Fitbit - Charge 3

I miss my fitbit charge 3. Compact, did workouts, heart rate, and read text messages. Battery lasted at least 7 days.

If you only want to measure distance, I count my laps in my head. I don’t think it’s easy to do, and I do lose track of a few laps every now and then. Overall, I’m quite sure my count is good, or I swam more laps than I counted (when I lose track, I try to start again from the last count I remember). I used to have a FitBit in 2024, and the battery was good (something like Charge 3 or 5 I think?). The screen slowly died away, and eventually, the entire watch’s system died after a few months of swimming. The watch was bought in 2018 or 2019, and I hadn’t used it much before 2024.

I’ve had a Charge 3, a Charge 5 and got a Charge 6 a few months ago. It’s been fine, does everything I need and battery life is great.

I bought a Huawei Band 8 recently. Only been a few weeks, I am very happy with it so far. i did not want something expensive. It was around 30 or 40 eur. I have used fitbit charge 3 before this is so much better for much less. Not sure about the life of it, as I just got it. But I was tired of changing fitbit band and I also hate its charger. It is also light weight which was important for me. It tracks stress, sleep, heart rate. Has a timer etc etc. the only issue is. Lose it nor health app is taking the steps from this, so I enter it manually. It may just be something that can be fixed, I havent gotten around to it yet. And yes it is really helping me with my steps. I also like looking at stress and sleep number.

I recently got a Garmin Vivosmart 5 to replace my Fitbit Charge I had for many years. Can’t believe I just made the switch, personally, the Garmin blows the Fitbit out of the water!

Garmin swim 2. Gives you pretty accurate yards that you can see while swimming. My Fitbit charge wouldn’t show distance until I stopped and synchronized with my phone after. Also, wet touchscreen on the Fitbit is useless.

Ya, I went through 2 fitbit charges before giving up and buying a pixel watch.

I like my Inspire a lot. I had issues with the last Charge I had but the Inspire has been great (I’m over the two year mark! My charges didn’t last much more than 2 years). The battery life is much better too. I’ve read articles that Fitbit app is being replaced on all android phones. To me this could imply a major refresh. If true - I’d say it’s a perfect time to get in!

I use a Fitbit charge but I take it off during rolling. There is someone at my class that uses a whoop with a bicep strap and he likes it. I asked if it ever slips or causes any problem and he said no. He's been using for training for 2 years now.

My wife and I had six different charge devices over the years. They all die just after the warranty! I really like the product but they don't last. Incidentally, the last one I bought I got the two year warranty. The product died after the first year and was replaced and then the replacement died 3 months after the warranty. Unless you want to buy one every year or so... don't but the fitbit Charge.

I don't believe you're going to find anything that fits those requirements. Heart rate monitoring while swimming is very difficult and only the most expensive garmins would I trust that it's being accurate. My recommendation would be a Fitbit Charge, I think that's going to be the best bet, it meets all of your other requirements and will track heart rate outside of the pool.

This. I was a long time Fitbit user with several Charges and a Versa. Switched to Garmin after Fitbit started to go downhill. My Garmin vivoactive 5 has been a great experience and I haven't looked back.

Honestly for the price point I would not get a fit bit. I had a charge and versa 2 or 3. The product wasn't great. The features struggled to work outside the basic health tracking and after a 2.5 years it was getting finicky about charging. I got a Samsung galaxy 6 instead. It was about the same price as a versa. All the advertised features work consistently without a fight. It is a much better product. Like you said they're phasing out the fit bit so if I were you I would go with the same brand watch as your phone for ease of use or something like a Garmin.

I’ve been using Fitbit for years. I’m currently on my second Versa Lite (had to buy a 2nd on eBay). I upgraded a few years ago to a Charge something, but the music controls didn’t work, so I returned and turned back to the Lite. It’s starting to require more frequent charging, which is a bummer. I’m starting to consider other options, but everything seems to have such a short battery life!

I had a Charge before actually (before the screen died and Google said tough luck). It was good for daily HR but I found every kind of activity tracking was really poor unless you had GPS on, and then it chewed through the battery like crazy.

you are probably right and tends to be the end result. You are generally better off sticking with the more well known brands. Ignoring blood pressure your cheapest option for what you want is fitbit charge - but does include a screen - but reasonably small.

fitness bands I feel are more for health based reasons as generally their hr and gps isn't great for activity (fitness bands are like amzfit band, huawei band, fitbit charge etc). They have started to increase smart functionality and are getting closerto a smartwatch. Smartwatches are more for either companion to your phone (enabling phone features on your watch) - wear os on android or apple watch on iPhone - they can replicate a lot of what the fitness watches offer but its via 3rd party - so not an complete eco system. Then you get yoru fitness brands - garmin, coros, polar and suunto - where their focus is health, fitness and training metrics and analytics - the bonus of these wattches is long battery life and sport specific metrics. And there are the others which are a sort of cross between wear os/apple watch and the fitness watches - huawei , amazfit, xiaomi etc (and loads of chineese branded watches in this category) - these watches can provide great value for money, however health, fitness and training metrics can be much more hit and miss than the fitness watches. As to which is best for you would depend on your focus and what you want a smartwatch to do - yours post seem to be all health based - its worth noting that no watch is a medical device and while some components may have a form of medical approval (fda etc be advised that the type of medical approval sign off doesn't make them a medical device its just confirming they can provide to a specific level - which isn't necessary a medical level that hospitals etc can use). From a health perspective any all of these watches can work for you including fitness bands - just depend on the level of detail and what features you want. Personally I would suggest a fitbit charge for you or alternatively the pixel watch 3 (assuming you have an android). Why fitbit - they give a fair amount of depth to their health metrics and they provide an easy to understand level of insight to their data (note if you want stress detail and sleep score detail you will need a sub). PS - this will provide you with most of the stuff you wanted plus up to 7 day battery life. If you wanted all those features (except blood pressure) in a very classy package you could look at a withings - however I feel they are a bit hit and miss on some of their results, and while you do get a cut out screen note you will have to consume most of your data with the app. So why would you get a watch for health features: Sleep - I pefer one that focuses on recovery as duration is generally fairly accurate for most, sleep stages to a degree is a waste of time (no watch can accurate distinguish between light & rem - even sleep clinics struggle) - thus how a sleep aids your body in recharging makes sense to me - this is a focus for oura, garmin, whoop, polar and to a degree fitbit - garmin is the best at incorporating sleep into other features. Stress - the impact to your body's ANS - can be useful driver with other metrics to show how your body is reacting to various inputs (i.e. high stress during sleep can suggest you coming down with an illness/injury/over training - incorporating this into other metrics like training readiness can help you reduce training and instead maybe take a recovery day enabling your body to recover/have more energy to fight an illness - effectively reducing the chance of injury/illness. This is great summary by garmin of what each health metric is and what it offers and why you might want to track it. Not all garmins have all these features but most do, and most of the other watches have similar features but not to the same level of detail. [https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/garmin-technology/health-science/](https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/garmin-technology/health-science/)

I have used a Fitbit Charge as my smartwatch for years. I think I'm on my third one and I only need to charge it about once a week. And with this latest one I got, it now has navigation and texting, two things I was missing in the past. It's smaller than even the 41mm Pixel and has everything I need. I'm with you ... just can't give up the battery life for a pixel watch.

Fitbit is fitness tracker. All the other options you mentioned are way more expensive smart watches. I still think Fitbit is good for general health tracking. Plus I really like sleep tracking and found Fitbit Charge comfortable to wear in bed compared to watches.

Why not just stick with the Fitbit Charge? My Fitbit also measured the little things. But it also picked up on too much. Garmin prefers to count little steps as "accidents" such as typing on a keyboard. If you are using it to win a challenge, then Fitbit might be better for you. But if you want it for running or workout suggestions, then Garmin is better.

Yes I left Fitbit when they got rid of Fitbit Bingo :(

Before I got more seriously into running, I really liked my Fitbit Charge. The best thing about it is that it would detect my activities automatically. So it knew if I went for a walk, went for a run, went for a bike ride, without having to tell it that's what I was doing. It counted my steps and tracked my heart rate 24/7, and it would tell me how many minutes I spent in each heart rate zone every day/week. With Coros, it doesn't track much at all unless you tell it you're about to do a workout. So I think Coros watches are best for analyzing workouts and training for events like races, FitBit is better as a general fitness tracker.

I've been using one for the better part of 2 months now. Same use situation kinda. I use it for time, timers, and sleep tracking. I had a fitbit charge before it that was great until it died. I wasn't going to drop another $100-140 for a watch to last a little over a year again. The watch pro 2 is awesome if you are willing to accept it's compromises. On the latest firmware, it duplicates notifications for me. It can and will disconnect from your phone if you go out of range or close the companion app. It likes for you to leave that in the background and have the connection notification in your notification shade (on Android at least, I am unsure of iPhone behavior). Neither of those are that big of a deal to me. What annoys me is when you set timers; you cannot leave the timer screen. The crown can accidentally stop the timer if it catches on clothes while you're moving around. I wear long sleeve rash guards at work and when it's raining; the wet rash guard sleeves will interact with the touchscreen and stop my timers, because again you can't leave the timer screen. I've already given feedback about how I'd love to have them modify the timer software's behavior. You *should* be able to send it to the background and go to the home screen. But as of right now it isn't designed that way. I've found a few screens where it remains on 24 hr time despite me setting it for 12 hr. Basically, it's got issues that can be patched with updates. I charge it once a week (a full 7 days). The battery life is AMAZING. I've only found one review that accurately describes the watch pro 2. It's a middle ground between fitness tracker and smartwatch. My Fitbit did not let me customize anything besides a watchface; it didn't do phone calls. It did last as long between charges. With the watch pro 2 you can have 4 "widget" screens in addition to the watchface. They have 4 spots per screen and they have widgets for each corner or a larger widget that takes two spaces (top or bottom). It has a "app menu" for anything you can't find a widget for. I don't regret buying mine. For the price point it's phenomenal.

I’m not familiar enough with Garmin+ to know. Honestly kind of a newcomer. Had a Fitbit charge for many years.

You have to remember that Fitbits are manufactured and sold by the hundreds of thousands. It's inevitable that some small number of people are going to have a problem with theirs. It's no different for any other consumer electronics product. You always play the odds when you buy any tech, but odds are that yours will work as advertised. The Fitbit brand has taken a lot of heat since Google bought it. But considering the competition, I'm not surprised that Tom continues to rate it high. I've been very happy with the three Charge models I've bought since 2016.

I had 3 Charge’s that all died in less than 18 months. This last time, instead of buying a new Charge 6, I bought a Garmin VivoActive 5. The size takes a bit of getting used to, but I’m happy to have broken up with FitBit for good.