They don't actually monitor your sleep. It is an estimation based on how still you're lying in bed. Snake oil

I'm interested as well. I've been using my garmin 935 for everything this year, it's been good and provides directional sleep metrics. I find it is actually pretty accurate at calculating the total number of hours of sleep I'm getting per night. The time in each zone is tough to tell. Also, the times it tells me about my training status (eg: productive, unproductive, etc...) has been tough to correlate with sleep or just a lot of training stress.

The traineroad podcast dudes recently said the Whoop monitor is really good? Anyone have any experience with this?

Oh. :-(

I have used Fitbit and Garmin. They may be imperfect, but they are still very useful. In day-to-day life, the data I get from my Fitbit highly correlates to the quality and duration of my sleep. I think that Fitbit is a little better than Garmin. An added benefit of a Fitbit (Garmin does it to, but FB is better) is using it for an alarm. Waking to a gentle vibration on my wrist is a zillion times better than a bedside alarm clock, and my FB will not wake my wife.

Supposedly, the Oura ring is much better than the Fitbits at sleep. And, the Oura does other cool stuff, like HRV and better analytics. I have a few friends with them, and they rave about the Oura compared to their Firbits and Garmin.

Do you have to wear the Oura all the time as a ring?

Emfit QS

Yes, it looks just like a black wedding ring. My friends wear them on their right hands.

Also, yes all the devices measure based on body movement. But, this is OK. Actual science people studied this, and the measurements are close to polysomnography sleep tests and highly useful.

except this study concludes that "Garmin wearables that support Advanced Sleep Monitoring present a valid method to estimate sleep stages."


Btw, I don't really care too much about the sleep stages data. I look more at total sleep time and after using a Garmin for sleep tracking going on three years now, I find it to be pretty accurate for sleep time. I've got no way measuring the sleep stages data though.


https://www.garmin.com/...sleep-study-results/

Does the garmin 935 do sleep monitoring?

The withings Aura (now Withings Sleep) goes under your mattress and measures breath rate and hr to get sleep cycles

Yes

Yep, and it's not just Garmin. Actual doctors have been using motion-based sleep monitors to diagnose stuff since the 90s. This is pretty mature technology, even though it has only recently migrated into consumer products. Motion-based sleep monitoring doesn't totally obviate brain wave measurements, but doctors use it for a lot of diagnoses.

Polar’s got some new algorithms in the ignite watch that will be coming to the vantage soon.

DCR seems to quite like them.

In my experience, the older (current a370 / vantage v) polar algorithm seems to mirror how I feel when I wake quite well. The only notable exception to this is when I’ve had a beer and think I’ve slept well, but the watch tells me otherwise ... lol

WD :-)

Ah, cool, I have a 935. Do I have to activate the sleep tracking or is it automatic?

+1

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"see the world as it is not as you want it to be"

+1 Emfit QS

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"see the world as it is not as you want it to be"

Oura ring.

Best sleeping/recovery tracking device I ever used.

Are you currently using the Oura?

Pretty sure that sleep monitoring is on by default on the 935. At least, it was on my 945. Just wear it to bed, and then check your sleep stats on the Garmin Connect mobile app in the morning. Most likely you will see stuff.

+1 on bunk

They are based on actigraphy, which is mostly just the movement of your arm. They can be a decent approximation, and they get a little better with SPO2 and HR measurement, but do not take them too seriously.

Definitely not just a measurement of arm movement (at least speaking for the 935 and my previous Polar M430). I'm a terrible sleeper and have tried to trick them. They always know when I'm actually asleep versus when I'm just lying there trying to fall asleep (or pretending to be asleep).

So, accelerometery is not terrible, but its also not great. The Oura literature that I've seen shows a sensitivity and specificity of roughly 50-60% for sleep phase detection, which is based on motion sensors as well as HR variability/HR itself. In terms of sleep onset, its actually pretty good though, over 90%. Which is way better then anything else that is commonly available.
I don't know what the high end garmins do however.

I have a garmin 235 and Oura which have roughly similar sleep times, but are totally different in terms of sleep content.

However, I just got a dreem2 headset, and have been using it for the past 3 weeks and comparing that to my Oura ring and Garmin..
http://www.dreem.com. They have peer reviewed data showing accuracy comparable to sleep lab EEG, so I'm taking that as my comparator.

It uses EEG to measure sleep phases - unfortunately they're not selling them in north America yet but should be soon.
Interestingly, the Oura and Dreem are usually within 5 min of each other for sleep time. However, for sleep phase (REM vs. Deep) the oura is off by usually 20ish %. The Garmin is just a random number generator.
Resting HR for all three is pretty accurate, Dreem and Oura are bang on, Garmin is usually 5-10% higher.
Pretty comfortable, and has a super cool bone conduction speaker so it plays sounds as I go off to sleep and then does neuroentrainment to enhance my deep sleep. Definitely recommend checking it out.

Emfit QS. It's a band that sits under your mattress and detects your heart rate and movement. It is so sensitive that it can detect hear rate variation (which is the original reason I purchased it).

I use the HRV function as an indicator of when I am over-trained/at risk of getting ill/injured due to a lack of recovery. Essentially, I look to (a) a rising trend in HRV overnight and (b) an absolute figure above 60 (below 60, I either don't train or do recovery work). It also rates quality of sleep by reference to a multitude of factors, including sleep period, ANS balance and HRV.

A nice surprise was learning that Emfit QS syncs with Training Peaks, so I have an ongoing record of the amount and quality of sleep I have enjoyed (or not, as the case may me).

The only downside I have encountered is the initial WiFi set up, which can be fiddly.


I also have experience of the sleep monitoring with the Polar Vantage, and it largely aligns with the Emfit unit, but the data from the Emfit unit is much more granular, and in my view trustworthy.

I have not used the Oura and by reputation Garmin hasnt focused on sleep monitoring to the same extent as Polar (with its science-based approach).

I would go with the Emfit QS.

Oura....