These are the dumbest things. Everyone I know who wears a watch to bed and obsesses over the “sleep score” just ends up stressed by the results, which makes them feel even more pressure to get a good score the following night. Sleep should not be gamified, it just compounds any problems that exist.
I think this comes back to the whole,
not everything is for everyonething. For me, it just gives insight into how my sleep went and motivates me to try and stay asleep a little longer, as I have issues staying asleep. But I can definitely see how it could adversely affect others.Surely you know if you slept well, though? Like I can definitely tell the difference, the body gives a lot of signals. Unless you have significant health problems, the preparation for getting a good sleep and developing a long-term healthy sleep pattern is pretty universal and well understood.
It’s like cooking a steak. Yes, most people get it right and don’t poison themselves, but some people have thermometers and make sure their steak is cooked to perfection.
not everything is for everyone
Big time. I’ve been training pretty hard recently, which means my sleep is critical. My watch doesn’t have a sleep “score” feature, but being able to track how much and how well I’ve slept in addition to how I feel when I wake up is pretty useful.
I’m the same. I take working out pretty seriously, so I like to see when I’m getting enough sleep for proper recovery or why when I wake up I feel like my legs are proper heavy. The watch has been a great help for me.
most, if not all, smart watch health features are like that, including heart rate. they’re just gimmicks.
What? As someone who relies on heart rate monitoring for autoregulation in the gym, I can tell you it works and works well. When my heart rate is allowed to drop between sets, I can lift heavier and pursue my progressive overload properly, but when my watch is glitching, my lifts are never up-to-par.
Now, can the technology be improved. Absolutely, let’s start with addressing the racial biases in the optical sensors, but to call it a gimmick is someone with a preconception attempting to spread misinformation. Whether in bad faith or inadvertently, only you know.
Yeah, maybe I’m missing something but smart watches in general seem like one of the biggest examples of big tech successfully convincing consumers that “more tech in your life is good”, even when it’s not actually doing anything new or useful for them. I’m definitely not convinced at all by health tracking for normal people, it’s pretty obviously a massive data hoarding exercise that offers very little in return.
Fitbit’s the best you can get for sleep and their measurements aren’t particularly accurate either.
Watches and fitness bands aren’t quite there for sleep tracking, last I checked…
Fitbit sleep scores were always a black box. Swapping the mystery score for mystery metrics is not improvement.
