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Any other reason to have Pulse Ox at night besides seeing the number(s)?

net1994
10 months ago

I just got my F8 and curious if any advantage to having it on at night?  If any training calculations or stress/body battery can use it to calculate those values, I'd leave it on.  It didn't seem to really impact my battery life for one night, so far.  But if the only thing it can do is record HR while asleep, I won't bother.

  • 0 10 months ago

    The SpO₂ data is used for the Altitude Acclimation, not for the Training Status. It can be useful when you are ill, when you suffer from a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or when you suspect snoring or sleep apnoe. Otherwise you can disable it without harming any important metrics. It consumes a lot of battery. HR and HRV detection (sensor with the green light) is not impacted by disabling the PulseOx sensor (red light).

  • 0 10 months ago in reply to trux

    Thanks for the clarification.  If you are ill or have apnea or other issues, will it prompt you on the watch or app?  If not, I'll disable it in a few days after the curiosity wears off.

    Also, btw, you are a forum superstar and always have insightful answers.

  • 0 10 months ago in reply to net1994

    It will not alert you, but when you see frequent nightly dips of SpO₂, then you may want to consult a specialist (although it may be also just an erroneous reading, for example due to bad wristband fit, sleeping on the arm, etc,...)

  • +1 10 months ago in reply to trux

    Hello. In additional to a more accurate stress and body battery reading, this can also improve the sleep tracking accuracy. 

    Correction 1/7/2025:

    If you are at elevation, seeing your PulseOx measurement would give you a better idea of how your body is adapting to the stress on your body that elevation is causing. It will paint a more complete picture of your sleep and health metrics.

    But having PulseOx enabled does not inherently cause sleep tracking to become more accurate, and PulseOx data does not feed in to Body Battery measurement.

    While PulseOx also does not feed directly into the Stress algorithm - a lower PulseOx would indicate "your body is struggling to get oxygen at this elevation and therefore you are likely experiencing more stress right now." But the Stress algo is designed be able to detect that regardless of whether PulseOx is enabled.

  • 0 10 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie
    Garmin-Laurie said:
    additional to a more accurate stress and body battery reading, this can also improve the sleep tracking accuracy

    How so?

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member 9 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie
    Garmin-Laurie said:
    Stress and HR are used in calculation of sleep. So a more accurate Pulse OX, means more accurate stress. This means more accurate sleep tracking. 

    On paper, it's a great feature, but based on my experience the readings are wildly inaccurate during sleep. My Fenix 8 often records values around 80, and there is absolutely no way that those are correct readings

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Are you saying that if you use Pulse Ox you'll get better Stress readings and that will directly impact the Sleep Score, that is change the score? Or are you simply saying that if Pulse Ox is used there might be some insight to why sleep might be poor that the user can take into account, but the sleep score itself is not affected by the use or otherwise of Pulse Ox.

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    I've read this a few times and sorry, but still confused.  My real question is if I have Pulse Ox enabled either all day or just when sleeping, does it impact my training readiness or body battery score (which I think would impact training readiness) and/or recovery time or....?  If it doesn't change any cumulative metric measurement, it's pointless to just burn battery life.  Also, I live at sea level so the altitude elevation acclimation doesn't impact me here.

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to net1994
    net1994 said:
    does it impact my training readiness or body battery score (which I think would impact training readiness) and/or recovery time or

    No. It has no effect at all on any numbers Garmin give you. It only provides information that does not feed into anything else. What it might do is give you some information into why you might have sleeping issues that you could use to change the way you sleep. If you’re training at altitude it might indicate low oxygen levels due not being acclimatised, which will affect training readiness etc, but the Pulse Ox results are not used for any other purpose than information.