the upper left corner of the display from time to time. That’s not a fault. It turns out that that’s just a strange little “low battery” indicator.

I was skeptical after I order this, because I was not sure if this was trustfull.
Because after I placed the order. I saw some reviews not receiving the Fitbit Charge 4.
I was wrong. I did get the received the Fitbit Charge 4. Everything nice and good.
As promised, delivery within time, brand new.
Even the price is a little high, still very happy to get a new fitbit charge 4.
My old one is still running.
I really want this Fitbit because the other ones doesn’t have altitude measurement function.
Thank you, kind regards, PB the Netherlands.

 This is good little smart watch type thing. It does what it says it will do and it isn’t uncomfortable to wear all the time. You will definitely want a different watch band after about a week or so because silicone watch bands trap moisture against your skin. If you wear the band too loose it will get caught on things. One of the connectors broke off of mine that way. It’s been about 3 years since I got this fitbit and yesterday the face got too dim to see in normal light. While it still works and syncs to the app, I can’t use it as a watch anymore. So while this was a good purchase the dimness issue is common for fitbits as they age (or so I found out while troubleshooting) and it feels like planned obsolescence. While this isn’t the top tier fitbit, it wasn’t cheap either, so I’m disappointed that it became functionally non-functioning in the space of a day.

I purchased this when my Charge 2 started having issues tracking my heart rate during cardio/peak exercise and no longer showed my stats “live” in the phone app (I had to track by looking at the watch each time or forcing a sync). I had a few issues getting the new one to work well with my heart rate too but once I figured it out it worked well. I’ll go into what worked and what didn’t at the end of my review, because without the heart-rate feature I would rate this a 2… but WITH it, I love the thing and give it a 5.

Spotify: I have not used this feature and have no interest in it. I tend to watch streaming shows during my workouts because it’s 8,000 degrees outside most days in Texas and I would rather be inside with the AC.

Swimming: I am very excited about this feature, but with the current COVID situation I haven’t gotten to test it out yet. I like the idea of being able to track my swims as well as my runs though and can hardly wait to try it out. That said, I HAVE worn it in the shower a few times because I forgot to take it off and it survived that with no issues.

Comfort and Weight: This thing is significantly lighter than the Charge 2, and the band is easier to change out. It makes it more comfortable to wear while sleeping.

Sleep Tracking: This is one of my favorite features, and I like the addition of the oxygen variation tracking. I was hoping that the oxygen tracking would be more than just sleep, but hey, it’s nice to know I don’t have sleep apnea. The feature basically tells you if you have “high” or “low” variations in your oxygen, and for the most part mine are low. The rest of the sleep feature tracks Awake time, REM time and Light vs Deep sleep. It provides an average trend for your sleep over time, plus a “benchmark” and a “sleep score” so you know how you did. It’s helped me be more mindful of my sleep and improve the quality.

Heart rate: This tracks my heart rate well and tends to align closely with my treadmill’s tracker. I had trouble getting it to read me consistently at first at higher zones, but keeping the watch just below the wrist bone one notch tighter than I normally wear it + using the phone app to look at my heart rate rather than regularly checking the watch helped. That, and I use the watch’s exercise app to track the workout now rather than letting it auto-detect like I used to. No issues since.

Cardio fitness score: I like knowing where I rank with average and seeing my numbers slowly improve as I get more fit. I wish that there was a feature I could turn on to track pregnancy, however, because your resting rate goes up significantly when pregnant and it lowers your score.

Female health tracking: I used to use Fitbit for this. It works well if you keep up with it, but I have another app (Ovia) that I preferred to use once I was trying to conceive.

Active Zone Minutes: This feature annoyed me at first. You get twice the minutes for being in Cardio or Peak, and I didn’t care to know how many “extra” minutes I got, I wanted to watch my “actual” minutes of workout. Well, at the end the app tells you how many “actual” minutes you get for the workout anyway and as long as you somewhat pay attention to the time (or use your treadmill to track it) you’ll know while you’re working out too. I get why this is a feature – being in cardio or peak is better than being in fat-burn for calories and workout quality so it encourages you to beef up the exercise, but I was being cranky and resistant to change.

GPS: If you do go out and run, GPS eats your battery for lunch. But it’s cool to see where you’ve been

Battery: When not using GPS, it’s awesome. SO much better than my previous fitbit.

Texting and Calendar: I like having the texts in a block instead of scrolling by like on the Charge 2, and the Calendar is always nice. Sometimes you’re not with your phone and a tap from your watch to remind you you’ve got a meeting or an appointment is really handy.

Hourly reminders to move: I used this less when I was in the office every day but now that I am pretty much perma-telework it’s great. Even if I’m in a meeting I can get up and move and I feel accomplished when I get 9/9!

Customizable clock face: Being resistant to change, I liked that I could put the “classic” watch face on my new Charge 4. I appreciate being able to see my step count, heart rate, date and time all at the same time and none of the “new” ones did that for me. The closest one had a sort of circle thing that tracks how close you are to your step count goal but that’s not a feature I care as much about so I went back to my old ways.

Automatic exercise recognition: I used to use this all the time, but when the Charge 4 was also losing my heart rate, I started using the exercise tracking apps and that seems to help. While it does auto-recognize my exercise that only works if it can read my heart rate properly.

Fitbit losing my heart rate:
So, when I do my treadmill runs I like to be able to have the app open and watch my count and heart rate there rather than having to look at the watch over and over. When my Charge 2 stopped doing that, I got into the habit of checking my wrist regularly only to find that my heart rate had stopped tracking and I wound up spending most of the workout adjusting the watch to get it to read. It was disappointing to do the full workout and not get “credit” for that work. Yeah, I know, I exercised anyway but I like seeing the trend and the data.

So, I bought the new Charge 4 to fix that issue, only to find that it had issues tracking my heart rate as well. After much finagling, I figured out that my new habit of constantly checking my watch was the issue. To resolve that problem, I eventually found that if I used the “exercise” watch app and set it to “treadmill” plus use the Fitbit phone app to watch my heart rate rather than the watch, I have 0 issues getting it to continue tracking my heart rate. I also tighten the band one notch each time and leave it snug just below my wrist bones so it doesn’t move so much, even when I sweat.

Here’s the stuff I tried that didn’t work, just to save you some time:
1) Turning the watch upside down
2) Moving the watch higher on my arm and tightening it. My watch tended to slip around more the further it was from my wrist
3) Moving the watch lower on my arm and tightening it. My wrist bends made it lose my heart rate less frequently here, but it still lost it

I have had multiple Fitbits over the last few years. My first one was 3-4 years ago. It ended tragically after the charging port broke multiple times and I had to get a replacement under the warranty 3x in the 9 months. After the 3rd replacement broke, I gave up and just left the Fitbit world for awhile.

Until Spring of 2021. I really wanted another fitness tracking watch and I’m not an Apple fan so decided to give Fitbit another try. I regret that decision.

I bought the Charge 4 and I honestly love it. I really do. The sleep tracker is spotty and doesn’t always record my sleep and there were a few other features that seemed a bit glitchy but it mostly did what I wanted it to: which was track my exertion during exercise and track the rest of my daily activity. And they changed the design so that the charging port is no longer an issue. So good job there! Alas, the part that attaches the face to the band broke about 6 months in. I was very sad.

So I called Fitbit to see about getting it replaced. They were very nice and got all the required info and then gave me details on what to submit via email to get a replacement. I sent everything in and then crickets… For at least a week.

So I called again.

Told them what happened, what I was told, what I’d submitted. They said I should have received an email with instructions to receive a replacement. I checked spam and all the other random places emails can get misplaced and found nothing. So they sent it again.

Got the email, filled out the things, the replacement shipped same day. Great! Got it a couple days later. Excellent! Took it out of the box- scratch that, they sent me a tiny little bag with JUST the face, NBD- put the face on the charger. Left it over night.

Next day, take it off the charger, sync it, it updates itself. Battery says 90%. I put it on and press play on my workout… Fitbit dies. App reads watch is at 4%. Put it back on the charger, finish my workout, shower and get ready, go check the battery level: app says 100%. Great! Let’s try again. I put the watch on. It immediately dies. Wonderful. They sent me a dud.

I put it back on the charger. Then I actually went out of town for a few days, got back and it was the holiday so I didn’t call Fitbit for about ten days. The first time. This is when everything just took a major nose dive into Customer Service Purgatory.

I called through the help center on the app and got a very nice rep, spoke English and everything and then the line suddenly just cut off. I called back and it took 10+ minutes for someone to pick up even though it said the wait time was less than 1 minute. When they did finally pick up, the rep could not hear me for some reason. Called again, same thing. Then I got someone and he told me the system was down and to call another day. Well… Alright then.

Called several days in a row and was unable to get someone on who could hear me. Apparently they were having some issues with the calls coming through the help center.

Finally, I located the 1-800 number and was able to get some one on the phone. I explained the issue including the faulty “replacement” and the rep attempted to locate my account via my email. It took her multiple tries for some reason but she eventually found it. Then she told me that my watch had not synced for several weeks so she couldn’t pull any data from the app. I explained (again) that the device won’t stay charged so it therefore cannot sync. She told me she would submit my information and I’d get an email.

I DID get an email. An email stating that they had already replaced my device and could not replace it again. My response was to again reiterate that the device they sent me did not work so thus did not meet the requirements of a warranty “replacement.” They then responded that they had sent me a warranty replacement in April, which was about 2 weeks after my original purchase. *sigh*

So here I am, with a two broken watch faces and several hours of my life washed down the drain trying to get a replacement for my faulty replacement.

I say all this to say, find another watch. Because chances are, yours WILL break while still under warranty. It’s all but guaranteed. And then you’ll have to fight to get a clearly used replacement that may or may not work.

Just find a better watch. And when you do, let me know what you got so I can get one too. Because CLEARLY Fitbit does not honor their warranties. And we shouldn’t reward companies for bad business practices.