Many people struggle with the quality of their sleep. Some mornings, it’s easy to hop out of bed feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day. On others, you wonder if you even slept the night before. While there are a number of reasons why you might wrestle with inconsistent sleep, the best sleep tracker watches offer a closer look at what’s really going on each night.
Sleep tracker watches collect valuable data about our physiological state to help us understand how long we’ve slept, how many times we woke up in the middle of the night, and even which phases of sleep we were in. With this information, we can develop better sleeping patterns for more of those refreshed mornings and fewer sluggish ones.
Are Sleep Tracker Watches Accurate?
Yes, modern smartwatches are able to accurately track sleep duration. When it comes to measuring the stages of sleep — in generic terms, light, deep, and REM — the device will most likely make educated guesses based on the data it’s collected from a person’s heart and respiration rates. In any case, the technology in sleep tracking watches provides impressively accurate information that people may use to improve their sleep hygiene.
Wearable sleep trackers — like smartwatches — use integrated sensors to monitor movement, heart rate, and breathing rate in order to draw conclusions about sleep quality and length. Motion sensors keep track of how much someone moves in their sleep and runs those measurements through an algorithm.
The algorithm then makes an estimate about the sleep duration and, in many cases, the overall quality of a person’s sleep. Sleep trackers with only motion detectors are considered somewhat less accurate than those that take into account heart and breathing rates.
These days, most smartwatches are equipped with advanced sensors to monitor various aspects of a person’s health and fitness, which includes their heart rate and respiration. This is pivotal to accurate sleep tracking. Data from both heart rate and respiration is used to determine the different stages of sleep and present the results to the wearer for a more complete assessment.
What Do Sleep Trackers Track? What Are Their Benefits?
The primary element of sleep that trackers monitor is duration. By wearing a tracker to bed, the device can detect when you fall asleep and when you wake up in the morning. This information can be helpful in determining whether you’re getting too little, or even too much, sleep. Similarly, sleep trackers can monitor and chart sleep interruptions in the middle of the night, helping you evaluate the overall quality of your nightly rest.
Sleep Schedule
Over the course of a week or so, trackers have enough information to show you your sleep schedule. Are you generally going to bed and waking around the same time everyday? Or are there frequent irregularities in your sleep schedule? Certain trackers will even offer tips on how to improve your sleep schedule, if needed. Depending on how advanced its insights are, a tracker can provide a list of key sleep metrics, how well you’re hitting them, and how to make adjustments in important areas.
Sleep Efficiency
In-depth sleep tracking watches can also gather data on your sleep efficiency. In other words, it can monitor the different stages of sleep and tell you if or when you’re entering a deep restful state. The current technology in consumer watches makes this possible by monitoring your heart rate as well as your breathing rate. It then makes inferences about which stage of sleep you’re entering based on the average person’s physiological state during a normal sleep cycle.
Sleeping Habits And Hygiene
With all of this information, sleep tracking watches can really help us improve our sleeping habits and hygiene. Adequate rest is so important to our overall well-being, which is why every health and fitness-oriented smartwatch has a feature-rich app solely dedicated to sleep tracking. If you’re looking to rest better at night, then a sleep tracking smartwatch would be a great investment.
Can A Smartwatch Detect Sleep Apnea?
While you should never use a smartwatch to diagnose a medical issue like sleep apnea, your sleep tracking watch can help you monitor any common sleep disturbances or patterns. Sleep trackers generate data about sleep stages and duration of deep sleep, and that data may be useful for your doctor during your next visit.
If you’re looking for a detailed assessment of your sleeping cycles and patterns, you should consider a smartwatch or fitness tracker that records duration in each sleep stage, presence of REM sleep, temperature sensors, blood oxygen levels, and other related statistics.
The more information you can gather about what happens after you go to bed, the better equipped you and your doctor will be to find ways to help you feel healthier and more rested each morning. Your doctor may also suggest a sleep study to expand on the information provided by your watch’s sleep tracking features.
Best Sleep Tracker Watches
Best Overall – Samsung Galaxy Watch5
The Galaxy Watch5 by Samsung is a versatile smartwatch with multiple intuitive functions for active lifestyles. Built to U.S. military specifications, it’s a durable, go-anywhere device made to withstand most manners of rigorous activity. The Galaxy Watch5 is also a great sleep tracker with Advanced Sleep Coaching software that analyzes current sleep patterns and creates a five-week program to develop better recovery habits.
Pros
- Durable, scratch-resistant screen
- Improved battery life over Watch4
- Competitive pricing
Cons
- Android exclusive
- Sub-par silicone band quality
- Sometimes inaccurate body composition readings
Best Native Sleep Tracking App – Fitbit Sense 2
Fitbit’s Sense 2 boasts one of the best overall sleep tracking applications. Its detailed readings offer insight into ten key sleep metrics and how you can improve in those areas based on recorded data for each month. The Sense 2 also provides stress management information from your waking hours, complete with suggestions on how to de-stress, for a better night’s sleep.
Pros
- Compatible with iOS and Android
- 6+ day battery
- Improved touchscreen responsiveness over previous generation
Cons
- Requires Premium subscription to access advanced features
- Easy to accidentally unlatch the band
- Unimpressive aesthetics
Best Battery Life – Garmin Venu 2 Plus
The Garmin Venu 2 Plus is a highly capable smartwatch packing a ton of daily features alongside health and activity monitoring. Take calls on your wrist, craft hands-free text messages using voice assist, and store up to 650 songs. The Venu 2 Plus also includes 25 sports apps in addition to workouts you can follow along with. Finally, Garmin has some of the best-in-class battery life at up to nine days for this particular model.
Pros
- 9-day battery in smartwatch mode
- Extensive health monitoring features, including sleep score and insights
- Bright, crisp AMOLED screen
Cons
- Clunky UI
- No wireless charging
- A bit on the pricier side
Best Health Tracker – Fitbit Inpsire 3
It’s hard to go wrong with the Fitbit Inspire 3 as one of the best all-around health and fitness trackers. Stay on top of your wellness goals using a variety of functions like automatic exercise tracking, 24/7 heart rate monitoring, cardio fitness score, sleep score, and others. When your phone is nearby, you’ll also see app notifications on the Fitbit.
Pros
- Customizable bands
- Small and unobtrusive
- Premium AMOLED display
Cons
- Limited features for some users
- Basic-level phone integration
- Premium subscription required for advanced insights
Most Economic – AmazFit GTS
When you’re on a tight budget but you still want to gather information for better sleep, the AmazFit GTS is a standout choice. It has a 14-day battery life, 12 sports modes for tracking your daytime activity, a high-precision optical heart rate sensor, and helpful sleep data statistics. In other words: this basic smartwatch ticks all the boxes.
The AmazFit GTS is a useful activity tracker for off-the-grid vacations, too. Not only will the battery life last about two weeks, but its water resistance and GPS functions will definitely come in handy.
Pros
- Comparatively inexpensive without sacrificing functionality
- Long battery life
- Sleep and sports tracking with heart rate monitoring
Cons
- Not waterproof (water resistant 5 ATM)
- Uses a proprietary app and isn’t compatible with standardized fitness apps
- Takes 2 hours to fully charge
Great Compact Wearable – Garmin vivoSmart 5
Garmin designed the vivosmart 5 to be a simple, easy-to-use lifestyle companion. The minimalist aesthetic wears more like a wristband than a standard watch, and the OLED display is still big and bright enough to read at a glance. Overall, the vivoSmart 5 combines many of the most useful daily smart features and health monitoring functions in a compact wearable.
Pros
- Super lightweight and comfortable
- Automatic activity tracking
- Comprehensive sleep tracking
Cons
- No on-board GPS; connected only
- Monochrome polycarbonate display
- Somewhat pricey compared to others
Best Premium Option – Garmin Epix Gen 2
If you’re looking for a fitness tracking smartwatch that looks and feels like a classic chronograph timepiece, the Garmin Epix Gen 2 is everything you’d want and more. Its sleep monitoring features include detailed breakdowns of light, deep, and REM sleep stages. The integrated app even offers a dedicated sleep-quality widget so you can quickly navigate to your pertinent sleep data.
It has other tracking functions, too. They include hydration monitoring, stress score, respiration tracking, heart rate, and pulse OX monitoring, all of which will give you a more complete health and wellness breakdown.
Pros
- Plenty of individualized sensors for monitoring your health when you’re active, resting, and asleep
- Access to extra fitness data when paired with add-on equipment like the HRM-Pro chest strap
- Integrated smartphone functionality
Cons
- Higher price tag than most other smart watches
- Large watch face may feel too big for some
- Fewer smartphone features than other smartwatch brands
Honorable Mention – Apple Watch Ultra
While Apple watches used to prioritize connectivity and smartphone features, the Apple Watch Ultra holds its own against fitness trackers and smartwatches from other brands for detailed sleep monitoring and health tracking.
The dedicated Sleep app helps users when it comes to setting and sticking to sleep schedules and tracking the time spent in different sleep stages. The app also makes it easy to view 14-day sleep patterns and overall sleep score at a glance. And when it’s in sleep mode, your Apple Watch Ultra prevents other apps from disturbing your slumber.
Pros
- Integrated with Apple Fitness+ and seamlessly connects to your iPhone or Apple computer
- Impressive battery life of 36 hours in normal use
- Improved brightness compared to other Apple Watch series for better visibility outdoors
Cons
- Apple Fitness+ is a paid app after the free three-month trial
- Not compatible with Android phones
- Only comes in one watch face size
What is the Best Smartwatch for Monitoring Sleep?
As you can see, there are many different options when it comes to sleep tracking watches. The common denominator among these popular choices is that they’re lifestyle companions. Most of the features center on fitness and keeping track of wellness, with sleep being one piece of the overall health puzzle.
There are watches containing follow-along workouts, watches that automatically track your exercise activity, and watches that encourage you to be active as often as possible. If you’re on any sort of fitness journey — or truly just want to sleep better at night — a smartwatch is an easy way to stay up on your goals with helpful apps and insights.
