Fitbit Charge 5

The Fitbit Charge 5 makes an important upgrade by adding a colour screen – something Fitbit should have brought to the Charge a long time ago. With an ECG sensor and more stress insights available, too, the Charge 5 is a much better mix of fitness and health tracker. It’s still lacking in some areas, notably when it comes to tracking exercise, while some key features aren’t yet live. Overall, though, it’s a solid tracker with room for improvement.

Not the cheapest fitness tracker available, but it's definitely Fitbit's best - offering a fantastic blend of features, design, battery life and price.

The Fitbit Charge 5 makes the fitness band every bit as desirable as the Versa, but the £170 price tag will put some people off.

When the Charge 5 gets its most exciting health features turned on, it’ll be a tracker with big appeal for anyone that wants to pay closer attention to their health beyond tracking steps and runs.

The Fitbit Charge 5 is extremely impressive, and pulls together the best features of Fitbit's current lineup in one neat device. You get on-board GPS for tracking runs without a watch, an EDA (electrodermal activity) sensor for measuring stress responses, contactless payments, sleep tracking, excellent heart rate monitoring, and sleep monitoring – all presented in a neat interface that's intuitive and simple to use, even if you've never owned a Fitbit device before. Unfortunately the much anticipated Readiness Score feature wasn't available at launch, and Fitbit has dropped the Spotify support that allowed you to control playlists through the Charge 4. The lack of music is a shame since the Charge 5 is designed with workouts in mind, but if that's not a dealbreaker then it could be an ideal gym buddy.

You still have a limited selection of apps on the Charge 5, it doesn’t integrate with Apple Health or Google Fit and Fitbit removed all music control functionality, even for Spotify Premium users. I’d expect more progress and differentiation in a device that now costs $30 more. You could safely skip this update if your Charge 4 is still serving you well. But if you don’t have a fitness tracker right now, the Charge 5 remains one of your best options if you’re looking for a capable band with built-in GPS.

The Fitbit Charge 5 is the best fitness tracker the Google-owned brand has made. It has almost all the same health and fitness features as Fitbit's more expensive smartwatches, like the Versa 3 and Sense for just $179 (£170, AU$270). Unless you need a larger screen, a voice assistant and music storage, the Charge 5 is hard to pass up for the price.

With an always-on color touch screen, a sleeker design, and new health tracking features, the Charge 5 is a significant upgrade over the previous model and Fitbit's best fitness tracker yet.