8 Best Sleep Trackers 2024: Expert Tips and Research

It will automatically detect when you fall asleep and then monitor how it’s going. You’ll be able to sleep your sleep stages, sleep score, movement, and total hours slept. Sleep is vital, and if you have no holds barred in tracking it, then consider the Garmin Epix (2nd Gen). This premium smartwatch automatically detects when you’re asleep, and it lets you set what hours you go to bed and wake up for additional insurance. You’ll be able to see your total hours slept, stages of sleep, if you’ve moved around, and get an overall sleep score. Beyond sleep, you also get a full suit of fitness tracking features, including heart rate, your maximum oxygen consumption during exercise, and more.

• This score is a simple way to understand what your sleep quality is like.
• The smaller display also doesn’t offer the flexibility of a smartwatch, and there are limited features beyond health tracking.
• We were impressed with the sleep tracking features and accuracy, as noted in our review of the Oura Ring 3.
• The Series 11 now offers consistently accurate overnight data and a daily sleep score for greater accessibility.
• Thanks to watchOS 11, the Series 10 is the most powerful workout companion yet out of Cupertino and offers a more personalized health and fitness tracking experience than ever before.
• To get full sleep tracking, you will need a subscription, but that is true of other fitness trackers on this list.

Wake Up Recharged: The 6 Best Sleep Trackers That Deliver Real Results

If you have insomnia, sleep apnea, or any other kind of sleep-related disorder, see a medical professional. If your doctor says that using a sleep tracker is a good idea, go for it. When we compared it against a heart-rate sensor during sleep, it also proved to be the most accurate of the trackers at measuring heart rate and heart-rate variability.

When you fall asleep, it’ll automatically set itself to Bedtime Mode, recording detailed information about your sleep stages, duration, sleeping heart rate, restlessness and oxygen variation. The price range for sleep tracker devices varies so determining your budget first will help you narrow down your https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/water-balance best options. It’s also important to factor in the monthly or yearly subscriptions that some sleep tracker devices require. Oura has the lowest at $6 per month but Withings and Fitbit do not require subscriptions. Eight Sleep is already extremely pricey and requires a $17 or $25 subscription per month, depending on your membership.

It’s not just athletes that benefit from source fitness trackers, says Athayde. Everyone can benefit from the data fitness trackers provide, if you understand your wants and needs, in my experience. If you don’t ever wear rings, you probably won’t find the Oura Ring comfortable.

The Garmin Venu 3 might be Garmin’s premium smartwatch, but it’s also one of the best fitness trackers available. The device features highly reliable multi-band GNSS and the company’s Gen 5 Elevate optical heart rate sensor (which performed extremely well during my review). It also boasts Garmin’s top training tools, including Body Battery, Recovery Time, Workout Benefit, Perceived Exertion, and Garmin Coach, plus detailed sleep tracking and automatic nap detection. I loved the sleep-tracking accuracy and how Garmin integrates rest-related stats into broader insights.

Best fitness trackers for sleep in 2024

The Bia Smart Sleep Mask is packed with features, including the ability to track your sleep stages through brain-monitoring technology called Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). The mask is configured with neurofeedback techniques to guide you to sleep, and there are separate modes for evening sleep, napping, meditation, and overcoming jet lag. The SLEEPON Go2Sleep 3 Tracker is our favorite sleep tracker for monitoring your blood oxygen level continuously during sleep. It is a ring made of silicon that syncs with your phone and can identify dips in blood oxygen, which may help detect underlying sleep-related breathing disorders. With a sleep tracker, you can get a clear look at the quantity and quality of your sleep on a nightly basis, and it can also help identify sleep problems.

How to Choose a Sleep Tracker

That’s pretty on par with the numbers from my Oura ring on all other nights. If you hate wearing things to bed but still want sleep data, Sleepme is one of the few non-wearable options that doesn’t totally suck. The setup includes a thin sensor pad that goes under your fitted sheet and connects to a small wire and hub. It’s not invisible—you’ll feel it a little if you’re sleeping on a bare mattress—but once you throw a mattress pad over it, it mostly disappears. This can help indicate whether the cells in your body are getting the oxygen they need, which can be helpful for assessing acclimation to altitude changes during athletic training. While your Garmin smartwatch is not considered a medical device and this feature is not intended for monitoring of medical conditions, this feature can provide valuable data for those pursuing an active lifestyle.

Watch Series 9

Kristen is also a NASM-certified personal trainer with experience teaching group fitness. For this piece, Kristen worked closely with the testing team to gain insights from our real-world tests and determine our winners for best fitness trackers across various categories. All of Garmin’s running watches include recovery metrics, including my fave, the Forerunner 265.

Other nights, my connection was iffy and I had large gaps in my sleep data. Wrist-based sensors can struggle when sweat, movement, or a loose fit interfere, especially during intense workouts that involve a lot of arm motion. The smaller display also doesn’t offer the flexibility of a smartwatch, and there are limited features beyond health tracking. But if you want a straightforward, reliable device that balances comfort, features, and price, the Charge 6 is one of the most dependable options you can wear all day, every day.

We checked in with Nitun Verma, spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine for some advice. For example, the app might tell you that you were in “Zone 3” during a workout, meaning you had hit 70% to 80% of your maximum heart rate. Our testers said that data such as this helped them learn in real time whether they were making strides in their fitness or overdoing it.

Best sleep tracker

SleepScore says that if you’re using an unsupported Android model, you will still be able to track your sleep using that device, but the SleepScore app features and functionality will vary. (When Justin tried SleepScore on the unsupported Google Pixel 3a, he wasn’t able to get a reading.) We also wonder whether this failure to update may open up any security issues on non-compatible phones. To be safe, we think it’s best for those with incompatible phones to skip SleepScore and try our also-great pick, Sleep Cycle, instead. Android users who don’t mind a wonky interface could try Sleep as Android, which contains cool features but is difficult to navigate.

If you want to find out more about the best sleep trackers, our FAQ section may answer some of your burning questions. The main reason to consider going to a retail store is that you can see how a wearable device actually feels in real life. That said, if you buy online with free returns, you’ll have a much longer period to test out a sleep tracker for yourself. You’ll need the tracker to monitor your sleep over many hours, so don’t pick a device that will be a nuisance for you to use or wear. Sleep trackers can provide meaningful data, but they aren’t perfectly accurate.

Garmin Vivoactive 6

While a screen may be important for the best fitness trackers, it is less of a necessity if you’re monitoring your sleep. However, we’ve also included some with screens, for those who want to purchase a tracker for fitness and sleep. Some include smart alarms to wake you during light sleep, or smart home integration to help create a sleep-friendly environment. Others double as wellness hubs, with tools for stress tracking, recovery, and fitness goals. Before you shop, think about what extras will genuinely help you improve your sleep and overall well-being. For Garmin smartwatch users and beyond who don’t want to wear a watch to bed, the Garmin Index Sleep Monitor is another worthwhile option that takes tracking off your wrist.

Best Sleep Tracker: Whoop Strap 3.0

If you’re looking to receive similar insights into your sleep cycle and help optimize your sleep, we found these picks to be the best sleep trackers for women across the market. To see your data in full, you need to pair the device with the Withings Health Mate app. The watch monitors your heart rate while asleep and the Coach function offers handy science-backed health wisdom about your data. While it may have all of this sleep tracking available, it’s important the Redmi Watch 5 is comfortable to wear overnight. The band itself, made of a mix of polyamide, polyester, and elastane, is comfortable to wear (even during sleep) and easy to adjust. The Whoop app displays everything from basics like step counts and estimations of calories burned, to weekly heart rate zones and a recommended bedtime.

The best sleep tracker: Oura Ring 4

Ultimately, the key difference between the two product categories is intended use. The Apple Watch SE 3 is more expensive than some of the other fitness trackers on this list, but it’s the most affordable Apple Watch, and it’ll track everything you need from your wrist. With hundreds of hours of testing under my belt, these are the best fitness trackers you can buy today, with an emphasis on comfort, simplicity, accuracy and value. Instead of just tracking your sleep, Elemind’s headband is designed to improve it. The headband tracks your EEG brainwaves and plays short auditory pulses that supposedly sync with your personal rhythm, so you fall asleep faster. Its effectiveness was demonstrated in preliminary clinical studies, but when I wore it, my sleep latency (the time it took to fall asleep) ranged from 4 to 16 minutes, according to the device’s app.

Best sleep tracker for Android users

To address that, sleep trackers first collect raw data and then use an algorithm to interpret what the data says about your sleep. The Muse S Athena Headband Sleep Tracker is a wearable device that tracks an impressive number of sleep metrics. If you purchase the Muse app, you’ll also receive access to instructional meditation programs and hundreds of guided meditations.