That all changes with the Fitbit Charge 5. The Charge 5 comes with a full-color AMOLED display, which is a first for the product line. It also borrows some smartwatch features from larger Fitbits, like the Fitbit Sense. Of course, all of these upgrades also increase the price of the Charge 5, making it by far the most expensive Charge to date. Fitbit launched the Charge 5 on August 25, 2021. It follows another Fitbit tracker, the Fitbit Luxe, which was launched just a few months earlier. Unlike the Luxe, however, this tracker has a larger display and is more utilitarian in design. As different as the Luxe and Charge 5 may look, they are remarkably similar in many ways. The software is virtually identical, both have full-color AMOLED displays and no hardware buttons, and both have adopted some features from the flagship Fitbit Sense smartwatch. The Charge 5 has most of the expected health features of previous Charges, including a heart rate sensor, SpO2 monitoring, sleep monitoring, and pedometer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an altimeter, so it won’t be able to track floors and other height-related movements. New to the Charge line, however, is an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor. This is a sweat/stress sensor that was first used in the Fitbit family with the Sense. The Charge 5 can also measure skin temperature, but that only happens during sleep and there is no dedicated hardware for this measurement. If you just took a look at the Fitbit Charge 5, you’d immediately see why it’s so much more expensive than the Fitbit Charge 4. Gone is the ugly monochrome display, and in its place we have a beautiful full-color AMOLED panel. The display is significantly larger than that of the Luxe, the first Fitbit tracker with a color display. That extra screen real estate is important because Fitbit has also removed the capacitive side button we saw on the Charge 4. All navigation is now done through the display, either by swiping or tapping. This system is similar to that of the Luxe, but that tracker’s tiny display made these movements difficult. With this larger display, navigation is a breeze.
