Fitbit Charge 4

6owners with an opinion

40%of verdicts positive

0/1positive/negative since 2024

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for ease of use; criticized for reliability and durability.

What people wrote

Doesn’t like it

Oh wow, the Cirqa is exactly what I've been looking for: a wrist sensor without subscription and without a screen. I had a FitBit Charge 4 some years ago, but it stopped working after a couple years. Then I got a RingConn 2 last year, but like TFA I've decided that I don't like the ring form factor.

Likes it

This is about the Charge 3, but I disagree. For the Charge 4 I didn't even realise it wasn't a real button. There is a vibration that feels like you've pressed a real button (the iphone did this first I believe).

Doesn’t like it

I was fairly happy with my fitbit charge 4, but now it's actually useless as a watch most of the time because they pushed a firmware update that reduces the max screen brightness. So now it's impossible to read the screen outside, even on the max settings . God I hate closed down hardware. I don't actually care if the battery life gets shorter because I take the damn thing off every day to shower anyway, and the time it stays off is more than enough to charge it every day if I had to. But what really annoys me is that the choice is just made for me. I'm never buying a device with closed firmware, unreplaceable batteries, etc, ever again. It's a complete waste of money in terms of durability and I'm sick of not really owning the devices I pay out the nose for and that fact making them strictly less capable.

Neutral

I've owned a Fitbit since Fitbit One - the tiny peanut-shaped thingy. When it went bonkers on me, they replaced it for free.After a friend's puppy used mine as a chewstick, (spit it out when a canine pierced the battery), I upgraded to a Fitbit Charge 4 and used that through two sets of wrist bands, then upgraded to a Charge 5. Big mistake. While the 5 does an ECG -- like an IWatch I was gifted, it dropped "flights" - elevation change. Worse, it made text messages its primary feature, which means I get woken up at all hours of the night with beeps of all kinds, some of which are SMS morse code - which my brain then tries to decode. Big mistake. Edit two typos.

Likes it

For me it was a watch. I bought a Fitbit Charge 4, originally to track my heart rate/steps since I've never owned one and always relied on my phone for time. With my phone generally on silent and by not checking it so often, I've found my use of social media/apps has reduced drastically this year. To the point that I recently forgot my phone at home, something that I didn't imagine possible.

Doesn’t like it

Anecdote (and obligatory YMMV): I purchased the Charge 4 when it first came out and after extensive usage, I tossed it in the trash. The final straw for me was when I was having a physical done and compared the HRM data of the watch to what the readings the nurse was getting with her device. The data reported by the Fitbit was wildly inaccurate compared to the readings that the nurse was seeing. I also compared my data to my wife's Apple Watch and noticed large disparities in GPS data when we would go on runs/walks together. In the end, I came to the conclusion that a) if basic heart rate/GPS data is inaccurate, what else is? and b) what's the point of collecting all this data anyway? At the end of the day, it wasn't providing me with anything that fundamentally improved my life and if anything led to more anxiety due to constantly tracking and obsessing over all of this data. tl;dr - My Charge's data was questionable at times and completely inaccurate compared to a medical grade device. In the end, all the data tracking just gave me anxiety.

Doesn’t like itDoesn’t say they own it

I just hope this is not a repeat of the Versa 4 where no third party apps were allowed[1] (unlike the prev versions which allowed them). That's a head-scratcher. This is the thing that gets people to spring for a Garmin. [1] https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Versa-4/Can-I-install-apps-o...