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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

I thought Apple Watch was compatible with Android, just not as smooth to use. This is eye opening.

At the same time, though I agree Apple Watch has the best sleep tracking (and I work in the sleep space), the difference in sleep tracking compared to others probably isn't big enough to justify jumping through all these hoops, unless, like the author, you enjoy doing this sort of thing.

The Whoop sleep tracking is quite good, but a rather expensive (I think) subscription just to get data about a health function you have very little direct influence over.

The Xaoimi Bands are inexpensive, and from what I understand, also have good sleep tracking.

I also just came across this https://cardiomood.com/, which seems to be like a non-subscription, but rather expensive Whoop.

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For years, I was an Apple Watch user: I assumed that all medium/top end trackers were the same, and that Apple Watch was pretty much the benchmark.

…but now that is have had the opportunity to use extensively Garmin watches, my experience is that they offer far superior accuracy, precision and technical details for activity tracking and sleeping than Apple Watch.

My picks would be in the following order:

1) Garmin high-end watches, they are truly a work of love

2) Aura ring, because of great convenience and reliability

3) Apple Watch, because they are great all-rounders

4) Coros, Suunto, Whoops, because they are highly reliable, but lack some of the smart functions

5) Withings, Fitbit, etc…, they are a solid option, but they generally lack distinctive features/capabilities

I would stay away from any brands offering super cheap products, due to privacy concerns and lower reliability and lack of advanced features.

I would love to hear more about your opinions on this as someone who has been experimenting with as a semi-serious runner after years of being Apple Watch exclusive.

What I see is benefits around battery life, form factor (buttons are awesome), and good native support for "compound metrics" like Endurance Score, Hill Score, Training Status, etc.

But when it comes to actual stats and metrics, Apple Watch feels superior in most ways. Garmin sleep tracking anecdotally feels much less accurate. It baffles me that it only shows pace to the nearest 5 seconds during a workout. It confuses me that it only shows a Vo2max estimate to zero decimal places.

Then, Apple Watch is at least 10x more customizable via third party apps. Want a Whoop-like experience with strain score, recovery score, etc.? Bevel and Athlytic are there. Want a much more in-depth and customizable workout experience? WorkOutdoors puts Garmin to shame here.

What am I missing that makes Garmin so pervasive, while Apple Watch is derided as "not a serious sports watch"?

I'm hardly a serious runner, but I'd say the pros you laid out for Garmin are quite nice, and the cons are inconsequential to your average fitness tracker user. I'd probably argue they're inconsequential to everyone but the absolute elite and, for them, are pointless.

Sleep tracking is hard to action on for the average user outside "you slept this long" and none of the writst-based devices are that good anyway.

Pace to sub 5 is a little more annoying, but probably not useful for the majority considering most people are just running, not craning over their watch the whole time.

VO2 max is also a wild estimate, and I'd hazard it's not particularly accurate for the average person. It's off by close to 20% for me, and I should be a pretty good candidate.

On the flipside, you can get tons of data out of a Garmin that costs significantly less than an Apple watch. Plus, the majority of Garmins sold are fitness devices with some smart features, with Apple watches being primarily a smart watch. While maybe not justified (I think the Apple watch features are quite nice) I'd expect that's a major part of the reason Garmin has the rep it does.

If someone is buying a device to run, most would recommend the cheaper, light, simple, specialized, long battery life watch over the opposite. If you already have an Apple watch, it's probably a no brainer. For the high-end Garmin devices, it's a little more complex, but not many people are considering a US$800+ device without knowing the nuances of the discussion, or having enough money to not care.

I think you're probably right on a lot of this.

I do think the pace having more granularity than five seconds is important for anyone who's doing any kind of speed work, where a pace off by 5 seconds can result in a fairly significant variance. Admittedly I am not a total novice, but my 5k and 10k pace times are about 10 seconds apart, and I do some interval workouts at 5k pace and some at 10k pace. 5 second granularity doesn't give much wiggle room there! Although of course, GPS and cadence-based paces are also estimates, so maybe the 5 second accuracy is better than 1 second which could inpsire a false sense of confidence in the estimate.

As far as Vo2Max goes, totally agree – my lab test results vary widely from both watches. However, I think that actually makes Apple's 1 decimal place more significant – it has a lot of value in offering a fitness trend, even if it's inaccurate. I might train hard for 3 weeks and see 0 movement in my Garmin Vo2Max, whereas I might see a 0.3 increase in the Apple Watch. This is valuable for even the novice runner.

That's very true, and I'd love to see some actual documentation on how they get to pace numbers.

I'm in the same boat with regard to 5K/10K pace, but I reckon it's probably not a huge issue in the long run. While plans specify those times, I think it's more about shorthand for effort zone where 5K is "this hard" and 10K is "a little bit less hard".

VO2 max improvement is a good point, though, and I'd probably agree. If I had a hazard a guess, Garmin would say that their training productivity tracker/race estimated are the preferred way of presenting that data. as an aside, I think VO2max has sorta been coopted as a "fitness number" when it actually represents a very specific thing that may or may not be emblematic of actual performance in the majority of cases. It is nice to have a a single value to look at that can sum up whether what you've been doing lately is productive, though.

That could just be me coming from the world of cycling where watts are king and there's far less variability. In my mind, all these running stats are mushy, but that might not actually be the case.

I feel the important piece to remember with VO2Max estimation is: Its an estimation. Its significant figures [1]; reporting the value to one or more decimal places communicates a level of confidence inappropriate for how inaccurate these estimations generally are. Especially the Apple Watch's; Garmin's is known for being pretty decent, usually +/- 2, but Apple Watch's is all over the place and is infamous for being really inaccurate.

Clamping pace to 5 seconds is a similar idea. GPS isn't super accurate: within 16 feet some sources say [2], though it gets better if you've got dual band, if you're moving; but it gets worse when you don't have an open sky. Just ten feet of GPS inaccuracy over a ten minute mile means your recorded pace is somewhere between 9:58/mile to 10:02/mile. And, experimentally, these systems are way, way more inaccurate than that: on a recent bike ride, with no major sky obstructions, I wore both an Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Garmin Enduro 3; the AWU2 recorded 25.05 miles, Enduro 3 recorded 25.18 miles. That's a difference of ~686 feet; ~27 feet/mile.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures

[2] https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

If vo2max is displayed without decimals it would take months to see progress for most people starting running. It’s baffling that they would make such a mistake.

I was considering a Garmin watch, but if they make such a stupid decision regarding vo2max then what other mistakes are lurking in their apps?

IMO the biggest reason why the Apple Watch is oftentimes interpreted as an "unserious" exercise smartwatch is actually quite simple: The display & lack of physical buttons makes it difficult to interface with in the variety of conditions that outdoor activity enthusiasts often find themselves in. If its bright out, the mps displays on many Garmins will outperform OLED. If its raining; good luck using a touchscreen. If you're wearing gloves; ditto. If you've just ran a marathon, you're dying, your vision is blurry, you're sweaty and collapsing, that "swipe over a screen then click the end workout button" workflow is the end of the world; it wasn't designed by someone who has ever been in that situation, its designed for and by people who take their nice little walks to the cute little grocery story.

Battery is another less major factor: Even the AW Ultra 2 struggles to make it through a full marathon run (~70-90% battery usage IME) and that's not an uncommon-enough situation for users of the quote"ULTRA"endquote to be an invalid criticism.

Nothing else matters. Your comment continues into talking about sleep tracking and recovery scores and strain scores and third party apps and literally none of that matters. That's silicon valley brain stuff that many customers don't care about. The Apple Watch is, to some people, a Bugatti without a steering wheel; it gets a lot of the basics wrong.

One note though: Many Garmin users would also say that Garmin is, sadly, also losing track of what their core userbase wants, as the experience has become more buggy and less focused over the years. I'm not asserting that Garmin is king and Apple are idiots; Garmin just has momentum and is generally great at the things its users care about.

*Oura ring I assume, for anyone googling

The Xiaomi Bands are quite poor according this tester[1]. Huawei Bands are slightly better but I guess you can't complain much for the price.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_aS0Q188tY

The MiBand7 is fairly far on the right, based on the price. But you're right, I thought more of the Mi products where higher.

Do you have an opinion on the sleep tracking in Garmin Fenix watches?

I have both an Apple Watch 8 and the Garmin Fenix and I use the Fenix for sleep tracking. I find the Apple Watch to be too general with the stats. The Fenix gives a lot more detail. You can debate if the extra detail is useful or not. I also like the heart rate variability tracking with the Fenix (it seems to mirror how tire I feel pretty well). Lastly, the Fenix can hold a charge for several days. I can use it to sleep track and run and repeat and it charges quickly. If I sleep track with my Apple Watch, it may not have enough battery for the rest of the day. I run with both -- the Fenix for running specific tracking and the Apple for calling friends, listening to Audible, or podcasts.

my experience with garmin (vivoactive, not fenix) was that they had all kinds of precision and detail, but it also didn't even notice when i got up to pee in the middle of the night - just a straight line through the graphs as though i hadn't woken up at all. that was the end of my trust in their sleep tracking.

The Quantified Scientist does very detailed, measurement-based tests on all sort of smart watches, you might want to see where your device stands in his charts in terms of accuracy.

Mine reliably notices that I woke up and immediately go under when my wife comes home late in the night, which happens basically every day (because bartender) so I get somewhat statistically significant results in that regard.

It's accurate enough.

Had a Garmin that would say my table had a heartbeat.

that actually might have been accurate.

my garmin was really good at picking up my heart rate. there was one time i had it in a waist pack, and i was wearing a chest strap that was not paired to the garmin, and the garmin managed to pick up a pretty accurate heart rate for most of a bike ride.

> hold a charge for several days

That would be an understatement, are you running/cycling a lot outside, or is it a smaller model (thus small battery because physics)?

Mine (Fenix 7) holds charge for 15 days minimum and that's with tracking workouts 3-5x/week (no GPS though, winter so I treadmill for runs). On a couple of months where I didn't do sports it held up 25-30 days.

I have SpO2 tracking disabled because it's quite battery intensive and the only use for it would be high altitude acclimation, although I must admit I looked at it during my "stop smoking" process.

Data aside, neither are ideal. I can’t sleep with the Apple Watch because it needs to be charged while I sleep to get through the day, and the Fenix is too heavy for my wrist at night. I use an old Mi Band, which tracks approximate data that suits me.

FWIW, I charge my watch while taking a shower before bed and in the morning, and that seems to be enough to get me through the day and through the night.

According to reviewers, Mi Bands and generally all of Xiaomi's devices are fairly bad at sleep tracking. So much so that it's almost pointless to use them for that.

I know it’s fully anecdotal, but my Xiaomi/Huami (former Xiaomi sub-brand) devices have matched up sleep duration quite well with what I feel in the morning - and I’m quite sensitive to less sleep. I think it’s quite good for sleep duration, but I don’t rely on REM duration etc as I don’t have much use for it. When it predicts a good sleep score I’ve definitely slept well, though sometimes it gives a lesser score even when I don’t appear to have slept poorly.

(I’ve used a Mi Band 1, an Amazfit Bip, and currently an Amazfit Band 7.)

Could be true. But I have no use for more precise and deeper info. I need it only to fight possible anxiety spikes and attribute them to a bad sleep.

I’m still using old Fitbit Inspire, which is not too big for sleep tracking. And it’s very accurate, for me.

I recently got a Fenix 7, but not for sleep tracking purposes. I find it ok. I definitely think it isn't great at measuring wakefulness at night, but I also have a very low HR and high HRV (while awake), which so this causes the margin for error in the device to be very low.

As I usually say, all of the devices are good enough. You're getting historical data about what your body did. You can't go back and change it anyway. I don't see real value in knowing my historical sleep data.

I had the fenix 7 and I liked the sleep tracking.

Because the garmin can function without requiring and acount/online nonsense, it does the sleep analysis and recommendations on the watch.

Not OP but I have a Fenix 7x. What happens very infrequently is that I would wake up during the night, and then be absolutely still (I'm trying to go back to sleep) except for checking my watch every 15-20mn. This does not get detected as "awake" the following morning.

I don't really care because I got this watch so I can upload a track and follow it while recording various metrics during 5+ days, and for this it works perfectly.

There are two data points you need to accurately track sleep: Motion and respiration rate. With that information you can identify light sleep vs. deep sleep, and sometimes you can differentiate between light sleep and being still.

Source: Worked on the ResMed S+ and got a theory dump from the PhDs running the project.

Sleep versus awake from a sensor on the wrist is always going to be subject to wide error bars.

Source: worked on an experiment trying to make people fall asleep while driving (in a simulated environment so it was safe- I built the simulated environment). It took a lot of EEG wires and gel in subject's hair etc. to accurately figure that out.

I would think that "pressing the button to turn on the backlight so I can check the time" would be a good indication that I'm awake :)

Same experience for me. If I wake up but lie still it's not nearly as accurate. What I do find useful is the Body Battery score, that generally maps well to how I feel the next day. And the Stress Score is an eerily good indicator of when I'm getting sick and when the illness is stopping.

This guy actively went the hard path. He didn’t need to do the for Kids pairing. It’s actually a case study in getting too in the weeds of a problem that’s tangential to what you’re trying to solve: good health reporting.

Some of the article you’d probably still want to do with Android, however (e.g. calendar syncing).

That said, I got an Apple Watch to attempt to replace my cell phone when leaving the house, but Apple seems to intentionally or nonintentionally wants to sabotage this use case.

How is the use case being sabotaged? They actively advertise that

I think a perfect example is swipe to type. It’s would actually be easy to type on the watch if it supported this.

It’s been a few years, so I might be out of date here, but the last update here was that there was an app that supported this (FlickType, only for Messages because app APIs, sure fine) but Apple banned the app after a lengthy but successful App Store approval and several updates (it appears to be back now).

I consistently ran into issues similar to this, where a solution was so obvious but Apple either totally missed it or seemed to actively make the issue harder without a phone.

I wish a wrote a blog post at the time about each one but I didn’t. Syncing music also comes to mind — I think you had to sync specific playlists, not your library, and it really, really sucked with almost no feedback. You also needed the iPhone watch app to do it — sync to phone then sync to watch. I was surprised Apple shipped it.

This comes from a happy macOS, Arch Linux and iPhone user who buys/uses an Android every 5 years for a year.

I’m going to charge the watch and update it to see if Apple implemented it. I just don’t think Apple is interested nor financially motivated to make the watch a first class citizen.

Has it been a bad experience? I feel bad about how much time I spend staring at my phone, and I think the watch would be the ideal form factor for me, but I haven’t pulled the trigger because it feels silly spending more money on tech to reduce my dependency on tech

Get a kale phone

I had to try Apple Watch for kids because my initial goal was not to buy iPhone to get the Apple Watch working.

From what I've heard, Whoop (https://whoop.com) has the best sleep tracking, but it is subscription based and the monthly price is ridiculous for a device that has not even a screen

How does apple watch compare with the ooma ring for sleep tracking?

I think you mean Oura ring.

I used an Oura for a while, and it is quite good.

The thing I say about all of them is...what's the value in you having better tracking?

Let's say it's off by 4% and that you got 4% less deep sleep last night than your tracker says? What are you going to do about it? You can't change the data from the past anyway. They're all "good enough" I'd say.

The value of accurate tracking is comparison. As someone who suffers from chronic sleep issues, being able to accurately compare the effect of interventions on my sleep pattern, as well as account for seasonality etc is invaluable. Accurate tracking also helps forestall habituation - it's like keeping a paper diary, obviously you can't change the past (no one ever suggested you could) but you can make yourself aware of large changes that happened too gradually to be obvious.

Yeah I'm not sure what I'd use this for. I tend to know if I've had a bad night's sleep, and the interventions I'd try are all things I should do anyway - don't drink, less caffeine, lower stress.

> The thing I say about all of them is...what's the value in you having better tracking?

Same reason I weigh myself almost every day. If there are changes or I have some other issue I can go back over the data with my doctor.

The Oura ring does a lot more analytics. There's a "sleep score", a "readiness score", various algorithms to suggest an "optimal sleep time", etc.

The Apple Watch just records stuff and throws it in the Health app. That's it. They added a "vitals" app that mostly alerts you when the numbers it records are drastically different than the norm, but it's not really analyzing or suggesting anything.

I get the feeling that Apple thought there would be a whole ecosystem of apps that would analyze your sleep data, so they didn't need to build any of it into the watch or the health app itself.

(or they just wait for a well-loved third-party app to emerge, and then copy its functionality into the core OS, killing it altogether, the apple way)

It seems like the "best" solution depends on how much one values ecosystem freedom, data accuracy or simplicity of use

Indeed, Apple gadgets work well if your body and lifestyle are close to what Apple tests for. Apple Watch is good “in general”, but for example it would regularly show me to be below sea level, not capture my heart rate (like measure it wildly off by 20-30 units) etc. AirPods as hearing aids — what if I'm not using an iPhone? So yes, the post is quite accurate and there really is no choice at the end, the wall of the garden is impossibly high.

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