So I bought the Garmin fenix 7X Sapphire Solar, for about €1K, and cash too, not a monthly payment plan. For that much money, I expect serious quality. I previously used the Vivosmart 4, and its sleep tracking accuracy was more of a gimmick (wildly off, even registered me as sleeping while I was in the shower in the morning). This was the main reason why I took so long to switch over to 7X. I was thinking, yeah, the Vivosmart is one of their more budget entry models, surely the fenix 7 must have better sleep tracking accuracy, but if the sleep tracking is this much off on the Vivosmart 4, it's gonna be off on the fenix 7 as well. Turns out that was the case.
Before I bought the fenix 7X, I bought the Garmin Instinct Solar, and this being an older model than the Instinct 2 Solar, it had about as poor sleep tracking accuracy as the Vivosmart 4 (and just as bad blood oxygen accuracy; always at 89%), so I figured that I have no choice here but to buy the fenix 7X, and having read about its new Elevate Gen 4 sensor, I figured that I'd see an improvement in sleep. I also have a Garmin Index S2 smart scale, so I'm in it for the long haul as far as Garmin is concerned.
Now, the sleep tracking accuracy in the 7X Sapphire is a dramatic improvement compared to the Vivosmart 4, but it's still far off from the Fitbits, Whoops and Apple Watches. I found The Quantified Scientist's YouTube channel after I had bought the fenix 7X. I liked his reviews, where he compares the fitness trackers he's reviewing to a Dreem 2 headband (EEG). Now the best comparison would be to polysomnography (PSG), but the Dreem 2 is close enough to PSG in accuracy, so his results are a fairly good ballpark on how these fitness trackers perform, with the exception of the sleep accuracy test he did for the 2022 Apple Watch SE (he only measured two nights; if he did more nights it probably wouldn't be that accurate). Anyway I'm aware that many users on this forum know about The Quantified Scientist's YouTube channel, but this is the statistics from one of his most recent reviews, in which he reviewed the Fitbit Sense 2:
^^ He hadn't yet reviewed the Fitbit Sense 2, but looking at where the Fitbit Sense positioned itself on sleep tracking accuracy, I presumed the Sense 2 would have about the same accuracy, so I bought the Sense 2 as well, and keep in mind, I didn't want to do this. I don't wanna run around with two fitness trackers, but I had to, because the sleep accuracy of the fenix 7 series just doesn't hold up well enough, and I want as accurate statistics as possible. I also ditched my Whoop 4 and Withings Scanwatch Horizon; too uncomfortable with four fitness trackers, and the Sense 2 was a good replacement for both. But as far as sleep is concerned, they generally performed much better than the fenix 7X.
From what it looks like now, I have no plans to ditch Garmin, because Garmin Connect is a really solid, and a really really good app. I love Garmin Connect, but let's keep it real: a health tracking app is only as good as its data. And sleep accuracy really has too improve. It was by the way mainly the Stress and Recovery HRV (Firstbeat) feature that brought me to Garmin in the first place, because this feature was previously available in Sony's SmartBand 2 (Lifelog), great stuff, so I'm sold on this feature alone, and I like the direction Garmin is going with the smart scales and smart blood pressure monitors, long battery life on their smartwatches and stylish smartwatches and so on. But the competition is really tough these days, and if it gets to a point where I can have only one fitness tracker that measures as many health stats as possible and gives me highly accurate readings on everything it measures, I'll be using that company's devices alone.
It can't be stressed enough how important sleep is for health, and Garmin entered the wearables market more than a decade ago, with GPS watches for joggers. Garmin does very well here given its long history with satellites and GPS, and the fenix 7X is top notch in this department, with the functionality of choosing multiple bands and increased GNSS accuracy. But where Garmin is really lagging behind is sleep. I look at the changelogs of the fenix 7 firmware, and not much has been done about the poor sleep tracking. Yeah I get it, bugs and features are also important and they must be added and so on, but come on now? Most of us who buy fitness trackers today, we want accurate fitness data and statistics. That's our top priority, not golf (lol). I realize we'll probably never get 100% accurate sleep tracking from any of these brands, but Garmin should come out on top in these sleep accuracy tests.
Personally I expect that if I spend a lot of money on a fitness tracker, the price should correlate with accuracy. I know very well that's not the case, but I didn't buy the fenix 7X for its premium materials, but for its accuracy; being the Garmin wearables flagship, it must have the highest accuracy compared to other Garmin devices, and according to The Quantified Scientist, the Garmin Vivomove Sport has much better sleep accuracy. And the Vivomove Sport doesn't even use Elevate Gen 4, so it must be using a better sleep tracking algorithm or something like that. Needless to say, the Vivomove Sport is a relatively cheap device. The Garmin Forerunner 255 also has better sleep tracking than the fenix 7X. Now the 255 is a bit more expensive than the Vivomove Sport, but it's still much cheaper than the fenix 7X Sapphire Solar. This almost sounds like a business decision: these cheaper devices will sell more, so let's prioritize their sleep accuracy.
Now I'm not knocking the cheaper Garmins, I think they should have excellent sleep accuracy, but what about us who pay a lot of money for the more expensive Garmin smartwatches?
It would only do Garmin good, revenue-wise, if Garmin updated their devices with a new and improved sleep tracking algorithm. A lot of people have sleep issues in this day and age where everything is stress here and hectic there, and we're looking for as accurate as possible sleep tracking when we buy these devices, and so it's in Garmin's interests to improve and deliver in this area.
Anyway I hope this thread won't be closed; this is just constructive criticism, and I'm looking for a constructive discussion here, and I'd really like to see Garmin improve its sleep tracking. We want accuracy in these devices, otherwise there's no point in wearing them. We're still far off from the one size fits all fitness tracker, but Garmin can do much better in sleep tracking than it's doing now.
Sleep tracking accuracy should be top priority for Garmin from now on.
