Sleep Tracking Issues

I am noticing that sleep tracking is not that accurate. If I am awake in the middle of the night . It doesn’t ask me if I am awake and stop sleep tracking .

any way to customize it or it just goes by the sleep schedule .

  • Several users have reported various issues with sleep tracking. Apparently, your mileage will vary quite a bit:

    - watch detects sleep/nap while the user is awake watching TV, or relaxing, etc. In addition to being wrong, this can lead to the actual night being replaced by the fake sleep, with a bad sleep score,

    - sleep start/stop timing issues

    - time awake during the night can be under reported and replaced by REM or light sleep

    - deep sleep can be under reported, and replaced by either light or REM sleep

    If you have issues and care about it, you should contact Garmin support and report your issue.

    Plenty of anecdotal reporting:

    forums.garmin.com/.../1530495

    forums.garmin.com/.../naps-i-took-a-nap-yesterday-and-my-garmin-7x-deleted-my-previous-night-s-sleep-and-substituted-the-nap-as-poor-sleep

    forums.garmin.com/.../epix-2-vs-sleep-study-spo2-off-wake-deep-undercount

  • I did report it couple of days ago . Support tech I talked to told me Watch just follows sleep schedule not that advanced.

    Wasn’t that helpful.  I hope Garmin is reading these forums .. I will be happy when I am awake Watch asks me am I awake and stop tracking my sleep .

  • The operative part seems to be 'not that advanced'. Frankly, it cannot distinguish between light sleep and awake. It's not the only watch with such difficulties. My wife's Apple watch has its own problems.

  • That’s fine I guess . Taking me time to get used to Garmin from Apple. Battery life is great .

    As for other metrics no idea yet . 

  • No watch, however good it is reputed to be, will be able to detect whether you are awake or not when you are lying in bed awake. Watches rely on movement and heart rate to determine whether or not you are asleep. The sleep schedule you set gives the watch a rough idea when you sleep but it is not rigidly adhered too. My sleep schedule is broadly set from 2130 to 0630 but I got to bed earlier or later, always read a while, and get up before or after the scheduled end time. My sleep is generally recorded ok. That people have problems with the sleep tracking of the watch is beyond doubt but that is not every one.

    The attached screenshot is the sleep recorded last Saturday when I had to get up at 0430 for an event. Note the sleep start and end time and also the wake periods when I got up to visit the bathroom. 

    You’ve already started a dialogue with Garmin Support so just keep at them. The new beta version has apparently made some improvements but I’m not sure what they are. However, I’m pretty certain that Garmin, along with the other sleep tracking watches, will only stop tracking your sleep when you are awake and moving around. If there’s a watch out there that will ask you every time you open your eyes during the night if you are awake then I’d love to hear about it. 

  • Maybe your watch is too loose? 

    My experience:

    I'm pretty surprised watch tracks so accurately.

    Sleep start and end, all wakeups for toilet breaks, REMs (woke up once in a middle of it and noted time to check later) - everything seems to be accurate.

    I don't know if deep sleep vs light sleep is accurate.

  • That people have problems with the sleep tracking of the watch is beyond doubt but that is not every one.

    True. But I think it's because people who sleep well will have their sleep tracked accurately. If you don't sleep well and spend much time awake in bed, the watch will not assess your sleep properly. You will show more light sleep than you are actually getting.

  • Just last night, the watch started tracking sleep at 9:30pm when I started watching TV. It reported about 75% of deep sleep until I went to bed at 11:30pm. I woke up at 6:15am and stayed in bed, while the watch kept on recording REM sleep during this time.

    So the latest beta didn't improve sleep start/end detection.

    I corrected the start and end time after the fact and my sleep score adjusted down from 82 to 76. To some extent, this is no biggie.

    The other issue is when fake naps are replacing your previous night of sleep, and replacing your previous score by 0, 50 or something in between if you don't attempt to correct it back to the original night of sleep.

    This screws up Training Readiness quite a bit since 2 out of 6 parameters are sleep score and sleep history.

    This happens more than once a week, and I hope the latest beta will correct this one. In the graph below, all scores 50 and below are wrong

  • Yup if sleep Zzz#’s are not good all other training measures will be messed up .

    Need to take them with grain of salt … 

  • Not the actual training metrics, but definitely Recovery, Training Readiness & Daily Workout Suggestions.