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amazon Fitbit Charge 4 reviews
The Fitbit Charge 4 fitness tracker builds on its predecessors by adding standalone GPS, Spotify support, more sleep tools, and Fitbit Pay.
The Fitbit Charge line has produced some of our favorite fitness trackers on the market since the original model’s launch in 2014. Now, in its fourth generation, Fitbit builds on those. We like the Charge line with the addition of GPS to map your exercise route without the need for a phone, Spotify support, more sleep aids, and a new motivational metric that can name Active zone minutes. Plus, Fitbit Pay is now available on all Charge 4 models, not just the more expensive Premium version. While we’d love to see a color display, the $149.95 Charge 4 is a great update.
Design, Navigation, Battery Life, and Setup
The Charge 4 looks sleek, measuring less than half an inch at its thickest point. I particularly like the styling of the Special Edition (pictured in this review), which costs $20 more than the standard model but comes with a reflective black/granite band, along with a Classic black plastic strap that you can wear during your sweaty workouts. Swapping the strips couldn’t be easier. There are two small buttons on the tracker’s back—tap them to release a strip and snap in a new one.
Like its predecessor, the Charge 4 has a grayscale touchscreen that measures one inch diagonally.
The screen turns off quickly to save battery power by default, although you can adjust the screen-on time via the Screen Timeout setting. You can wake it up by tapping the touch-sensitive button on the left side of the device (which also lets you go back when navigating the interface), shaking your wrist, or tapping the screen itself. In testing, I sometimes had to tap the screen multiple times to wake up, annoying. Overall, the display is the main issue we’d like to see resolved in Charge 5.
You can customize the tracker with different watch faces, depending on your mood or the look you’ll choose for that day. I chose Mod Clock Date, which shows the time, current date, and your step count for the day. Other watch faces show additional metrics like Active Zone Minutes and your heart rate.
The interface is basic and clean. You can swipe up from the watch face to see fitness stats, including steps you took that day, steps hourly, Active zone minutes, current and resting heart rate, distance traveled, calories burned, floors climbed, sleep data, weight, water intake, and more. Swiping left from the watch face lets you access the apps on your device, including Exercise, Spotify, Agenda, Relax, Timer, Alarm, Weather, and Settings. Swiping down on the watch face brings up your notifications.
Fitbit says the Charge 4’s battery lasts up to seven days or up to five hours when using GPS. After wearing it for 24 hours (before the GPS test), the Charge 4 still had 85% battery left, which is pretty good. Using GPS to track workouts drained that number significantly faster, but that was to be expected.
To preserve battery life, you can enable a Dynamic GPS feature that uses your phone’s GPS when you’re carrying it with you and the Charge 4’s GPS when you’re not.
Charge 4 is water-resistant to a depth of 164 feet; I’ve worn it in the bathroom a few times with no issues. Fitbit says that you should dry the tracker after wearing it in water to avoid skin irritation. Fitbit also recommends regularly cleaning it and your wrist, especially after exercising or sweating.
For accurate heart rate readings, you should wear the Charge 4 tight enough that it won’t move around, but not so tight that it leaves marks on your wrists or cuts off your circulation. You should also periodically loosen or remove it completely to rest your wrist and avoid irritation.
Connecting the Charge 4 to the Fitbit app is simple. You open the app, select Device Setup, plug the tracker into your device’s charger, and wait for a smiley face to appear on the screen to indicate the device is charging. Follow the instructions in the app to pair it with your phone via Bluetooth and turn on notifications. The app then starts setting up your Charge 4 and installing software updates if available, which took over an hour for me.
Health and fitness tracker
Charge 4 tracks your steps, distance, floors climbed, calories burned, and Activity Zone Minutes, a newly earned metric for time spent burning fat, cardio, or heart rate zones highest heart. Women can use the Fitbit app to track their menstrual period and fertile window and see where they are in their cycle from their wrist.
Thanks to the Charge 4’s GPS, you can leave your phone at home and see real-time speed and distance on your wrist. GPS works with seven different types of activities: running, walking, cycling, hiking, interval training, and a new outdoor workout mode for things like kayaking, surfing, and skiing.
To use the Charge 4’s GPS, select one of the compatible workouts, wait for the GPS signal, then tap Start. I tested this feature for 23 minutes walking/running, and it worked perfectly.
While running, Charge 4 displays your distance and speed on the screen, as well as how long you’ve covered. When you reach your fat burning, cardio, or peak zone, it vibrates and displays an encouraging message on the screen.
Completing an activity, Charge 4 shows a summary, including the length of your workout, how many miles you traveled, average speed, how many activated Minutes Zones you accumulated, average and maximum heart rate, how many calories you burned, number of steps.
See how we test fitness trackers.
One limitation is that you can’t track your workout in the background and use another app simultaneously. That means you can’t go back to the Spotify app to control your music or even the watch face to see the time unless you finish your workout.
In the Exercise section of the Fitbit app, you can see a color-coded workout intensity map that shows your route and heart rate zone at any given time. For my running/walking portion, the map shows that I hit the cardio zone shortly after getting out, then alternates between fat burning, cardio, and peak time zones remaining. Another color-coded map shows your speed changes during the run.
The Charge 4 is the first Fitbit device with Activity Zone Minutes, measuring how hard you’ve worked in an activity based on your age and resting heart rate. You earn one minute in the activity zone for every minute spent in the fat-burning zone — no matter what type of exercise you’re doing — and double that for time spent in the cardio or peak zone. If you’re working hard and hitting your peak heart rate or zone, the activity zone minutes you earn may exceed your workout duration. For example, in my 23 minutes of walking/running, I accumulated 42 Activity Zone Minutes.
The default goal is 150 minutes in the weekly activity zone or about 22 minutes per day. Fitbit says it can help prevent illness, reduce anxiety, improve cognitive function and sleep, and have other benefits. You can change your Active Zone Minutes goal in the Fitbit app.
There are six pre-installed exercise shortcuts on the Charge 4, including running, cycling, swimming, walking, jogging, and outdoor workouts. Still, if that’s not your favorite activity, you can easily customize the list. To do so, go to the Charge 4 section of the Fitbit app, tap Exercise shortcuts, delete the ones you want to replace, and select the activities you want to track. There are plenty of options to choose from, including Bootcamp, kickboxing, martial arts, Pilates, spinning, tennis, and more. You can also rearrange the list and put your favorite activities at the top for easy access. I’m a regular yoga practitioner, so I added it to the top of the list, followed by weights, running, walking, cycling, and outdoor workouts.
where can you get a Fitbit Charge 4 online
Fitbit Charge 4 Fitness and Activity Tracker with Built-in GPS, Heart Rate, Sleep & Swim Tracking, Rosewood/Rosewood, One Size (S &L Bands Included): Buy it now
Fitbit Charge 4 Black Advanced Fitness Tracker: Buy it now
Fitbit Charge 4 Fitness Tracker Rosewood NFC: Buy it now
Sleep tracking
Charge 4 tracks how much time you spend in light, deep, and REM sleep each night. While sleep tracking has been available on Fitbit devices since the original Charge, the fourth-generation model has some sleep tools previously only available on the expensive Versa 2 smartwatch. That includes the ability to see your Sleep Score on your wrist and Sleep Mode, which dims the screen and mutes all calls and messages at night. To see your Sleep Score, swipe up from the watch face. To enable Sleep Mode, press and hold the left button and then swipe right.
Your daily sleep score gives you a “snapshot of the quality and duration of your sleep,” based on the amount of time you are asleep and awake, how much deep sleep you have, and REM, your sleep heart rate, and level of restlessness. The app explains that “during deep sleep, your muscles relax and repair themselves, while in REM sleep, your memory and mood are refreshed like they were dreaming.”
An asleep score of 90 or higher is considered “excellent,” between 80 and 90 is “good,” between 60 and 79 is “fair,” and less than 60 is “poor.” Fitbit says most people are between 72 and 83.
The first night I tracked my sleep using the Charge 4, I slept for 6 hours and 22 minutes, and it gave me a score of 77. Interestingly the next night, I fell asleep for a longer period — 7 hours and 2 minutes — but I felt much more restless, and the Charge 4 tracked exactly that, giving me a sleep score of 74. On the third night, I decided to wear earplugs and keep a diary for 6 hours and 41 minutes continuously, get a score of 80.
Usually, I wouldn’t say I like wearing anything around my wrist to bed, but the Charge 4’s slim profile makes it surprisingly comfortable while sleeping. I’ve loosened it up a bit, but it still tracks my sleep well.
The Fitbit app provides a wealth of information about your sleep. You can see a graph for each night that shows how long you’ve slept and been awake, your sleep stages throughout the night, and how your sleeping heart rate fluctuates. These insights can be a good wake-up call if you don’t close your eyes enough.
The app also displays an Estimated Oxygen Variation graph that shows changes in breathing while you sleep. The app notes that “blood oxygen saturation often fluctuates, but high variability can be associated with breathing problems.”
The Charge 4 allows you to set a silent alarm so it will wake you up at the specified time with a gentle vibration on your wrist. That is a great feature if you sleep with someone or have roommates. The Charge 4 also supports Smart Wake, which uses machine learning to wake you up at the optimal time when you’re in a light sleep. Previously, Smart Wake was only available on Fitbit smartwatches.
Spotify, Fitbit Pay, and Notifications
Spotify support is a top request among Charge device users, so it’s great to see it on the fourth-generation model. To set up Spotify:
- Go to the Charge 4 section of the Fitbit app, select Apps, then Spotify.
- From there, tap Settings and sign in to your Spotify account.
- Note that you must have a Spotify Premium subscription to use the music streaming service on Fitbit.
The Spotify app on the Charge 4 lets you browse your recently played music, play, shuffle and skip content; liked the songs; and select music output. This app is a great addition to the Charge 4, but its controls are a bit basic. For example, you can’t click on a playlist and choose a specific song you want to listen. You also need to connect your phone.
Another great upgrade to the Charge 4 is that Fitbit Pay is now standard on all models. On Charge 3, the mobile payment system is limited to the more expensive Special Edition model.
With Fitbit Pay, you can leave your wallet at home and pay right from your wrist. Fitbit Pay works with Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, PNC, SunTrust, Wells Fargo, and many other banks and card issuers.
To set up, you’ll first need to set a four-digit PIN for Charge 4, then enter your credit or debit card information and billing address. When you set up Fitbit Pay, the app will notify you that merchants will only see a device-specific number, not your actual card number, a good privacy guarantee.
Once you set it up, you can use Fitbit Pay anywhere that accepts contactless payments; when you see the contactless or mobile payment icon at the check-in counter, press and hold the left button on Key 4 for two seconds. If prompted, enter your four-digit PIN, and your card will appear on the screen. Then hold your wrist near the pay station.
This feature is handy in the COVID-19 era, allowing you to reduce your exposure to potentially germ-laden point-of-sale systems.
The Charge 4 can also show notifications from your phone for calls, messages, and meeting invitations. If you use an Android phone, you can send quick reply messages. It’s a shame that iPhone users are excluded from that party, but Apple’s closed ecosystem prevents Fitbit from providing quick replies on iOS.
To control notifications on your device, go to the Charge 4 section of the Fitbit app, tap Notifications, and use the toggle to turn call, text, and calendar alerts on or off. You can also choose to turn on notifications from certain apps. For example, I turned on notifications from Amazon, Coinbase, and Slack but left Snapchat.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to boost your health and fitness, the Fitbit Charge 4 and its great companion app provide many insights that can help encourage you to be active and improve your sleep. Its screen could be better, but the Charge 4 has a nice design, good battery life, and is water-friendly. Fitbit’s lineup falls between the $199.95 Versa 2 smartwatch and the more basic $99.95 Inspire HR fitness tracker. Thanks to more GPS, Spotify controls, more sleep trackers, and Fitbit Pay on all models, the Charge 4 stands out as one of the best-advanced fitness trackers you can buy.
Advantages
Built-in GPS
Powerful companion app
Spotify Support
Other sleeping tools
Fitbit Pay is available on all models (not just Special Edition)
Indicator of Minutes inactive zone
Defect
Missing color screen
Waking up the screen can be complicated
Basic interface