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Comment by the_watcher | Hacker News Reader

While sleep tracking is possible the single most useful thing I could get out of a wearable, I just have never been able to sleep with a watch or band on. Until there's something as low profile as a reminder band (think Livestrong), I'm not sure if I'll be able to get sleep tracking (the Oura ring is promising, but the price point is too high for its limited applications to me).

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Interesting, I don't mind sleeping with a watch band on and there are a few 3rd party sleep tracking apps for the apple watch already that are decent.

My biggest complaint is there's no way to disable the screen that's good enough for sleeping. In theater mode it still wakes up if you tap the glass and I accidentally bump it way too often when lying in bed. I really want a better night time mode where only pressing the crown will light up the screen. If they do add an officially supported sleep tracker I hope they'd run into this issue and fix it.

Oura ring is a wonderful sleep tracker. While certainly a tad pricey, its incredibly effective at its given purpose. I didn't realize 1) how much quality sleep impacted my overall health and 2) how consistently quantifying sleep quality impacts daily decisions (working out, drinking, eating, etc). Highly recommended.

I don't mean to be sarcastic - but how is sleep tracking useful? What practical benefit do you get out of knowing how long/how you sleep?

When you wake up exhausted (or not) you can see what/when contributed to that.

I used such for a couple years. Best part was specifying what time range I wanted to wake up, and it would watch for the best actual time to wake me. Much happier mornings then.

This is what I miss too. Sleep Cycle alarm clock used to do that for me but it stopped working a little while ago and I can't figure out why.

I gave my old watch to my girlfriend and having her use it for sleep tracking has been super helpful in tackling her sleep issues. Once she saw her numbers for deep sleep every night, it kind of kicked her into action to address the root cause. Sometimes just quantifying something is really helpful. It's also been somewhat useful in comparing the various approaches (prescriptions, marijuana, vitamins, exercise, etc etc), because sometimes it's hard to judge how good of sleep you got one night if you're constantly getting terrible sleep every other night.

There is few literature on the effect of marijuana on sleep. It mostly looks like it decrease your REM sleep while increasing your deep sleep when you take any of it (the process inverse when you stop). Actually, any open data or even feedback would be of help.

There is a business school cliche: what gets measured gets managed

For me, it helps figure out if my sleep apnea is getting worse and I need to talk to somebody about my CPAP machine or not.

I use a Beddit for this very reason - https://www.beddit.com

I didn't realize Beddit kept going after they were acquired by Apple. I had the first couple versions as review units but I ended up just stopping using them because they didn't tell me anything I basically didn't already know. Which is sort of how I feel about sleep tracking generally. I didn't get enough sleep last night? You don't say.

(I do think they're potentially useful for someone who feels tired a lot and doesn't understand why. I'm less convinced by the value of ongoing tracking.)

The Beddit devices I tried ended up breaking due to either wireless communication issues or sensor damage. I gave up on it. I’m thinking if I end up with a spare Apple Watch for whatever reason that I’d use the old spare while sleeping.

There is also the Withings device https://www.withings.com/us/en/sleep which I use and works well.

Beddit is $149. Expensive. Why not Fitbit Inspire which starts from $69 and includes sleep tracking and a lot more.

GP specifically said they have trouble sleeping with most wearables.

I don’t see an option I don’t need to wear, unless I’m looking at the wrong thing.

I have the same issue as the original poster in that I find wearing something on my wrist while I sleep uncomfortable. The Beddit is a strip that goes under my sheets. So I guess that’s why not.

Have you looked at the Xiaomi Mi Bands? They do sleep tracking, are fairly low profile and easy to find on Amazon for under $30. I switched my mom over from a buggy Fitbit to one last year and it's been better in every way. Given the cost of most of its competitors, it kinda boggles my mind that I don't see more of them.

The killer feature of Mi Bands is battery life. 25 days easily. And price. Quite amazing value for the price.

I've had the Amazfit Bip (a Xiaomi brand) watch for maybe a year and it's still doing around 40 days per charge with an always-on transflective screen, without notifications.

I don't like the privacy policy of the Xiaomi Mi Bands. But what I found out, is that there's an excellent firewall on Android called NetGuard, and it can block network traffic on a per-app basis. So I just block the Mi Fit app, and it doesn't seem to influence anything.

For Android, Sleep as Android has a contactless option (they emit ultrasonic audio and then sense the changes in the audio field): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...

I've also found it uncomfortable to sleep with an Apple Watch on.

I started using a Whoop band a couple of months ago for mostly that purpose and I often forget that I'm wearing it.

I find that placing my device on my ankle is significantly more comfortable for night-time tracking.

The band I have is of a suitable length for both wrist and ankle use.

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