Sleep tracking is hilarious inaccurate

Former Member
Former Member

Everything seems to work decent on my Garmin Fenix 6, but the sleep tracking is inaccurate every night. I have the watch for 3 days and it shows 10, 12 or even 16 hours of sleep per night. Is it a firmware related problem? I have the last version installed. Should I make some changes on its settings? How can I fix that? 

  • So what problem are you experiencing with the tracking? Have you set up the sleep hours on your profile?

  • I have my sleep time set from 10:30pm - 6:00am.  90% of the time my sleep score is Poor. I have one excellent score ever and I have had the watch since 9/2021.  It also can't detect naps the way the Fitbit did.  It's not a deal breaker but I wish it were more accurate.  Hopefully Fenix 7 has better sleep tracking, improved solar charging, and the ability to connect to 5Ghz wireless networks. That's all I need and it will be the perfect watch for me!!!

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 3 years ago

    its sleep data on the watch itself seems ok but it fails to transfer on the connect app. Very disappointed. I am beginning to doubt their other datas too such as heart rate when exercising on the treadmill. The sensors on the treadmill handles gives completely different reading to the heart reading I get on my watch. I think that is pretty dangerous too as to we dont know when are we exceeding our max heart rate allowed for age. 

  • When it come to sleep you going to be disappointed. It’s not a device in the world that can give you accurate sleep from the wrist , it’s more complicated than that. Take a look at the youtube channel : «The Quantified scientist «. He test all this devices from all the brands. They are all full of errors.

  • Use a external HR strap , Polar H9 and H 10 is state of the art. The wrist heart rate sensors on the sport watches is what it is. Ok for tracking rest heart rate.

  • I follow this channel. Despite there is no wrist device accurate, there are differences between them

  • I think sleep tracking has got better over time.

    Last night for Garmin and Coros Pace 2 - Garmin sleep tracking was hopeless a few months back by now seems fairly credible - awake time, duration are now very close. Coros is generally better for key metrics like wrist HR accuracy so if Garmin almost matches Coros now they are doing OK. 

  • What do you have as your bed time and awake time. I had to lie in the bed for over 9 hours to get an 80 sleep score. And the body battery only went up +30.

    Is there any way to track naps?

    Will the polar heart straps help get more accurate numbers thru the Connect app? I like Connect as it connects to lots of different devices and apps. I would hate to be required to go back to Fitbit or Polar to get the better sleep tracking.

  • Sleep time is set between 10pm to 730am.

    Naps work for me, although Garmin only stores 1 sleep period so a nap replaces the previous night's sleep statistics. Below I went back to sleep after an early morning bike ride.

    You cannot track sleep with external sensors within Garmin.

  • I also see that sometimes sleeping in the night does hardly "charge" my body battery, on the other hand by working (sitting and typing in the computer, sometimes talking) it can go up. It's a bit confusing. But it might also be that the watch takes things like HRV into account and by measuring that these BB values maybe make sense.