Sleep tracking not accurate ...

Hi All

I got Fenix 6x Pro two weeks ago upgrading from Fenix 3 HR. I love the new watch and I was really pleased to see much more detailed sleep tracking to my old watch. I started checking my sleep record after each night and...

Last week was really tough for me. Tough negotiations at work resulted in a lot of stress and sleepless nights. I literally couldn't sleep at all, maybe had few rounds of sleep but woke up after really short time, then just lying for few minutes, turning, rolling, then standing up and going to the bathroom... In the record in the morning I can see I had 7 hours of sleep, the only difference is that it recorded only 8 minutes of deep sleep and a lot of REM and light sleep, which is obviously not true ... I know that a watch cannot know whether I'm actually asleep but recording a light sleep when I'm actually standing up and walking to the bathroom is clearly wrong...

Another thing is stress. I had stress peaks last week when I really physically felt bad and the stress ratio was high, but then I managed to get really relaxed through meditation and just refocusing and it was still high...

can this be improved somehow, maybe it needs time to learn my patterns, or is it just all we can get from a device like Fenix ... ?

  • I am not sure if the sleep time needs to be set up for the sleep tracking. I think it's most likely for the 'Do not disturb' function and kicking off the sleep PulseOX tracking.The last one is not really strengthen by my experience but it might be a bug as well. 

  • Yes, this is my experience as well!

    I am monitoring my sleep quality pretty close since I suffer from sleep apnea, and I have used a simple Forerunner 35 watch up until last week.
    Before starting my CPAP-treatment, the Forerunner 35 usually measured 1-2 hours of deep sleep per night.
    After starting my CPAP-treatment, I usually got 3-4 hours of deep sleep according to the Forerunner.
    My wife also has a Forerunner 35, and she gets about the same (3-4 hours per night)

    Last week I bought a fenix 6s pro and was expecting better and more accurate sleep analysis.
    But it measures "deep sleep" totally different!
    I've got less that 1 hour of deep sleep every night for a whole week, and every night it's only a few short periods in the beginning of the night. Then it's all light- and REM-sleep...

    Of course I don't know which watch is making the better analysis (and I don't know what the definition of "deep sleep" is), but it differs *A LOT* from my old watch Confused
    And since almost no one in this forum seems to get more that minutes of "deep sleep" per night using the fenix 6 watches, I get the feeling that something's wrong in its analysis...

    Update: Hmmm, but this page does indeed give an explanation maybe: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=mBRMf4ks7XAQ03qtsbI8J6#7 ("Why am i not seeing as much deep sleep as i had before this update?")

  • I suspect your previous Forerunner data was pretty inaccurate. Three to four hours of legit deep sleep is highly unusual. The Fenix numbers may be more realistic, but the Fenix has proven to be so inaccurate at tracking my sleep that I don't trust it at all and haven't even bothered to look at it's sleep data for weeks.

    The stupid thing has shown me in REM sleep when I've been up at 2:30am walking around the kitchen and the living room and it often shows me going back and forth between REM and Light Sleep several times in a very short period of time, which just doesn't happen. It's just awful at detecting when I'm in bed but awake; it always considers me to be in a light sleep during those time.

    I'll stick with my Beautyrest Sleep tracker which, for me at least, seems to be quite accurate.

  • The watch can only recognize 1 sleep a day. If you take a nap at midday, the sleep at the evening is not recognized.

  • I have same issue. Only had my watch 2 weeks and noticed my sleep accuracy is well out. Always gives me way more sleep than i had. Laat night i chilled in bed until 1am and like you recorded i was asleep. 

  • I'm having sleep accuracy issues on my Fenix 6X, I will trial the fix of setting the sleep times (from 7:00 am to 7:01 am) and see how it pans out.

    my watch thinks im asleep while im gaming on my PC which is pretty crazy because the stress levels are high yet the watch thinks im asleep.

    coming from a Fitbit Ionic .. not very impressed .. the fitbit had very good tracking for sleep and for the amount of money that Garmin charges for the Fenix watches .. you would expect things to be done better.

  • Another new Fenix user here who finds the sleep tracking to be terrible. I recently got a Fenix 6S Pro and generally like the functionality but I'm surprised by just how bad the sleep tracking is. Last night it showed that I had no deep sleep but I'm sure I would have done as I slept reasonably well.  I also got up and went downstairs to use the toilet in middle of the night but it hasn't picked that up at all! When it does pick up that I wake in the night, it always just shows it as a very short time, even if I'm lying awake for long periods of time. For a seriously expensive bit of kit, this is really poor - a Fitbit that is a fraction of the cost does it a lot better. Come on Garmin, sort it out!

  • Another new Fenix user here who finds the sleep tracking to be terrible. I recently got a Fenix 6S Pro and generally like the functionality but I'm surprised by just how bad the sleep tracking is. Last night it showed that I had no deep sleep but I'm sure I would have done as I slept reasonably well.  I also got up and went downstairs to use the toilet in middle of the night but it hasn't picked that up at all! When it does pick up that I wake in the night, it always just shows it as a very short time, even if I'm lying awake for long periods of time. For a seriously expensive bit of kit, this is really poor - a Fitbit that is a fraction of the cost does it a lot better. Come on Garmin, sort it out!

  • I have a fenix 6 titan. Is a crap. Sleep monitor is not all. Just try to use for winter sport. No heartrate, no ox, . Only the gps i think is working well. I can't send-it back mine. The warranty will not do anything.

  • Yea, I've given up completely on it and just ignore the sleep data that it seems to randomly generate. I occasionally check it by comparing it to the data from my Beautyrest Sleeptracker, which has proven to be very accurate (at least in terms of detecting when I'm asleep vs awake) and the Garmin fails miserably every time.