Fitbit Charge 4 review

Our Verdict

With GPS and new health features, the Fitbit Accuse 4 is the best fitness tracker for most people.

For

Accurate, fast GPS
Big community of users
Good pattern

Confronting

No onboard music storage

Tom'southward Guide Verdict

With GPS and new health features, the Fitbit Charge 4 is the best fitness tracker for most people.

Pros

+
Authentic, fast GPS
+
Large community of users
+
Practiced design

Cons

-
No onboard music storage

The $150 Fitbit Charge iv is only the company's second device with GPS, and, when combined with a born heart rate monitor, it helps provide a much more accurate mensurate of your running, biking, and swimming.

Fitbit Charge 4 specs

H2o resistance: 50 meters
GPS: Yep
Heart rate sensor: Yeah
Display: 1 inch, 160 10 100-pixel touchscreen
Contactless payment: Fitbit Pay
Battery life: seven days/5 hours continuous GPS

Considering that several of the all-time cheap fitness trackers — all which cost less than $100 — have GPS, it's been a long time coming for the Fitbit. During my time testing the Accuse 4, I was fortunate enough to be able to run outside in the suburbs, keeping a good altitude from anyone I encountered. But the Charge 4 has another great qualities too, including enhanced sleep tracking and a new fitness metric, to allow you know if you're getting enough practice.

Be sure to read the rest of our Fitbit Charge 4 review to notice out what else we like about 1 of the best fitness trackers still, as well as our Apple tree Watch Serial iii vs. Fitbit Charge four and Fitbit Versa two vs. Fitbit Charge four face-offs to run across the benefits you'll become with a traditional fitness tracker over a full-fledged smartwatch.

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Since launching the Charge four, Fitbit has updated it to include two new features: Smart Wake can sense your sleep patterns, and adjust your wake time (upwardly to xxx minutes), and then as to avoid waking you lot while yous're in a deep sleep. Dynamic GPS can sense when your telephone is nearby, and use its GPS, rather than the Charge 4'due south GPS, in order to conserve battery life.

Fitbit Charge four review: Price and release date

The Fitbit Accuse 4 was released in Apr 2020, and is available on Fitbit.com, as well equally at online retailers including Amazon, All-time Purchase and Walmart. It's available in black or rosewood (a deep purplish red) for $149; a special edition, with a woven black/granite cogitating band, is bachelor for $169.

We're expecting the cost of the Fitbit Accuse iv to drop over the next couple of months as its successor, the Fitbit Charge 5, has now been released, with an ECG and EDA sensor, every bit well as a color AMOLED touchscreen. Read our Fitbit Accuse 5 review here.

The Fitbit Accuse four starts at $149.95 with either a black, rosewood and tempest blue/black wrist band. A Special Edition Charge 4 costs $169.95, and comes with a granite reflective/black woven band.

Fitbit Charge 4 review: Design

I'll exist the offset to admit that when it comes to smartwatches and fitness trackers, I like big, honkin' devices like the Garmin Fenix 6. But there's something to be said for the svelte Charge 4. For one thing, it's a lot lighter, so you lot almost forget that information technology's on your wrist.

The Charge 4 looks almost identical to its predecessor, the Charge 3. Both have a similar rectangular blueprint with a grayscale OLED touchscreen, and a replaceable band that wraps around your wrist. A single touch-sensitive area on the left side of the Accuse 4 acts equally a Back button. Previous generations had a concrete, silver button, and while the touch-push works well, I miss the silver color accent.

The Charge four's touchscreen was easy to read in all but vivid sunlight, and responded quickly to swipes, except when my finger was sweaty; then, it didn't work at all. That's pretty typical for most touchscreen devices, though. However, the minor size of the Charge 4's screen did make information technology a bit more difficult to read while I was running and my head and arms were moving.

Both Charge devices volition use a like-size wristband, then Charge iii owners who desire to upgrade but like their one-time band volition be able to easily swap them. All you take to do is press a push button on the underside of the strap where it connects to the device.

Those with smaller wrists may besides find there's a gap at the edges, where the Charge 4 connects to its strap; when my wife tried on the Charge 4, this gap was noticeable, though the device was secure.

Fitbit Charge 4 review: Agile Zone Minutes

With the Charge 4, Fitbit is introducing a new fettle metric called Agile Zone minutes. The tracker will measure the time you lot spend in target eye rate zones, and track your progress toward the goal of 150 minutes per week. It's the recommended minimum from the American Heart Association, Centers for Affliction Control, and World Health Organization.

You get double credit for the amount of time you lot spend doing vigorous activeness. The Charge 4 will calculate your target heart rate zones based on your age and your resting center charge per unit; as your overall fitness level improves, the Charge 4 will automatically recalculate those zones.

Active Zone Minutes comes on Fitbit's smartwatches now, as well. Our Fitbit Sense review and Fitbit Versa 3 review explain more than nigh how the feature performs on newer devices.

Later on Fitbit calculates your center charge per unit threshold for Active Zone Minutes (mine was 116 beats per infinitesimal), the app shows a nautical chart of your heart rate, and the time y'all spent in each zone (Fat Burn, Cardio, and Tiptop). Although I but spent 23 minutes in the Cardio and Peak zones (136 bpm and higher), I was awarded 46 minutes of credit. I'll accept it!

Fitbit Charge 4 review: GPS and running operation

The most notable new feature of the Fitbit Charge four is its built-in GPS. The Charge four is but the second of Fitbit's devices, and the first of its fettle trackers to take this feature. (The company considers the Fitbit Ionic to be a smartwatch.) Many of Fitbit's rivals have had GPS in similar trackers, and considering devices like the Garmin Precursor 35 running lookout now price less than the Charge 4, it's most time GPS became mandatory in trackers that cost more than $100.

I was pleasantly surprised at how apace the Accuse 4 picked up a GPS bespeak; on my start run with the device, it took about half a minute, but later that, it acquired the satellite in seconds. That'south what I get with the best GPS watches, and was happy to see it hither, besides.

Past default, the Charge four has six exercise shortcuts loaded: Run, Wheel, Swim, Treadmill, Outdoor Conditioning, Walk. Inside the Fitbit app, though, you can choose from 16 other activities ranging from yoga to kickboxing, even interval workouts.

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I liked that during my run, the Charge 4 would buzz my wrist when I moved from one heart charge per unit zone to another. However, I wish it would have also buzzed after each mile. If you lot accept headphones hooked upward (through your smartphone), the Charge 4 will give you sound cues to this effect.

After the Charge four synced with my phone, a map of my runs showed up in the Fitbit app, along with data for stride, elevation, heart rate zones, and calories burned. Even better, the app overlays this information along your road, so you can se precisely where yous were huffing and puffing.

Looking at the data, there appeared to be a couple of instances where the Charge iv's heart charge per unit monitor was a scrap tardy in its tracking; my heart rate would suddenly jump upwards 10 or 20 beats per minute before settling into a more than consistent design. Overall, though, the heart rate tracking seemed pretty consistent.

Fitbit Charge 4 review: Sleep tracking

The Fitbit Accuse 4 uses an SpO2 pulse oximeter sensor (also found in the Charge 3, Versa, and Ionic) to better help yous sympathise your sleeping patterns. A new Restoration metric shows not merely your heart charge per unit while sleeping, but also your restlessness and estimated oxygen variation; if at that place's a lot of variance, it could be linked to breathing issues such as sleep apnea.

The first night I wore the Accuse 4, it said I didn't fall asleep until nearly 12:30 a.1000., a one-half an hour or so later on I dozed off. I must've been tossing and turning a lot. However, my oxygen levels remained pretty consequent. The 2nd night, the Charge 4 idea I didn't fall asleep until 2 a.m. Fortunately, y'all tin edit this data in the Fitbit app, to more accurately reverberate your rest.

Fitbit has also brought its Smart Wake characteristic to the Accuse 4; the company says it uses auto learning to know the best fourth dimension to rouse you from your sleep, a characteristic my toddler has perfected without the assist of advanced algorithms.

Fitbit Accuse four: Spotify controls

Adapting some other feature brought over from Fitbit's smartwatches, the Charge 4 will take Spotify music controls. While you lot'll still demand your phone —deplorable, no onboard music storage — this should make it easier for you to skip tracks and change playlists. This was a nice-to-have characteristic, but until yous can really download tracks to the Charge iv, equally you lot can with the Versa 2, it'south not a feature I'd use regularly.

Fitbit Charge 4: Fitbit Pay

I'll admit, I didn't think much of contactless payment until I became slightly paranoid at touching any surface in public. However, it'southward overnice to know that I could use the Charge 4 to pay for stuff without having to put my fingers on a keypad. While not every bit ubiquitous as Apple tree Pay or Google Pay, Fitbit Pay works with 500 issuers, retailers in 44 countries, and 10 transit systems worldwide — not that I'm planning to use the New York City subway in the most future.

The Charge 4 is the first of Fitbit's fitness trackers to have this feature, only information technology is bachelor on the Versa, Versa 2, and Ionic. Here is a list of participating banks for Fitbit Pay.

Fitbit Premium

Launched concluding fall, Fitbit Premium is a $ix.99 per calendar month subscription service that offers personalized workouts, health and sleep insights, and coaching from trainers.

While not limited to those who purchase the Charge four, Fitbit is currently offer a 90-day complimentary trial of Fitbit Premium, besides as 40 new pieces of gratis content in the Fitbit app.

Fitbit Accuse 4 review: Battery life

Fitbit says that the Accuse 4 should terminal up to seven days in normal fitness-tracking mode — the aforementioned as the Accuse 3, and fairly standard for most fitness trackers — and will last upward to 5 hours if you lot're actively using GPS.

I took the Charge iv on a few runs using GPS; a xxx-minute run drained the battery past about 20 percent. If you were to extrapolate that, you would use up the battery in about 2.5 hours — half the fourth dimension that Fitbit claims. That's non great when compared to GPS watches, simply not horrible if you lot're using the Charge 4 just to track your daily runs around the neighborhood.

After iv days of wearing the Charge 4, plus two one-half-hour runs using GPS, the Charge 4's battery life was down to 24 percent.

Fitbit Charge 4 review: Verdict

With the add-on of GPS, the Fitbit Charge 4 represents a big improvement over the Charge iii. Now, yous can track your running, biking and swimming equally accurately as y'all can with a bona fide GPS watch. Plus, the Charge 4 has some other excellent features, including wireless payment support and amend wellness tracking.

That said, if you're a dedicated runner, y'all'll be ameliorate served by i of the best GPS watches, such as the $300 Garmin Forerunner 245, as those devices have larger displays, more granular metrics and settings and longer bombardment life, especially when using GPS.

But at that place's no denying that if y'all want a fitness tracker to precisely measure your do, sleep, and other health metrics, you can't do ameliorate than the Fitbit Accuse 4.

Michael A. Prospero is the deputy editor at Tom'southward Guide overseeing the dwelling house, smart home, drones, and fettle/wearables categories, as well as all buying guides and other evergreen content. When he's non testing out the latest running watch, skiing or training for a marathon, he'south probably using the latest sous vide machine or another cooking gadget.