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Why is sleep-tracking still so terrible? Will Garmin ever improve it?

I've had my Fenix 6 Pro for nearly 2 years. Compared to the Apple Watch I had, it was a step up in terms of tracking cycling and heart rate and added pulse ox.

It was a massive step backward for sleep tracking, but since it has all the sensors it needs to do better, I (incorrectly) assumed it would get better.

Last night I went to bed around 10PM. I woke up around at 1:35 (stay tuned for how I know it was 1:35AM), sat up in bed, and took off a sweatshirt I had fallen asleep in.

I woke up around 6:33, so I waited an hour to get my sleep info. Why? Because the Garmin won't allot the time needed for their developers to code the difference between awake and alkasleep, so I need to hedge for days I can sleep in.

When the Connect finally calculated the info, I found I had slept from 1:35 to 6:33.

I sat up in bed and took off a shirt, and the previous 3.5 hours of sleep were thrown away.

This is useless.

Why won't Garmin do better?

0 trux over 2 years ago

egoebelbecker said:
Why won't Garmin do better?

They do. My Instinct 2 displays the sleep analysis right after waking up (no processing in Garmin Connect), and has no problem detecting when I am waking in the middle of the night and marking it accordingly in the graph. And it does not matter whether it is at the beginning, at the end, or even multiple times:

0 egoebelbecker over 2 years ago in reply to trux

So the Instinct has better sleep tracking than the Fenix 6 Pro?

Every review I can find has the Fenix 6 pro being more capable and yes, my watch is up to date.

0 trux over 2 years ago in reply to egoebelbecker

egoebelbecker said:
So the Instinct has better sleep tracking than the Fenix 6 Pro?

I cannot tell you, since I never tried Fenix 6. However, the sleep analysis was already working without any problems with my old Instinct 1st gen, which used the remote analysis on the server, unlike my current Instinct 2 that has it already built in.

0 dbmata over 2 years ago

I have the Fenix 7, descent g1, oura, a Samsung watch and frankly. Garmin is the gold standard for sleep scoring, even though that's the only thing the oura does.

There's an app called Garmin connect that lets you go through your data and make changes if needed. On the watches I have, awake time before morning gets counted in the sleep time. If it's not accurate, I go into the app and edit.

0 3649079 over 2 years ago

I have a Venu 2 Plus and it's sleep tracking is great, with SpO2 all night and respiration, pretty excellent frankly, except for the first night when it did an update in the middle of the night, so think about making updates manual and see if that helps.

There can be issues possibly if you have tattoos making it harder to detect heart beat, and so get good readings.

0 8699309 over 2 years ago

In order for the watch to properly recognize sleep you must be wearing it for at least two hours before bed. Is it possible you had the watch off to charge and it recognized your sleep after wearing it for the needed time?

0 8699309 over 2 years ago in reply to 8699309

Also you may want to check your user settings to make sure you have specified your normal sleep / wake time.

0 firemaker69 over 2 years ago

I worked shift as an engineer for 40 years. 30% of the population works shift to keep the world working.

Garmin does not even want to take a nap.

We know better.

Garmin is making money.

0 JobyL over 2 years ago

Certainly my experience with the Fenix 6 pro makes me doubt the validity of its sleep analysis.

Many days I will watch TV from about 7pm, then have a shower and go to bed sometime before 10. Regularly Garmin will show the only session of deep sleep I had all night was 7:30 - 9:30pm.

I have set my normal sleep hours as 10pm - 6am.

0 egoebelbecker over 2 years ago in reply to 8699309

8699309 said:
In order for the watch to properly recognize sleep you must be wearing it for at least two hours before bed. Is it possible you had the watch off to charge and it recognized your sleep after wearing it for the needed time?

This isn't what happened, but are you saying that if I decided to charge the watch just before going to sleep, it would fail to properly track my sleep?

Wow. That's both amazing and completely unsurprising.