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Sleep Tracking - Add percentages for Deep vs. Light sleep - and one more suggestion

I wear my Fenix 5 24/7.

Sleep tracking data is helpful but I have 2 suggestions to make it much better. One of these suggestions would be an easy tweak and the other would be much more involved from a development perspective. (Please see the attached screenshots).

Suggestion 1 - Easy Tweak - Please show Deep vs. Light vs. Awake as percentages as well as hours/min.

Why do we need this? Because knowing the percentage of your night spent in deep vs. light is a much more helpful gauge of the quality of your sleep than simply having the times. Garmin's competitors are doing this and it would not be difficult in terms of design or development.

Every morning I wake up and manually convert my sleep times into percentages.

Suggestion 2 - Please separate "Deep Sleep" into REM vs. Deep.

Again, Garmin's competitors are doing this. They are combining the Heart Rate data with the movement data from the Accelerometer to differentiate between REM sleep and Deep Sleep. Garmin is just using the accelerometer to measure sleep stages. Thus, since the body is equally still in Deep vs. REM sleep, Garmin is lumping them together as "Deep". I get that, but why not incorporate the Heart Rate? They have the hardware to be able to do this.

I love my Fenix 5 and use it for everything and that's not likely to change, but, i'm seriously considering getting a competitor's device to use at night on my other wrist for a more comprehensive sleep tracking overview.

Here are links to descriptions about some of Garmin's competitors' sleep tracking capabilities. I really hope Garmin prioritizes this in the near future.

https://www.fitbit.com/sleep-better
http://thelocker.whoop.com/2017/05/01/understanding-the-stages-of-sleep-how-to-optimize-it-with-whoop/ ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1236565.png ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1236566.png ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1236567.png
  • 100% agreed. Well presented.

    I would buy a Garmin fitness tracker right now if more in depth sleep analysis methodology was available, or even if we knew it was being worked on for an upcoming software update for those Garmin models with the appropriate hardware. I've been researching wearable fitness trackers this week and have found none with the combination of features I'm looking for. The ideal product for me would be something like a Garmin 735XT, 935, etc with more advanced sleep state detection and, as a market competitor so buzzwordingly puts it, Actionable Insights.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    Dear Garmin - in a nutshell, just do what FitBit is doing re sleep tracking. They do everything that's been suggested above: show REM vs deep vs light vs awake in minutes as well as %. FitBit also allows you to compare your night against your 30 day average for these stats as well as vs a "benchmark" of people same sex/age. I'm not a huge fan of FitBit's hardware, but they have the sleep tracking dialed in.
  • As a quick follow up here, I ended up buying a Fitbit Charge 2 and i've been wearing it for sleep tracking - I also swapped my 5 for a 5x (but that's a separate issue).

    Loving the sleep tracking functionality so far and the Fitbit app interface is pretty slick as well. I do not wear my 5x to bed anymore.

    After I got my Fitbit, I ended up buying one for my girlfriend too (got her the Alta HR). My brother's birthday is this week and i'm getting him the Charge 2.

    It is fun to wake up each morning and check out the sleep data. It's also fun to experiment with small lifestyle/daily routine tweaks to see what kind of things improve sleep quality.

    There are numerous areas where the 5x is obviously far superior to any Fitbit, but for sleep tracking there is no contest. I still have hope that Garmin will eventually step up their sleep tracking game - it's a bit annoying to switch back and forth between two separate devices.
  • 5 years on and it’s no better! What a shame, get a grip Garmin!!