- The latest update to the Fitbit Charge 5 is reportedly causing excessive battery drain and bricking devices.
- Affected consumers with an active warranty are offered a 35% discount code from Fitbit toward device purchases.
- 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. However, review assessment of products takes into account the state of the product at the time of review. There are instances where products improve significantly after launch, and there are instances where they go in the other direction thanks to updates. The latest update for the Fitbit Charge 5 is reportedly bricking the fitness tracker for many users, so you may want to hold off on updating to the newest firmware.
Fitbit announced the latest v194.61 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.