At a time when it seems likededicated fitness trackersas a category are getting stale, the Fitbit Charge 6 feels surprisingly relevant. The Charge 6 is actually $20 less expensive than the last-gen Charge 5 was, but at an MSRP of $160, it’s still approaching cheap smartwatch territory. It also packs in more Google-centric smartwatch-like functionality than Fitbit’s previous trackers have, though, with support for both Google Wallet and Google Maps, all while maintaining the multi-day battery life central to the proper fitness tracker experience. If you can get past the tiny, narrow display, there’s a lot to like here.
Fitbit Charge 6
The Fitbit Charge 6 is Fitbit’s first tracker with integration for Google services like Wallet and Maps. There otherwise aren’t many improvements from the previous-gen Charge 5, but for $160, the Fitbit Charge 6 could be a great option for anyone out for a long-lasting, convenient fitness tracker.
Price and availability
The Fitbit Charge 6 costs $160, representing a $20 price decrease from theFitbit Charge 5— nice. It comes in three colorways that match much of Google’s other recent hardware: black aluminum with an Obsidian band, silver aluminum with a Porcelain band, or champagne gold with a Coral band. It’s available now from Google, Fitbit, and third-party retailers including Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and others.
Design and hardware
Google’s newest Fitbit tracker consists of small, rectangular body that’s a little under an inch and a half by one inch in size, nested between two halves of a silicone wristband. There’s a tiny, full-color AMOLED display on the Charge 6’s face, an array of health sensors and charging pin contacts on its underside, and a single, pressure-sensitive button on its left edge. The tracker’s bands attach via a clever clip mechanism to the top and bottom of the Charge 6’s body.
The Charge 6’s design is the same as the one Fitbit introduced in 2021’s Charge 5. It’s the same size, with the same itty-bitty color screen — the two trackers' bands are even interchangeable. But while the Charge 5 came in black, silver, or gold colors with a variety of band options, the Charge 6 comes in black, silver, orchampagnegold colors that match the metal accents on Google’slatest Pixel phonesand thePixel Watch 2.
Band colors are also coordinated: the Obsidian, Porcelain, and Coral bands the Charge 6 comes with all match other Google kit, and I’m unreasonably pleased at how well the champagne gold Charge 6 matches my Rose Pixel 8 with a Coral case on. It doesn’t affect how well the device tracks your fitness, of course, and it’ll matter even less as Google releases more new colorways in the future, but I’m a sucker for consistency.
I think the Fitbit Charge 6 is very comfortable. It’s small and light enough that it’s easy to forget I’m wearing it at all, and its unobtrusive footprint means it’s easier to wear to sleep than larger trackers and smartwatches. If you don’t like the feeling of bulkier wearables, the Charge 6’s small size should be a big reason to check it out.
I don’t love Fitbit’s decision to consistently put hardware buttons on the left edges of its trackers, though — I get the idea is that you squeeze the tracker to press the button, but it can make using the Charge 6 while wearing long sleeves awkward. I would’ve at least liked the option to change which side the button is on in software, like you can on the Pixel Watch; the hardware is symmetrical, so it’d just be a matter of rotating the display 180 degrees.
The downside of the Fitbit Charge 6’s slim build is that its screen isreallysmall. It’s 1.04" AMOLED display that looks quite nice, with high enough resolution that individual pixels aren’t visible from a normal viewing distance and pleasantly vibrant colors. It also gets bright enough to read outdoors. It’s very narrow, though, which really limits how much useful information it can display at once.
During applicable workouts, the Charge 6 will show distance traveled at the top of its screen and a duration timer at the bottom in tiny text, and you can tap in the middle to cycle through larger views of a number of other metrics, like heart rate and calories burned. I don’t need to see more than three metrics for my ongoing workout simultaneously — I’m glancing at my wrist every few minutes at most. But having to cycle through a bunch of different metrics one by one while you’re running is a clunky experience that takes your eyes off what you’re doing for entirely too long. App notification previews are also laughably brief, sometimes showing only five or six words. The Charge 6’s small display is often a hindrance, even if your eyes are sharp enough to read small text.
Software and performance
Tiny display aside, the Fitbit Charge 6 is easy to use. Swiping around the tracker’s various screens is speedy, and its UI is simple to navigate. Device settings are accessed with a swipe down on the clock face, health stats a swipe up, and various other functionality — app notifications, exercise tracking, timers and alarms, et cetera — in a rotating carousel to the left and right. A single press on the Charge 6’s hardware button will return you to the home screen, and a double-press will open Google Wallet.
Google Wallet functionality is part of a trio of Googley new features in the Charge 6: while previous Fitbit devices used Fitbit Pay, the Charge 6 is the first Fitbit tracker to come with support for Google’s contactless payments platform. That’ll be very convenient for a lot of users, but I actually haven’t been able to try it.
Cards from the bank where my checking account is are supported in Google Wallet, generally, but not on Fitbit. Fitbit supports Mastercard cards from another bank I use, but not Visa (again, a Fitbit-specific limitation). Yet another bank, I’m told, “has temporarily paused support” for Google Wallet altogether.
I think Google Wallet is one of the most exciting new features in the Charge 6, so I’m frustrated I couldn’t test it. My experience here does seem unusual — other reviews, including fromour sister site How-To Geek, have noted the Wallet experience on the Fitbit Charge 6 has been about as frictionless as it is on any other wearable. Still, if Google Wallet would be a big get for you in the Charge 6, be sure to look at Fitbit’slist of supported banksbefore buying. You’ll probably be fine, but it never hurts to check.
Google Maps on the Fitbit Charge 6 is just turn-by-turn directions sent from your paired phone; you’re able to’t actually view maps on the tracker’s screen. Given how small it is, that makes sense, and walking and cycling directions on your wrist is still convenient. YouTube Music integration is disappointing, though.
The Fitbit Charge 6 doesn’t have a YouTube Musicapp, really — it can only control playback in the YouTube Music app running on your phone. You can’t save playlists or podcasts to the tracker for offline listening, and you can’t control playback in any media app but YouTube Music. I can understand hardware limitations precluding offline music playback, but evencheap earbudscan control playback in any media app on your phone. The Charge 6 seems intentionally limited on this front, and I’m not pleased about it.
Fitness tracking
The Fitbit Charge 6 automatically tracks steps, activity, heart rate, SpO2, body temperature, and sleep duration and quality, and, of course, tabulates all that data in the Fitbit app. The app is sort of in an awkward transitional period right now, with some views presented with a new, morestreamlined look (thathasn’t been entirely well received by users) while others clearly still sport bits of Fitbit’s legacy app design.
The app is relatively easy to use, and I appreciate that you’re able to customize the Today tab to highlight whichever stats are most important to you. I’m not entirely convinced Fitbit is the one-stop shop for all our fitness needs that it wants to be, though; Fitbit’s food logging is more cumbersome than alternatives like MyFitnessPal, and the Fitbit Premium-exclusive Coach tab isn’t so much a virtual fitness coach as it is a curated collection of video and audio wellness content.
In addition to this library of workout videos and audio-guided meditations, Fitbit Premium unlocks a few more features. Your subscription will get you a Daily Readiness Score each day, which uses a number of different data points to try to give you a single-number snapshot of how ready for physical activity your body is. You’ll also get smaller perks, like a Sleep Profile that gives you a more in-depth look at your sleep habits, and monthly wellness reports delivered to your email inbox.
The Charge 6 comes with a six-month trial of Premium (for “new and returning” users); the service costs $10 per month after that. I think most people will get by fine without Premium, but six months should be long enough to get a feel for whether you care about any of the added features it brings.
With a feature Fitbit calls SmartTrack(™), the Charge 6 can detect when you’re doing a number of different exercises to automatically log the activity. It works with walking, running, outdoor cycling, and elliptical machines, with “sport” and “aerobic workout” serving as generic catch-alls for other activity. Of these activities, I really only ever walk or run, but the Charge 6 has generally done a good job detecting and tracking those exercises for me. The tracker also offers 40 types of manual exercise tracking.
The Charge 6 has built-in GPS for tracking outdoor workouts without your phone. In my experience, it’s been accurate, but given the tracker can’t play music on its own, I can’t imagine leaving my phone behind on a run with the Charge 6 anyway.
For indoorsy athletes, the Charge 6 is capable of serving as a connected heart rate monitor for many popular exercise machines. Fitbit says it’s “tested and confirmed connectivity for the latest models of iFit, NordicTrack, Peloton, Concept2, and Tonal,” and that it should be supported by any other machines that use theBluetooth Heart Rate Profile. I wasn’t able to test this integration myself — if the Fitbit Charge 6 serving as a heart rate monitor for a specific piece of equipment you have is important to your purchasing decision, you’ll want to do a little research here.
Given its small size, the Fitbit Charge 6 is a very convenient sleep tracker. I sometimes find sleeping in full-size watches (especially larger ones like the 47mmGalaxy Watch 6 Classic) uncomfortable, but the Charge 6 is slim and lightweight enough that I can forget it’s there altogether. Sleep tracking data seems broadly in line with what mythird-gen Oura Ringreported for the same nights, and I get the impression it’s accurate. I wish Fitbit did more with it, though; more ambitious fitness platforms offer advice about sleep factors like light exposure and caffeine consumption, while Fitbit seems content to just quantify your sleep and let you do with the data what you will.
The Charge 6 also supports EDA measurements to approximate your stress levels. But unlike theFitbit Sense 2and the Pixel Watch 2, which have continuous electrodermal activity (cEDA) sensors to monitor activity over time, the Fitbit Charge 6 only supports on-demand measurements. Given EDA is, at best, correlated with physiological stress, only being able to take these measurements manually doesn’t seem especially useful unless you remember to do it multiple times every day. Even then, I’m not sure what you’d get out of the experience.
Overall, the Fitbit Charge 6 offers a pretty full suite of health tracking options in a lightweight, affordable form factor. Serious athletes might want to consider something with more specialized fitness features, but for general-purpose activity tracking, the Charge 6 is a solid pick.
Battery and charging
Considering how petite the Fitbit Charge 6 is, its battery life is commendable. With the always-on display active, I’ve been getting just over three days per charge, which shakes out to two charges per week. With AOD off, Fitbit says battery life can stretch to a full week. Your mileage will vary, but I absolutely believe that kind of battery life is realistic.
Charging’s a slower than I’d like it to be, though, with the bundled magnetic charger taking just under two hours to take the Charge 6’s tiny battery cell from empty to full.
Considering you’ll only be wiring it up once or twice a week, though, that’s manageable. A quick half-hour charge as you get ready in the morning should net you 25 percent battery or more, which should be enough to see you through the day.
Competition
Since our wrist real estate has largely been taken over by smartwatches, the dedicated fitness tracker space isn’t as vibrant as it used to be. The $160 Fitbit Charge 6’s closest competition is probably Fitbit’s own other trackers. If you’re willing to give up Google Wallet and the built-in GPS, the $100Fitbit Inspire 3will provide an otherwise very similar experience in a similarly svelte form factor — though the Inspire is limited to 20 exercise types, while the Charge 6 can track 40.
If you can stretch your budget a little more, you’ll often find previous-generation smartwatches on sale around the $200 mark. Watches like theSamsung Galaxy Watch 5and thefirst-generation Pixel Watchcan’t match the Fitbit Charge 6’s battery life, but they offer robust health tracking options and more software flexibility, with access to the Play Store and all of Wear OS’s smartwatch apps. The Pixel Watch even comes with Fitbit integration for a similar software experience.
Should you buy it?
I didn’t expect to like the Fitbit Charge 6 as much as I do, but its relatively low price, great battery life, and small, comfortable form factor have made me a fan. With Google Maps directions, Google Wallet for contactless payments, and app notifications, the Charge 6 does most of what I need a wearable to do (or rather, it should — but my difficulties with Google Wallet really do seem unusual and specific to my situation).
Techy types might miss the app selection available on full smartwatches — I didn’t realize how much I’d come to rely on Wear OS’s Google Home app — and serious athletes might want more purpose-built fitness features available in wearables from the likes of Garmin. But for anybody in the middle who’s just looking for a comfortable, affordable fitness tracker to keep tabs on how many steps they’re taking and how well they’re sleeping, the Fitbit Charge 6 is a pretty compelling option.
