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Sleep Tracking - how much do you get?

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Kieren Feb 2016 2:29pm, 13 Feb 2016 3,789 posts	Quote Pin Kieren So I've bought myself a Mi Band 1S (£15 - £30 depending where you buy it) activity tracker. It tracks steps and automatically tracks sleep, taking your heart rate periodically along side movement to estimate when you are in deep and light sleep. You don't move in REM and deep sleep, so I guess as an estimate you half the "deep" sleep to see how much deep sleep you are roughly getting. I rarely seem to get much more than 2 hours deep sleep, even if I sleep over 8 hours. The most I have got in a month of tracking was 3 hours. I'm curious to see what sort of numbers others see if you track your sleep with fitbit or other apps / tools - particularly deep sleep
Kieren Feb 2016 2:29pm, 13 Feb 2016 3,790 posts	Quote Pin Kieren
Badger Feb 2016 2:54pm, 13 Feb 2016 6,870 posts	Quote Pin Badger I use my fenix 3 for this (not really what I bought it for, but it can do it, and being reminded I'm not getting enough sleep does help me force myself off to bed earlier). Last night it tells me 8h25min total sleep, 1h 42min deep sleep (just for once, more than 7h30).Total is about right, and it does seem consistently to hit it (though it will mistake lounging in bed on a Sunday morning for being asleep still). No idea about the deep sleep; sometimes it shows 3 or 4 episodes about 90m apart, which is about what you'd expect for sleep cycles, sometimes much longer chunks, so I don't think it's reading consistently.
cackleberry Feb 2016 2:58pm, 13 Feb 2016 987 posts	Quote Pin cackleberry I'd love to have a go at tracking mine as I sleep very badly indeed. During bad patches I would be lucky to get 3-4 hours sleep despite spending 7-8 hours in bed. Sleeping ok at the moment though touches wood. I'd be interested to see if my sleep is really as bad as I think it is. None of which answers your question of course! How do you rate the Mi band? Never heard of it before? I had been considering an activity tracker and was looking at the FitBit range, then got a proper Garmin instead!
cackleberry Feb 2016 3:17pm, 13 Feb 2016 988 posts	Quote Pin cackleberry Badger- that is something I thought might be a problem with sleep tracking. Sometimes if I can't sleep, I just lay quiet, usually in the hopes I'll drop off any second! My OH has often assumed I'm asleep when really I'm wide awake. Would the tracker be able to distinguish between that and actual sleep?
sallykate Feb 2016 3:24pm, 13 Feb 2016 4,226 posts	Quote Pin sallykate I use an app on my phone. It does get fooled if I don't move as it assumes I'm asleep then. It doesn't give me the number of hours of deep sleep but it gives me a percentage sleep quality which I guess is based on the pattern of sleep / deep sleep (which it shows in a graph). I can also record various things which it correlates with sleep quality: did I exercise? What sort of dinner did I have? Did I drink anything and how much? These are all self-defined. I think my best ever night was after Beachy Head marathon one year.
Kieren Feb 2016 4:13pm, 13 Feb 2016 3,791 posts	Quote Pin Kieren @cackleberry - I rate the band highly. I bought one for myself and my partner. The battery lasts almost 30 days and it tracks sleep automatically. Step count is OK - that not really why I bought it though. It can share data to googlefit if you want it to. I paid £30 from an amazon seller because I wanted it in time for Christmas. There are sellers liek gearbest that have it for about £15 I bought my mum a fitbit. That is good as it emails her updates but they battery lasts about a week and you have to manually start and stop sleep tracking my tapping the device. ------------- As far as telling the difference between being awake and asleep - probably not. All the devices only give you a rough idea. The mi-band 1s has a heart rate sensor and will take a pulse reading between 11PM and 8AM to see if it had gone really low which would indicate deep sleep. I have no idea if it learns your heart rate - I hope so as most runners probably have a low resting HR just sitting. It's good to know others are getting around 2 hours so far too. For what it' worth - I don't feel like I get enough sleep. Something so easy seems so difficult at times
Derby Tup Feb 2016 5:46pm, 13 Feb 2016 20,171 posts	Quote Pin Derby Tup Six hours if I'm lucky
Badger Feb 2016 9:49pm, 13 Feb 2016 6,871 posts	Quote Pin Badger Cackleberry, it's a good question. Last night just before I turned in, I glanced at the app and it thought I'd been asleep for hours; in the morning, though, it had worked out I was moving less from when I really went to bed and stopped treating that time as sleep. So I guess it depends on just how still you keep and how often you might move your arm. I don't remember it getting 'trying to get to sleep' wrong, because I always am stiller when I finally do fall asleep. Sounds as though it might not be true for you.
Wazelle Feb 2016 10:58pm, 13 Feb 2016 1,812 posts	Quote Pin Wazelle I get between 5.5 and 8 hours. i use a jawbone up to track. it can tell the difference between resting and sleeping.