Average respiration rate - sleep higher than awake

Frankly told, I would not rely on the numbers at all. I do often breath exercises, where I can breathe only once in a minute during half an hour, but the watch will consistently tell me I am breathing ~14 breaths per minute. And it is completely wrong even at less extreme breath exercises, not even speaking about several minutes long breath-holds. It won't detect any of it. And paradoxically, when I start the activity "Breathwork", I can breathe 20 times per minute, but the watch will still log just the number of breaths prescribed by the workout (for example 4 bpm at the short Relax & Focus exercise) even if I do not respect it at all.

It may perhaps work better for someone else, but for myself I found it utterly useless. 

The only place where I see it delivering relatively credible data, is during the Running activities when I wear the HRM-Pro belt, which is comprehensible, since it delivers more reliable HRV data (which is used for detecting the breathing rate).

Same here, for me it’s 4 beat on average

CARM said:

it’s 4 beat

Not that it would be important, since in the context everyone knows what you mean, but just to avoid the eventual confusion otherwise:

The "bpm" at the respiratory rate does not mean "beats per minute" (that's just for the heart rate), it is "breaths per minute"

Yes - of course you’re right -  I meant „breath” - somehow, when talking about metrics it’s mostly beats per minute, so it got there “automatically” ;-) in a way

If I do breathing exercises, it shows very accurately, but you have to take a long time, it doesn't record one breath hold. (diving) But after 15 minutes of meditation, it shows correctly like 5 breaths per minute or less. A person must be absolutely still, otherwise it does not measure at all, stop moving (diving, exercising).

TeaRacer said:

If I do breathing exercises, it shows very accurately,

As I wrote, it is just an illusion. It will always just show the breathing rate prescribed by the breathwork exercise, not the real one. At least it was the case with me, when I tested it. You can do the same test too. See my results for 6 different tests below on the image. I did the workout exercises in identical way - sitting at the desktop, no moving, no diving, of course.

Using the 6 min breathwork exercise Focus & Relax. Counting my breaths carefully, and keeping it identical during the whole workout. The first test was with some hyperventilation during the whole time (20 breaths / min), second one was with normal breathing (12 brpm), third one was following the prescribed rate 4 brpm (4-4-4-4 / inhale-hold-exhale-hold), the 4th test was done slower than prescribed - a breath each 30s, the 5th test was just a single breath each minute, and the 6th test was a long breath hold. In all 6 cases the prescribed 4 breaths / min were incorrectly detected (with just some brief small deviations of maximally +/- 1 brpm)

Then, I repeated the test wearing the HRM-Pro, and hoped it would work better, but in fact it did not detect any breathing at all. Also no graph for the breathing rate with the HRM-Pro:

I don't do preset exercises, I just start the yoga app. :-)

Nothing is perfect. :-)

I don't think this is a problem with the watch.