Credit: C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
- The latest update to the Fitbit Charge 5 is reportedly causing excessive battery drain and bricking devices.
- This is a repeat of an incident from July 2023, which caused the same issues. The two updates even have the same changelog.
- There is no way to stop the Fitbit Charge 5 from auto-updating its firmware.
The Fitbit Charge 5 is a good fitness tracker, and it makes it to our list of best fitness trackers that readers should buy. Unfortunately for Charge 5 users, owning this tracker is turning out to be a headache, as updates frequently brick devices or cause disproportionate battery drain. We reported on a firmware update in July 2023 causing this issue, and a new firmware update in January 2024 is repeating the same story all over again.
Fitbit announced the latest v194.91 update for the Charge 5 with an extensive changelog. There are new clock faces, support for global language characters and right-to-left text notifications, availability of all exercise modes in the Exercise app, and general bug fixes and improvements.