Fitbit Charge 5 is Official With New Daily Readiness Score

Fitbit unwrapped a new wearable this morning, and no, it isn’t their first Wear OS watch. Instead, Fitbit introduced the Charge 5, the newest version of what is their most popular fitness band, with upgrades everywhere, including new and important readiness software features that will stretch across additional devices.

Before we get into the Charge 5 and the Daily Readiness Score, I do want to point out that Fitbit did tell us in a briefing that they are still planning a proper Wear OS smartwatch in the future and that they will bring the Fitbit software suite to Wear OS, we’re just not there yet. They didn’t put any sort of firm timeline on it either. OK, Fitbit Charge 5 time!

Fitbit Charge 5

The Fitbit Charge 5 brings an always-on AMOLED display that gets brighter outdoors (2x brighter), GPS, 24/7 heartrate, SpO2 monitoring, skin temperature tracking, VO2 Max estimates, Fitbit Pay, and up to 7 days of battery life. It brings with those specs sleep tracking with scores and stages, an ECG app, EDA scanning, stress management, workout intensity maps and workout zones, notifications and calls from your attached phone, and access to Fitbit’s app, including 6 months of their Premium service for free. It will also have access to their new Daily Readiness Score, which is a coming soon feature. More on that in a minute.

Like all of Fitbit’s products, the focus of the Charge 5 is to give you an impressive overall view of your health and fitness situation. From stress management to improving sleep, hitting those fitness goals and monitoring your heart and its health, the Charge 5 can pretty much do it all. Plus it has the recently introduced skin temperature tracking to potentially tip you off to issues.

With a slick new design with tons of band options to customize the Charge 5, Fitbit will begin pre-orders today, August 25, and ship in late September. Fitbit Charge 5 costs $179.95.

• Fitbit pre-order link

Daily Readiness Score

One of the biggest new features for Fitbit that’ll come to the Charge 5, as well as the Sense, Versa 3 and 2, Luxe, and Inspire 2, is the Daily Readiness Score. This is a metric that will tell you each morning as you wake up what level of activity your body is ready for each day.

Fitbit looks at your 24/7 heartrate activity, heartrate variability (HRV), and sleep to come up with a score (to 100) that will help you decide how far to push your body. If the number is high, you are ready for heavier or more intense workouts, but if you see a lower score, it probably means active recovery would be best or finding more rest in a day.

The Daily Readiness Score will show prominently in the Fitbit app, with individual scores for each of those three categories and insights into why you started at that score for the day. Fitbit will provide recommendations on the level of workout needed depending on those scores too.

Again, this is rolling out “soon” and it’ll be locked under Fitbit’s Premium subscription.