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Is the sleep tracking really that bad on Garmin Venu?

Hi there,

I'm not the Venu owner yet but I'm close to buying one as my 3 years old Fitbit Ionic is slowly giving up and the new Versa is just not my style at all.
I love the look of Venu and I know it's probably one of the best fitness trackers out there. I workout 5-6 times a week. Weight lifting, HIIT, jogging - whatever I feel like on a certain day. I'm sure Venu would do an amazing job tracking all of my workouts and daily calories. However I've managed to find out that the actual sleep tracking on the Garmin devices is basically next to useless. Is that really the case? I mean, I'm a shift worker and I often go to bed at different times. Sometimes I will read a book for an hour before bed. Sometimes I'll just play a game on my phone for 30min before sleep. It's all just super random. My Fitbit had absolutely zero problems detecting my sleep, like zero zero problems. It's all always very accurate (as much as it can be on a wrist device) and it always knows exactly when I fell asleep and woke up. It detects my naps if I ever have one during the day. It's really good. I'm wondering if Venu will be anywhere near as good.
I like the Body Battery function on the Garmin devices but then again if sleep tracking is that bad how can the body battery be accurate?

I would really like to know if it's really as bad as some people say?

Thank you.

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0 4757287 over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

I've had Samsung devices in the past and Samsung's sleep tracking is about as poor as that of the Venu's.

But Fitbit is accurate, as far as actual sleep time. The Venu is way off, counting as sleep any motionless period. It's just primitive, compared to Fitbit.

Garmin should improve it, by adding Firstbeat or by other means. But it should improve it, because the feature as implemented currently is closer to a gimmick than to a real measurement.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to 4757287

i get that. it's halfway there and that's probably not very useful for anybody.

i'd rather have a device that does activity tracking/gps/heart rate well and has longer battery life. if they can't get sleep tracking to be good, would rather go without it. same for pulse ox, ecg on apple (i see people asking garmin for it too) - more sensors and complexity.

anyway it would make sense that once the kinks are worked out with firstbeat sleep all garmins going forward would have it, and hopefully it would come to more of the watches currently in use....

0 Pete M over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

I don't know what kinks there are with the firstbeat sleep tracking, but it couldn't possibly be worse than what we have now.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago

It is terrible! Do not buy for sleep tracking.

I might hop into bed at 2100, watch some TV for a couple of hours, take an hour ish to fall asleep, wake up at 0800 with my alarm.

Garmin without fail gives me a solid 11 ish hours sleep, doesn't detect my mid morning trip to the loo and sometimes doesn't detect when I've got out of bed after the alarm...

0 Former Member over 4 years ago

I have a Garmin Venu for over 3 months now. I moved from the Fitbit Charge 3 as it was failing and not syncing. The Venu seemed to offer more in terms of information and data. I was concerned for its sleep tracking as I found the sleep tracking on fitbit so accurate.

I have found the sleep tracking on the Venu to be useless. I have no confidence in any of the information. It does not detect naps during the day. One morning at 07.53 I checked my sleep only for my Venu to display I slept until 08.30, almost 40mins into the future. Some mornings when I check it, it seems accurate but when I look back over my days information, the sleep has been changed to include time I sat watching tele before bed.

It makes me question the validity of all the other information it provides.

I could not recommend it any less.

0 STB over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

Since the Venu and Vivoactive 4 watch are basically the same, I can confirm this. I have gone from VA4 to Fitbit Charge 4. Will buy a Garmin in the future if they get their act together, as I do appreciate battery life and data screens. But right now it's a beta device.

0 3590507 over 4 years ago

If sleep tracking is important to you then don't buy it. Maybe with Firstbeat widget it will improve but so far it is simply unreliable.

0 4757287 over 4 years ago in reply to 3590507

"Unreliable" would imply that the Venu gets it right occasionally.

Unfortunately, it never does, unless you go to sleep as soon as you lay down and get up as soon as you wake up. If you read or watch TV in bed, it always thinks you are sleeping. It's so primitive, it's a joke. I am getting into the habit of checking the time I actually go to sleep, and when I wake up, so that I can manually enter these later. But what is the point of a $300+ device then?

Between this and the lack of native Trail Running and Hiking activities, which are considered "basic" on every other device, I am actually regretting purchasing the Venu.

Does anyone know if the Sleep function on any of the other Garmin devices that use Firstbeat is actually better? I am just curious, in case that Garmin finally decides to fix the issue by implementing Firstbeat Sleep on the Venu.

0 4703647 over 4 years ago in reply to 3590507

3590507 said:
If sleep tracking is important to you then don't buy it. Maybe with Firstbeat widget it will improve but so far it is simply unreliable.

As much as I know Venu is not getting firstbit sleep tracking.

0 7523092 over 4 years ago in reply to STB

For anyone considering a Fitbit just because Garmin's sleep tracking is rudimentary, please go to the Fitbit forums, get some popcorn, sit back and read.

I come from Fitbit having owned a Charge 2, Versa Lite and Versa 2 and I can say that only the C2 was a good device, probably from a time when Fitbit wasn't trying to cheap out on materials and water proofing.

Versas and basically any other recent Fitbit watch are really a joke, they fail in about 10-12 months, right at the edge of the warranty and their support is terrible. True, many of their "lifestyle" tracking features are pretty good, but the hardware, plus syncing issues bring them down and there's simply no comparison to better made devices.

I bought a Venu which hasn't arrived yet, but I've been skimming through these forums for a while now, and almost nobody is complaining about the REALLY basic stuff that a fitness tracker should nail down, such as durability, app syncing, OS support, battery life issues, etc.

Trust me you would want to run back to Garmin and its mediocre sleep tracking after experiencing the Fitbit ecosystem for a while.