I love that the Charge 5 is smaller and lighter than the Apple Watch it’s much more comfortable to wear and I regularly forget that it’s on my wrist. The Charge 5 works fine for this, though I have some annoyances with it. I typically turn off as many notifications and buzzers as I can. When I’m not running, I want my fitness tracker to be as inert as possible. But after a week of running with both the Fitbit Charge 5 and the Apple Watch SE, if I had to pick just one for future long runs, I’d grab the Apple Watch every time. I haven’t relied on a fitness tracker in years, instead using a cheap Casio watch to track my time. I like to run in a forest while listening to podcasts or music. Runs are my happy place - especially really long ones. (Unfortunately, I don’t have comparative data for my four-hour run because at one point I accidentally paused run-tracking on the Charge 5 for 20 minutes. The Apple Watch SE shows a shorter time because I stopped it first. If you can’t see the labels on mobile, the top metric is the Fitbit Charge 5 and the bottom is the Apple Watch SE. These are Fitbit Charge 5 and Apple Watch SE metrics taken from a run. Both devices, however, tracked the exact same average heart rate across both runs.įitbit Charge 5 and Apple Watch SE comparison Run Metrics According to MapMyRun, which lets you plot runs on Google Maps, one of my routes was 6.28 miles, but the Charge 5 recorded it as 6.1 miles and the SE tracked it as 6.02. But it’s hard to know which is truly accurate. The Charge 5’s metrics portrayed me as a better runner across two runs, the Charge 5 recorded slightly longer distances and slightly faster paces than the Apple Watch SE did. Interestingly, the Charge 5 and Apple Watch SE recorded some different metrics when I took them out on runs. And because I can use the digital crown or the button on the side to wake it up, I never felt any risk of tapping something I shouldn’t that would mess up my run. The Apple Watch, on the other hand (pun intended), showed me all of the stats I care about on one screen, no extra tapping required. This was very annoying, and I often had to completely stop running so I could tap the screen enough times to get my Charge 5 situated again. Many times during my four-hour run, I would tap on the Charge 5’s screen a couple times to wake it, only to accidentally tap past the last metric I had up, forcing me to keep tapping just to return to where I was before. Photo by Jay Peters / The VergeĪlso annoying is the fact that the Charge 5 has no physical buttons, meaning you have to wake up the screen by raising your wrist or by tapping on the screen. Also, sorry to subject you to my sweaty arm. It looks ridiculous - see for yourself below - though Fitbit tells me that this will be fixed for final retail units.įitbit says that the time being cut off will be fixed in final retail units. But after I crossed two hours, I noticed that the Charge 5’s screen cut off part of the time on both ends. During my training run, I liked having the length of my run shown as the main metric in the middle of the screen. The Charge 5’s small screen is also poorly optimized for showing long run times. Infuriatingly, I couldn’t figure out a way to go back to a metric if I accidentally tapped past the one I was looking for, often meaning I would be tapping the screen repeatedly. To get to the next metric, you have to tap the screen to advance them one by one. Handy.īut in the middle of the screen, you can only see one of nine other metrics at a time, such as pace, heart rate, and step count. During a run, the Charge 5 shows three metrics at a time, and two of them are always visible in small font at the top and bottom of your screen: your mileage and how long you’ve been running. Many of my frustrations come down to the Charge 5’s small 14.7mm x 21.9mm screen, which is surrounded by much bigger bezels than the official product shots would suggest, and its UI, which isn’t as easily glanceable as I would have liked. However, it did so much less elegantly than the Apple Watch did. The Charge 5 did tell me all of these things. So when I’m on a run, I want a fitness tracker to tell me how far I’ve run, how long I’ve been running for, what time it is, and my heart rate. I don’t really care about running fast instead, I like to run far. I happily submit myself to multi-hour runs many weekends of the year. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a somewhat specific set of requirements and needs. Buy for $179.95 from Amazon Buy for $179.95 from Best Buy Buy for $179.95 from Google Storeīefore I go further, I should tell you what I need a fitness tracker or smartwatch for.
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