The Best Sleep Trackers for Some Quality Shut-Eye
Whether you sleep, slumber, snooze or snore, a good night’s rest is vital to your health and happiness. The best sleep trackers can help by breaking down sleep data with metrics and tracking features like heart rate variability, letting you take back control for a proper night’s sleep.
The ubiquity of gadgets like wearables means that millions of us already own a sleep tracker, capable of calculating all sorts of metrics, but they’re not all made equal. It’s also worth remembering that not everyone wants to wear tech in bed, so we’ve gathered together the best alternatives that can track your sleep from under the mattress. But first, this is what to look out for…
What's the best sleep tracker?
Offering plenty of bang for your buck, the Sense is a superb standalone smartwatch that happens to also pack in a robust set of sleep tracking features. These include heart rate and temperature monitoring, sleep quality measurements and even automatic snoring detection which could be used to pinpoint disturbances throughout the night.
Made from lightweight titanium, the Oura is a cleverly designed smart ring that's capable of measuring your heart rate and sleep quality, in addition to activity and fitness tracking. An ideal choice for people who'd rather not strap obvious bits of tech to their wrist and/or head.
Rather not wear anything at all? Withings' under-mattress tracker is for you. Developed with sleep physicians, it's capable of tracking your sleep cycles to provide a sleep score, along with the ability to detect snoring and sleep apnea.
What features should I look for in a sleep tracker?
Less sophisticated fitness trackers have tended to use wrist movement to monitor sleep—stop sniggering at the back—but now the vast majority use heart rate instead to calculate when you fall asleep, the type of sleep you’re having and how long you stay asleep. It’s the most important sensor in any sleep tracker.
But how long you sleep doesn’t always determine the quality, which is why many factors are used to build an accurate picture of your sleep, including temperature, breathing disturbances, body movement via accelerometers and even ambient noise. Brands like Whoop, Fitbit and Apple are also using blood oxygen data that can help identify sleep disorders including sleep apnea, a potentially dangerous condition where breathing stops and starts while you're asleep.
How this data is then used makes a big difference, with some apps offering deep-dive analytics as well as a Sleep Score that, like hitting your 10,000 steps, helps to glamify good sleep. We’re also big fans of sleep-based alarms, that wake the wearer up at the optimum time of their sleep cycle, to help you hit the ground running each day.
The best sleep trackers can also offer help if you struggle to fall asleep, with headphones available to block out distractions and relax a chaotic mind. Non-wearable smart mattresses can even adjust your body temperature based on your sleep history to give you the best chance of a good night’s rest and a quality sleep.
What does a good night's sleep really look like?
Your time asleep can be broken down into a cycle consisting of light, deep and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, and for you to fully feel rested you should cycle through these stages at least a few times per night. Your sleep tracking app will break these stages down for you and make it easy to identify problem areas for helping you reach a world of better sleep.
During a typical night, you cycle through these stages of sleep…
Stage 1: Hopefully only lasting a few minutes, the first stage of sleep is light and easy to wake from.
Stage 2: Your brain waves, eye movement and heart rate begin to slow.
Stages 3 and 4: You move into deeper sleep that’s harder to wake from. This is the time when your body grows and repairs itself and boosts immune function. For healthy adults, 15-20 per cent of your sleep should be a deep sleep.
REM: The final stage is when dreams occur, as your brain processes and stores long term memories. Our eyes are closed but dart rapidly from side to side, and our limbs can become paralyzed to stop us acting out our dreams. 20-25 per cent of our sleep should be REM sleep.
The sleep cycle repeats every 90 to 110 minutes and as sleep progresses, REM cycles increase in length.
This story was originally published on British GQ with the headline “The Best Sleep Trackers for Some Quality Shut-Eye”.
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- 1/7
Kokoon Nightbuds
The world’s thinnest Bluetooth earbuds have been designed specifically for side sleepers, and offer unrivaled comfort compared to the competition, plus, the clever neckband design can track sleep and automatically help you stay asleep in real-time.
How? As you nod off to a favorite podcast or song, disturbance protection – in the form of intelligent white/background noise – kicks in, helping to smooth out the peaks of sound that might disturb sleep. These super-slim buds won’t cause any major irritation if worn all night, and unlike many true-wireless designs you won’t lose them if you’re prone to tossing and turning in the night. But impressively, and as you snooze, they also continuously monitor sleep quality using PPG heart rate monitor and accelerometers to help you build up a better understanding of your sleep patterns via the Kokoon app.
- 2/7
Apple Watch Series 7
The world’s most popular smartwatch finally introduced its own sleep tracking with watchOS 7 on the Series 6 (which remains a brilliant, affordable choice). The Sleep app is slick, simple and great at helping you identify trends over time, while also managing bedtime routines and wake up alarms. You can set sleep goals and look back over 14 days of data and diagnose why. With the release of watchOS 8, your Apple Watch can now also track your breathing rate as you sleep, which can give you even greater insight into your overall health.
It’s not as deep diving as some sleep trackers like the Oura, but, just as with its comprehensive fitness tracking, Apple presents your health data in brilliantly simple, easily digestible ways. Battery life remains a slight issue, but with the Series 7 having 18 hours of stamina, it should only need a quick top-up during the day.
- 3/7
Muse S (Gen 1)
You might feel a little silly wearing a glorified headband to bed, but the Muse S’ built-in meditation assistant and soothing voice guidance make it a far more comfortable alternative than most headphones. An ideal choice for people who hate sticking things in their ears while trying to sleep, the Muse S also doubles up as a sleep tracker, monitoring your heart rate, breathing patterns and body movements as it helps you lull yourself to sleep.
- 4/7
Garmin Venu 2 Plus
A high-quality smartwatch from Garmin that comes stacked with the features needed to keep you at peak performance day and night. The Venu 2 Plus' 43mm design has a gorgeous AMOLED display and stainless-steel bezel, new customizable centre button for easy access to your favorite features. It’s also stuffed with sensors including Pulse Ox3 sensor for blood oxygen monitoring and continuous HR tracking, that when combined, can help build an accurate picture of your sleep patterns.
As well as tracking sleep duration, it offers a breakdown of sleep stages including REM, deep and light sleep and wake up times and presents the findings as a score and gives you some analysis on how well you slept. It will also monitor respiration rates, stress levels and blood oxygen levels as you sleep. Plus the nine day battery means, unlike an Apple Watch, you can happily leave it on without fearing a flat battery during the day.
- 5/7
Fitbit Charge 5
With the launch of the Charge 5, Fitbit has created a slim, comfortable halfway house between full-powered smartwatch and fitness tracker that, behind the searingly bright AMOLED screen, is absolutely stuffed full of sleep monitoring and gym busting features. Fitbit has always tracked sleep well, factoring in data over several nights, not just the previous night, to build up a better picture of what a ‘good’ sleep looks like for you. It does this using an ECG sensor, heart rate tracking, skin temperature sensors, blood oxygen levels.
The deep dive data mining can then offer you an in-depth look at your sleep - light, deep or REM - offer a new ‘Daily Readiness Score’ which can suggest if you should hit the gym or take it easy with a ‘recovery’ day. It also measures blood oxygen saturation during the night, helping you spot signs of sleep apnoea, which can leave you feeling exhausted in the morning.
- 6/7
Whoop Strap 4.0
The latest generation of Whoop Strap is smaller, smarter, and designed with new biometric tracking, including skin temperature and blood oxygen. Designed for wearing 24/7 this advanced fitness tracker is for serious athletes rather than Couch to 5K enthusiasts, and with sleep such an important part of recovery, Whoop takes every wink very seriously indeed.
There’s no screen, battery life is 4-5 days, accuracy is first-rate, and the introduction of a Sleep Coach mode provides nightly recommendations via the app for when you should go to bed in order to help maximise your recovery the next morning. It even considers the effort you’ve put into exercise during the day, whether you’ve not had enough sleep over previous nights, and even if you’ve snuck in a nap during the day. Naturally, it can also wake you gently with a silent haptic alarm at the perfect moment in your sleep cycle. The most popular subrscripton option to join Whoop is $25 per month for 24 months (including Whoop Strap 4.0).
- 7/7
Amazfit ZenBuds
Like Kokoon, the Zenbuds are ultralight, super comfortable earbuds that pump your ears full of soothing sounds to help you drift off quickly and stay that way until morning. They don’t however allow you to play your own content, with the emphasis on ambient noise cancellation and soothing soundscapes from the app designed to help you relax before bed.
The zenBuds also monitor your average resting heart rate during the night, your sleep stages, sleeping positions and provide a sleep quality score. You can check your sleep quality report in the Zepp App after a night of sleep and get suggestions to help you form healthy habits and get more from your rest. When the ZenBuds detect that you‘re asleep, they automatically pause playing, so you can sleep soundly through the night.
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