Fitbit Charge 6 Fitness Tracker

I had a Fitbit for the last few years that I acquired for free, from my insurance company and I absolutely loved it. It finally died. Completely. And I was heartbroken. I didn’t want anything like an Apple Watch because they’re too big and bulky and I don’t need all the extras that are on it. I’m 63 years old. My old Fitbit saved my life because I went into a fib and had no idea what was going on until I checked on my Fitbit to see that I was in trouble. I was at the hospital already with my daughter, sitting with her and immediately a team came in and took me straight downstairs to the ER. I stayed there for a week until I got better. That’s due to this Fitbit that I had. I ordered this Fitbit six, and I love it just the same. Does everything the older one that I had did that was not a six. I have not scratched it at all, and I’m rough on things because I work outside a lot with my hands. I love the heart rate monitoring and the sleep tracking. It’s very comfortable. The size is perfect. If this one ever dies, and I hope it’s a few years before that happens, I will order another one. I’m very happy with these. My only complaint is that the bands from my Fitbit five do not fit this six model. They will not stay attached so I’m scared to order extra bands to go with this six.

Nice quality screen, solid and accurate tracking. I was pleased to find that most functionality is available without the subscription. The plastic band slightly irritated my arm so I switched it with a braided nylon band which is much better for me. I use mine primarily as a sleep tracker and it is quite accurate, I like the graph showing the nightly sleep stages. It lasts about a week on a single charge and charges quickly, about 90 minutes or so from 15% to full. No issues for me so far.

I wanted a relatively simple, small, lite watch with excellent sleep and fitness tracking; I don't want to read messages or emails on my wrist - I keep my phone with me for that. In fact for most smart watch functions, I'm fine with simple controls on the watch and doing the heavy changes on my phone. With that in mind, Charge 6 has done a great job. It is lite and comfortable, includes face fonts that make it easy to read even in daylight, and it is an excellent fitness & sleep tracker. If Google would stop sabotaging the fitness app, I would give this an easy 5 starts. Unfortunately, Google seems determined to gimp everything that made fitbit awesome. The app software is slowly becoming terrible, functions are removed and the GUI makes the sleep tracking difficult to track. The quality has dropped enough that I stopped subscribing to the advanced features, they werent' worth it any longer. Lesson - don't trust any Google owned wearable to continue whatever it is you think is worth buying it for.

A family member had recently raved about her FitBit and I had a very old Apple Watch which needed replacing (due to terrible battery life) so I was convinced to give it a try. Unfortunately, my experience has been quite awful and I want others to be informed before they buy. My main reasons for using a smart watch are the health functions such as exercise logging, step counting, heart rate etc. So if these things are important to you please read further: 1st disappointment: Inability to sync FitBit to Fitness app on iPhone. I had a pretty impressive streak in my Fitness app and it was a huge motivator for me to exercise daily (something I have always struggled with). It was QUITE the blow to see all my progress completely wiped away. (No more 200+day streak for me! I guess). Fitbit does have a free app to collect new data but I’m still disappointed that they cannot combine all your progress from both somehow. 2nd disappointment: SEVERE Inaccuracy on distance. I head to the gym for my first workout with the Fitbit. I get on the elliptical and select the “elliptical workout” option on the watch and press start. As I’m warming up I notice the watch does little vibrations as my heart rate increases to different levels “light” “moderate” and then “vigorous” - which I think is a nice touch. When I get 1 Mile (on the machine) into my run I decide to check my progress (on the watch) but to my HORROR it says only 0.3 miles… How did it miss 70% of my workout!?! I cannot express how devastated I was to see that. I’m working so hard to change my life and watching the miles stack up day after day is my only reward so far. I’ve done lots of googling to solve this problem and tried manually adjusting the stride length to every length there was but nothing fixes it and I’ve read plenty from other people who report the same exact problem so I’m convinced it’s just their terrible calibration. 3rd disappointment: Major exaggeration of calories burned. As I mentioned I have an Apple Watch I used every day for quite some time. I am very familiar with my typical calories burned daily. I also follow the amount on my exercise equipment as well. For some reason the FitBit consistently shows an abnormally high number for calories burned. For instance something that should burn about 200 calories suddenly burns 2 THOUSAND…?? This all makes EVEN LESS sense when you consider the aforementioned distance tracking issue; claiming I burned 2,000 calories by running 0.3 miles??? Ridiculous. This combination of discouragement from the “it won’t matter anyway” distance tracking, to the absurd number of calories I’ve “already burned” today is a recipe for disaster for me. Un-motivating my workouts and encouraging my laziness. Please DO NOT rely on this watch for your health goals. The final straw for me is the terrible battery life. To be completely clear - I have had this device for 4 days and I have already charged it 4 times. So please do not be mislead by claims of charging “once a week” or “once every other week”. NOT true. And, yes, I’ve tried all the different display settings. I hope someone takes the time to read this like I did not do. If Amazon returns weren’t such a headache I would’ve sent it back after that first workout. I’m actually stunned at HOW awful it is. There are many more issues I did not get into because they are mainly aesthetic and I wanted to focus on the ones that could genuinely cause someone harm but I’d be glad to elaborate on those other issues as well if anyone is curious.

I have had a Fitbit for so long at this point that when mine starts acting up, replacement is automatic. It does sleep tracking, pulse/ox, and so much more than just steps (which is how I originally used it). Just checking my sleep stats helps me realize the cause when my energy is tanked while setting a step goal just slightly out of reach is a real motivator. I have it set to prompt me when I haven't walked 250 steps in hours that I am active and also when I am approaching my goal to get the last few steps before midnight. I might not do anything about either prompt if I'm not able to, but when I am, I'll go for a short walk or jog on my rebounder exercise trampoline for a minute or two. Basically, I find the Charge 6 as successful at motivating me and tracking key points for my health as my previous Charge 5 (and I like that the charger and wristbands I had for the 5 work perfectly with the 6). The battery life at least so far is much better than the 5, however, so I'm charging about once a week instead of every 3 days. The only downside for me is the data access and view. Since Google bought Fitbit, the exports of my data that I used to give my doctor are no longer available. The raw data is easy to get, but you have to parse it and organize it yourself. The other downside is your data is no longer accessible on the computer. I'm not much for using my phone for anything beyond calls, texts, and games. I much prefer looking at stats and charts on a bigger screen. If you have been a Fitbit user before, you may miss these features. If not, going in you should know that the results of your efforts will be viewable primarily on the phone. If that doesn't bother you, then you'll be all set. Oh, and one other feature that either didn't work on my 5 or I turned it off without understanding it is the notifications. I like being able to quickly read a notification on my watch regardless of the game or conversation I'm in on my phone. You can read, clear, or open the notifications. Open switches your phone to the app that sent the notification. Downside is that if the notification itself doesn't say who sent it (app name or contact name if a text, voicemail, or messenger), so you have to check the phone for that.

This was given as a gift. They absolutely love it. Highly recommend it does everything as advertised.

Decent price, delivered quickly. Easy transition from my CHARGE 5 to the new CHARGE 6. Everything seems to work and uses the same charging cable as the 5.

I've had experiences with Fitbit for quite some time now. I originally started with the Alta. It was great for what it was, but wished it could do more. Not long after, I moved onto a Charge 2. It mostly satisfied what I was looking for with what it offered compared to the Alta (heart rate tracking, bigger screen, navigating beyond touch, more screen real estate, etc). As much as I liked it, there were still some flaws. One of the biggest annoyances was how it would get disconnected and I'd miss notifications. That's when I went with the Apple Watch (Series 2) and haven't been back since. I had high hopes for the Charge 6 when it came out and was hoping Google would make big strides into improving what I remembered of the 2. It seemed to have all the checkmarks, except they took away the altimeter to count flights of stairs climbed. The first thing the product tells you to do when taking it out of the box is to open the Fitbit app to activate the Charge. I haven't opened the app in years so when I did, it told me to sign in. That's when I came to my first issue. My original Fitbit account is no longer valid. I was forced to migrate my account to Google and there was some issues when attempting. It wasn't very smooth and took 2 attempts. OK, after that we need to get the App to talk to the Fitbit. Which leads me to the second issue. For whatever reason, the Fitbit wouldn't connect to my phone. The App would recognize the Fitbit was nearby, but it wouldn't connect to it. I would open and close the app multiple times, along with toggling the bluetooth on/off on my phone, checking all permissions, and even restarting the phone. The app would see the device, so would the phone, but it just wouldn't connect. It finally connected after I upgraded my iphone to the newest ios (which was only one iteration newer and released a few days prior). I don't believe that's the true cause for my issue, but whatever. When the Fitbit connected, it then tried to upgrade it's firmware which lead to the third issue. The Fitbit needs to be near the phone while the firmware is downloading. The device couldn't have been more than 2 feet from the Fitbit, but the download would disconnect. The download takes about 10-15 minutes to complete, but it failed on my the first 2 times. It completed successfully on the third attempt and now I can finally start using it. Comparing this to my old Fitbits, the first thing is that the screen is beautiful. I like that it's smaller and a lot more refined than the Charge 2. I also like the fact that they have removed the character limit of text notifications (so I can see full message) and that I can go back to previous messages that were sent. This annoyed me before because what showed on the screen was only the last message truncated and if you didn't see it while it scrolled past, you can't see it anymore without pulling out your phone. You can see the past 10 notifications sent before it rolls over. I limit my notifications to only the basics like phone calls and text messages to maximize this functionality. The steps counter, sleep, and HR monitoring are what I would expect them to be. And the battery life is way better than an Apple Watch... I don't have to worry if I charged the watch the night before in order to use it. Unfortunately, the added functionality from Google is also stunted. You can't respond (preset responses) to messages unless you have Android. New functionality like to control Youtube music app requires a paid premium account. The touchscreen isn't that responsive, causing me to swipe multiple times or just not respond at all. But the final straw is the connectivity. Too many times I would miss notifications because somehow connectivity was lost and wouldn't re-establish. Usually a re-sync with the app would resolve this, but only after I noticed something was wrong. I really really wanted to like this device, but it would be too many compromises for this price. You can really see and feel the direction Google is taking with their acquisition, treating FitBit completely as secondary while incorporating the FitBit tech in their flagship Pixel watches. Especially with a $70 price cut a little over a month after release and them pulling Fitbit products from multiple countries. With all this, looks like I'll be upgrading to an Apple Watch Series 9 instead.

Good product. Got it on sale. Replaced a Charge 2 I’d had for several years. Biggest complaint with the Charge 2 was that I couldn’t read the display in bright sunlight. The Charge 6 is much better in this regard. Not crazy about most of the display configurations offered. Happy with the default one. It does take a lot of effort to learn all the features, the more arcane of which I’ll never use, and to learn how to configure and use them. Attractive device. While setting it up, I found a limitation of the Fitbit app that bugs me. I can’t appear to be able to control multiple devices with it. My wife was given a Versa 3 as a gift, and expects me to set it up for her, so I have to pry her iPhone out of her hand (difficult) to do that, because I can’t control it from my phone.

I love my Fitbit Charge 6! It has a simple, sleek design that’s easy to navigate, making it perfect for everyday wear. The step counter is fantastic—super accurate—and it doubles as a great watch, too. I genuinely enjoy wearing it, and the long battery life means I don’t have to worry about constant charging. One feature I wish it had is Bluetooth tracking to help locate it if misplaced, but that’s a small downside in an otherwise excellent product. If you love walking, running, or are just starting your fitness journey, this is a must-have tool!