Buying a Fitbit Charge 5

Day 15.

After being in hospital and having the luxury of a heart rate monitor to see what my heart was up to, I wanted something at home to do the same. This lead me into looking into smart watches with built-in heart rate monitors.

I researched a couple of options on the market. My main selection criteria was:

• Not too expensive

• Fairly accurate heart rate monitor

• Nice to have a way to keep track of exercise, specifically walking and maybe running

• Available in New Zealand without excessive shipping delays

This is not a sponsored post.

Choosing a smart watch

I ended up with 3 main watch contenders:

	Fitbit Sense 2	Fitbit Charge 5	Apple Watch Series 7
		WINNER
Measure heart rate	Yes	Yes	Yes
ECG	​Yes	Yes	Yes
Accuracy	Good	Good	Great
Step counter	Yes	Yes	Yes
Set goals	​Yes	Yes	Yes​
Price	From NZ$ 449	From NZ$ 299	From NZ$ 649

I ended up buying a Fitbit Charge 5 from Life Pharmacy's online store on promotion - Life Pharmacy is a local New Zealand pharmacy brand. The main reason for my final decision was that it was good enough for an excellent price point.

It landed on my doorstep on 14 June 2022.

What I have liked about the Fitbit Charge 5

The Fitbit mobile app for iPhone is really great. I have loved the heart rate features like low and high heart rate alerts (both of which I have used and needed).

I have loved the ability to send different watch faces from the Fitbit mobile app to the watch that showcase different elements of importance. For example there are watch face options with a focus on showing metrics like heart rate vs others with a focus on reaching goals set for step counting.

The watch screen works really well in the dark and in the daytime.

I have loved that it came with two strap length options right out of the box: regular and longer. I was quite deflated when the watch strap didn't fit my wrist (meet me: tall girl with big wrists), but then found the longer strap hidden at the back. Huzzah!

What I have disliked about the Fitbit Charge 5

On occasion the heart rate measurement has been wrong.

I have been able to contrast the heart rate displayed on the watch screen with a medical grade heart rate monitor in hospital. A few times the Fitbit has shown a higher heart rate in fat burn mode when the medical grade monitor have shown regular heart beat rates.

I have also had the heart rate monitor get stuck on a specific setting.

This creates a few trust issues when you are using the heart rate monitor feature on the watch at home.

I have also found it frustrating that the watch cannot measure steps as well as heart rate when I push the stroller to pick up my son from daycare (this accounts for most of my steps every day).

In summary

I am very happy with my choice. The Charge 5 does the job very well with a lot of the same features as the Sense 2 in the Fitbit mobile app. The Apple Watch might have been nice in terms of accuracy, but at the price point was not comparable.