Fitbit Charge 4 Advanced Fitness Tracker with GPS, Swim Tracking & Up To 7 Day Battery

I bought this to replace my faithful Fitbit Alta, which didn't have a lot of "bells and whistles". I was at first overwhelmed with all the features of Charge 4, but I quickly began to appreciate the accuracy of the heart monitor, as I am a cardiac patient. Also, the sleep tracker is brilliant, although, it often thinks I am asleep when I've been reading in bed for a while, before I drift off. So, it might be a bit too sensitive. However, after having it for several months, it popped of my wrist one day, and it broke off one of the parts that attaches it to the strap. I was prepared to pay to fix it, it's that good. But as I logged in to see when I purchased it, I found the warranty and began the process to return it, which consisted of a couple of clicks and a bit of typing, packing it up, printing out a lable, and sending it off. A few weeks later, I recieved a brand new Fitbit, as apparently, they were unable to repair mine. (Although, they never said that...they just sent me a new one.) In fairness, I realised, when I read the instructions on the new one, I'd been wearing it too tight...so that may be why it broke. (shhh..lol) Overall, I'm well impressed with the whole purchase and the product. I think I'm a Fitbit lifer now.

I have previously had a Fitbit Blaze, but I was disappointed with its battery life and eventually the battery stopped holding charge, so I was interested to see how the new Fitbit Charge 4 compared. Overall, I would say it is an improvement in most areas (although some are not as good as the Blaze)! It keeps its charge much better (although it is new) and is good for day to day wear but the battery life with GPS is disappointing. It is supposed to be up to 7 days normal wear and 5 hours GPS. It all depends on how active you are. I probably get 4 days normal (but I work outdoors and rack up 10,000 steps by 10am!) for GPS I would say make sure its fully charged first and you might make 5 hours.To begin with it was not straight forward to set up and like all fitbits it is not good if your internet bandwidth is low especially as all support is online! There is no way to manually set the time (which I have found an issue when travelling through different time zones in the past)It took a while to get the charger working (no smiley face) initially but I think it is just because the battery was so low to start with.The charging cable is uselessly short especially as a lot of the set up needs to be done whilst plugged in which resulted in my crouched on the floor under the side table! The charger is a much better design than previous models as you do not have to remove the strap and it has a clip to lock the watch into place, which is great once you get it working!Over the course of the first week there were daily firmware updates which were a bit annoying but I do now have the advertised functions ( I didn’t use Spotify, payment or any of the premium features and I did miss being able to control the music stored on my phone ( I am old fashioned that way)).The itself strap comes with 2 alternative sizes which is useful but only one has the band to keep the free end in which is a bit of an oversight. the strap itself is very plastic-y and not very comfortable. A softer silicone material would be nicer, but I suspect this will be more hardwearing. The strap attachment mechanism is much stronger than previous models.The display is black and white and it is very difficult to read in direct sunlight especially as the default display time is so low (the auto hibernate kicks in after about 5 secs which isn’t enough time for my eyes to adjust to the display) and there is no always on option or ability to delay the auto hibernate. The wake action of raising your wrist needs to be done quite firmly and often fails. (It was a pain when trying to take the photo!The screen itself is an ok size and the swipe/ button functionality take a bit to get used to. I found all the buzzing a little annoying and difficult to stop an activity once it was in progress as it would keep going through a loop of pausing then telling me to press to finish but when I did I got the DND/sleep mode options. I think it just takes a bit of getting used to.So on to some of the functionality...WorkoutsThe fitbit has inbuilt GPS so there is no need to take your phone and do not get the same connectivity loss. It auto detects workouts and you can track six activities on the device, but you can edit in the app/dashboard for example I can change the outdoor activity to horseback riding but it didn’t do anything to modify the stats which would have been nice. If you do autodetect though GPS is not turned on, so you won’t get a map. Various activities log different data but I was quite happy with the heartrate zones, energy burned distance & elevation. GPS does drain the batteryAs well as counting steps you record Active Zone Minutes which basically ranks your activity so that a higher intensity workout in the cardio heart rate zone is worth double a lower intensity work out with heart rate in the fat burning zone. It has a daily target of 22 an average of 7 days divided by 150 minutes of weekly exercise. You can customize all your targets in the app.Sleep & O2- Fitbit gives you an overall score for your sleep, showing awake, light REM and deep sleep periods. I tend to find the less deep sleep I get the more tired I am, and it all seems to be at the start of the night! It estimated my O2 fluctuations, but I am not sure for me this is especially useful, I think the just like to play with the sensor!Female tracking and food and water intake I just can’t be bothered with as its too much data input for me and my fluid comes not just from water! I did try to use it to log alcohol consumption though as it made me think about how much and when!Notifications can be enabled for calls and text messages, calendar updates but not WhatsApp messages ????Overall it does what it says on the tin and has a reasonably easy interface. Battery life and screen needs improvement but am I happy? YES!

I am a first time FitBit user, and have had my Rosewood Charge 4 for about a month now. I am overall very happy with my purchase.First, the positives:- it has made a real difference to my motivation to exercise and meditate more regularly. N.B. I use it for cardio circuits and strength training. I have not yet tested the GPS properly on a run.- heart rate analysis in general is great, especially during exercise. The different heart rate zones (fat burn, cardio, peak) are useful indicators. I cannot however comment on how accurate this is, as I have not used it in conjunction with a heart rate monitor.- sleep analysis is great. The sleep score and bedtime reminders have made me a lot more strict about getting to bed on time.- SmartWake alarm feature has made a real difference to how well rested I feel when I wake up. I no longer rely on my phone alarm, and instead wake up gently at my lightest stage of sleep which is great.- Battery life is amazing. Once charge lasts me at least 5-7 days.- No issues with syncing so far (although a different story when it comes to text/WhatsApp notifications - see below).The negatives:- The screen display sometimes doesn't light up when you tilt the watch towards you. It often takes a more exaggerated gesture / button press to light it up.- Text/WhatsApp notifications are EXTREMELY temperamental. Multiple times a week I find that my FitBit has not synced to display my phone notifications, and find a message on the app stating "Notification service not running. A phone restart is required to re-enable notifications on your tracker". What's even more frustrating is that a restart doesn't resolve this issue. Instead, the only solution appears to be going into my phone settings, clearing data for the FitBit app, and then logging into the app again and enabling notifications. I think this is a wider issue with FitBit compatibility with Android phones, and is not Charge 4-specific. I am currently using a Huawei P20 Pro.- The Spotify feature occasionally disconnects and unlikely to be of much use. It's more like having a remote on your wrist - useful if you're playing Spotify from your phone without your phone nearby and want to pause/skip a track. The only real use I've found for this feature is when I'm listening to music in the shower!- The Charge 4's strap is quite bulky on smaller wrists and the rubber is pretty inflexible (see picture). My wrists are very small - around 5ish inches - and this means there is a lot of space left when I tighten the strap as far as it can go (for me, the third hole from the smallest). I bought a woven strap separately to try and remedy this, and it does look better but hasn't completely resolved the issue due to the width of the device and strap connectors. If this likely to bother you, get a different FitBit watch.- The rubber on the Charge 4 strap does wear slightly with use (giving it a grey-ish tint).None of the above are dealbreakers though. If you're a first time fitness tracker user you are likely to still be very happy with your purchase!