Garmin has a long history of developing sometimes niche products, often at double-take prices. This is one of those products. I’ll save you a bunch of reading and tell you straight-up at the beginning of this review, that while I wouldn’t be a purchaser of this product (because I wear a watch – or two – while sleeping already), the hardware engineering of it is astoundingly good. In fact, it’s far better than Garmin’s marketing efforts and computer imagery would lead you to believe initially.
The Garmin Index Sleep Monitor is conceptually a simple product: It negates the need to wear a watch to get sleep data – things like sleep time, breathing disturbances, blood oxygen levels, and more. While it’s primarily designed for existing Garmin watch customers, you don’t need a Garmin watch at all to use it. It can be used without any other Garmin device. But if you have a capable watch, then it backfills all of the data you need for more advanced metrics like Training Readiness, Body Battery, and more.
More notably, though, while this aptly-named sleep product is designed only for capturing sleep data, it can very likely be seen as a trial run platform for a more 24×7 product, akin to a Whoop or similar band. For now though, this is all about sleep.
With that, let’s dive into it.
What It Does:
The Index Sleep monitor is simply designed to record all of your sleep metrics, and then backfill that data to your Garmin account when you wake up. The target purchaser here is squarely existing Garmin customers who own a watch, but don’t like wearing a watch to bed. This ‘fixes’ the problem where no sleep data impacts many of the Garmin metrics, especially training metrics.
Without knowing how much you sleep each night, Garmin’s devices can’t figure out how your training recovery is going, how ready you are to train, whether or not you might be getting sick, or how you might be recovering from jet lag. All things that require continuous vitals monitoring.
Whether or not you agree with this product (or its price), it’s factually true that if you don’t have complete data, you can’t give complete recommendations. Just as it’s true if you didn’t have any sports tech and were simply old-school style with a coach. If you omitted that you hadn’t slept more than few hours last night before doing a hard workout (that you failed), then that coach couldn’t give you accurate or useful advice on how to recover (or, how to best plan for the next workout).
In any event, the Garmin Index Sleep Monitor contributes the following sleep metrics to your Garmin account:
– Sleep times (fall asleep/wake-up)
– Blood oxygen (SpO2) levels (aka PulseOx in Garmin lingo)
– Heart Rate Variability data
– Skin Temperature
– Body Battery levels
– Sleep Phase/Stage levels (Deep, REM, Light, Awake)
– Sleep Score
– Breathing Disturbances (Garmin’s non-medically certified version of sleep apnea monitoring)
– Heart Rate (during sleep)
In turn, it updates the following metrics with that data:
– Training Readiness score (which includes sleep history)
– Training Status (which requires HRV)
– Recovery time
– HRV Status (the scoring levels based on the underlying HRV data)
– All sleep-specific metrics
– Sleep Coach recommendations
– Women’s ovulation cycle prediction features
– Morning Report
– Daily Suggested Workouts
If you’re a Garmin watch user, and you don’t wear the watch during the night, you’ll notice many metrics don’t show up (or populate fully) that next morning. This aims to resolve that.
Finally, from a hardware and pricing standpoint, the unit is $169USD, and comes in two sizes, either S-M or L-XL band sizes (you can buy the other band size if you want). The battery is specified to last 7 nights according to Garmin, more on that in a moment.
With that, let’s get into it.
In the Box:
The Garmin Index Sleep monitor comes with three parts, albeit one of them is already combined into the strap for you. Inside, you’ll see the band (fabric thing), a standard Garmin charging cable, and then inside the band, there’s the pod.
The strap comes in two different sizes: S-M, and L-XL. In my case, I had both straps, as you can buy the other strap as an accessory. Ultimately, I decided on my arms that the S-M size fit best, and went with that one. I could have made the L-XL one work, but I ended up with a fair bit of extra length flopping around.
For size comparison, here it is next to a Whoop 5.0 device (the MG is the same size):
Just for context on the weight that we’re talking about here, let’s compare side-by-side with the Whoop 5.0 band (the MG band is identical in weight, fwiw):
AmazFit Hyrox band: 21g
Garmin Index Sleep band (S-M): 31g
Whoop 5.0/MG on regular wrist band: 29g
Whoop 5.0/MG on bicep band: 31g
As you can see, it’s crazy lightweight, and in range of others in this realm.
Daily Usage:
First up, it’s worthwhile noting that pod is removable, so you can swap bands as well as wash the band in the laundry machine. More importantly, though, the pod stays very nicely inside the band; there’s no chance of it accidentally falling out or such.
Next, there’s the band. At first glance (looking at Garmin marketing/promotion materials), you’d see the rather wide size (compared to something like a Whoop bicep band), and wonder: WTF is it so big for?!?
But what you quickly realize the instant you pick it up is just how insanely thin and lightweight it is. And more specifically, as someone who has worn a Whoop bicep band for roughly 5 years now (every single night), the difference is astonishing. By being rather wide (and super lightweight), it distributes that ‘snugness’ over a much wider area, as a result, you simply don’t realize it’s there. In fact, that’s actually a slight concern of Garmin’s, in that people might just leave in the morning with it still on their arm. In doing so, you’d burn a lot more battery (obviously). Additionally, removal of the band is a key signal to the band to initiate an immediate sync to the app.
As for the material, as noted, it’s incredibly lightweight and soft feeling. Being a non-fashion-forward dude, I’m not up to date on the specifics of various clothing textiles. Specifically, the differences between silk and things that popular culture has deemed silky. However, as one who has done the laundry around our household occasionally, I noted that it basically felt like women’s underwear (my wife would probably argue I should do the laundry more often, then again, she probably would prefer I didn’t).
In any case, given Garmin’s press materials at the time didn’t actually specify what the material was, I enquired to Garmin about the exact material composition (including my comparison to women’s underwear). A few minutes later, I received clarification of the materials, for which I will include the exact quote here:
“70% Nylon, 30% Spandex, 0% women’s underwear”
See, who says Garmin execs don’t have a sense of humor?
But fear not, unnamed exec, my wife actually agrees. Without telling her about this exchange, I handed her the band and asked her what it felt like. Her response: Women’s underwear. See, we all agree! Oh, and she thought it felt pretty comfortable, too.
In any event, to adjust the sizing, you have this little tube thingy that you can use. Again, it’s astonishing how lightweight it is, you just never feel it (despite looking like something you’d ever much feel).
You can adjust the positioning of it to wherever it feels best for you. Garmin roughly recommends having the sensor facing outwards, but that’s purely for comfort reasons. Ultimately, you do you.
At this point, you’re ready to sleep. However, you can set an alarm if you want to. This can be either a specific-time static alarm, or, a smart alarm. In either case, you can create custom schedules for them too:
For smart alarms, they’ll work as they did on the Vivoactive 6 when it was released, which is that you’re effectively setting the “must wake-up by” time (e.g. 6:45AM), and then it’ll potentially wake you up anytime in the preceding 30 minutes (e.g. between 6:15AM and 6:45AM), depending on the most ideal sleep cycle. By picking the right sleep cycle to wake you up in, it’ll theoretically reduce your grogginess level.
Additionally, there are a few other settings and such you can poke at here in the Garmin Connect app, but by and large, it’s pretty minimal:
That said, over the past week I had a highly variable schedule (since I was traveling). One morning I was up at 6:55AM, the next at 4:55AM, then at 7:45AM, then back again to 4:55AM – setting a blend of manual and smart alarms for each. The thing is though, it’s kinda a pain in the ass to set these alarms, in terms of digging through the menus of the Garmin Connect app. Sure, if I had a repeatable alarm wake-up schedule, it wouldn’t be an issue (e.g. every weekday at 7:45AM), since it would just do it automatically.
But I’d love to see Garmin add an option on the Garmin Connect app that automatically shows some sort of alarm tile at the top of GCM (Garmin Connect Mobile) as you near bedtime, to allow quick-access to alarms. Otherwise, right now the software aspect kinda feels like a (substantial) afterthought. Admittedly, I’d probably use my phone’s alarms most of the time anyway (because of how fast they are to set). But since Garmin added the alarm feature, they are at least assuming people will use it.
In any case, at this point, you simply sleep,
Now, as morning nears, and if you have an alarm set, that alarm will vibrate to wake you up. I was able to use the vibrate alarms successfully to wake me on all my nights of sleep (including for a 4:55AM wake-up time before a departing international flight…on a mere 3.8hrs of sleep). Sure, I had backup alarms on my phone set, but it was indeed the Garmin Index band that woke me up initially.
However, if you want to snooze, you can simply double-tap the band, and it’ll snooze for 10 minutes. Then, in 10 minutes, the process repeats again.
Unfortunately, though, I found that my sleep stats ended the moment I double-tapped to snooze. Meaning, if I set an alarm for 4:55AM, then double-tapped at 4:56AM to sleep for another 10 minutes (and trust me, I was hard asleep), my sleep would show as ending at 4:56AM, such as below:
Snoozing Alarm on Garmin Index Sleep Monitor:
Actual: Hit snooze at 6:45AM twice, to 7:05AM then kinda woke up, out of bed by 7:10AM Garmin Index Sleep Band: 6:45AM (smart alarm was set for 6:15-6:45AM Whoop MG: 7:09AM Apple Watch Ultra 2: 7:04AM AmazFit Hyrox Band: 7:09AM
In fact, that was the case for every single one of my nights’ sleep. No other wearable I was wearing at the time had a problem recognizing I went back to sleep. The Whoop MG, Apple Watch Ultra 2, Oura ring, and AmazFit band all correctly saw my snooze-time as being properly asleep.
Now interestingly, if I didn’t set an alarm on the device itself, then it properly tracked sleep throughout the entire sleep phase (including when I used snooze on my phone). Meaning, a bug exists that basically ends the sleep tracking phase upon using Sleep Index tap-snooze, rather than the physiological act of my body snoozing causing the issue. Here’s an example of two days ago, without any Index Sleep band alarm set (but with alarm set on my phone, which I snoozed):
Wakeup with alarm at 7:50AM, then snoozed till ~8:00AM:
Actual: ~12:20AM to ~8:00AM Garmin Index Sleep Band: 12:21AM to 7:56AM Garmin Venu 3: 12:18AM to 7:56AM Whoop MG: 12:23AM to 8:03AM Oura Ring V3: 12:18AM to 8:01AM Apple Watch Ultra 2: 12:18AM to 8:02AM
As you can see, no issues here at all. This correct identification behavior matched other days as well.
Speaking of that sleep, here’s how it looks in Garmin Connect Mobile (the smartphone app, it’s also displayed on Garmin Connect desktop/web too):
Furthermore, you can then see my sleep data properly pulled back into a watch a short time later (I didn’t wear this watch to bed, just the Index Sleep monitor):
Now, this piece can be a bit fiddly in scenarios where you quickly leave the bedroom (especially a hotel room). In Garmin’s marketing campaign video, they show someone placing their Index Sleep Monitor on their bedside nightstand upon waking up in the morning, with it magically syncing with the phone and watch near-instantly. But whether that “instantly” part happens is highly variable on whether or not the Garmin Connect app in the background has time to sync before you walk away from the sleep band.
On all my mornings at home, this happened without issue. It synced, and life was great. Our home isn’t super big, so in almost all areas of it inside, my phone and watch can typically talk to each other via Bluetooth through walls.
However, last week while traveling, things were a bit more variable with the hotel room. On other mornings, I left the hotel room quickly after waking up to grab coffee downstairs, with the Index Monitor on the bedside table. In this cases, it apparently hadn’t synced with my phone yet – leaving the watch I put on, now data-less. In all cases, the moment I opened up Garmin Connect Mobile on my phone back in the room, within a matter of a few seconds, things synced and life was happy.
Point being, if you’re in a place where your phone & Index Sleep monitor might not be able to talk to each other after you take the band off, just ensure the data is synced by opening up the Garmin Connect app on your phone for a few seconds, which basically kicks them along and near-instantly syncs.
Finally, let’s talk about battery life. Garmin claims about 7 days of battery life on the sensor. My guess here is they’re assuming ~8-10 hours of sleep per night (meaning, being a bit conservative). Either way, all of my testing shows it’s trending a bit better than that. I’m seeing roughly 8-9 days of sleep data per charge, with typically 6- 8 hours of wear per day. Obviously, I don’t tend to get 8- 10 hours of sleep per night, so that might skew things too. Either way, their battery stats seem good.
Data Comparison:
Now, I’ve already outlined a few different nights of data above, but here are a few more, with some other stats including comparisons against a Garmin watch at the same time. I’ll note that some of my nights over the past week have either been on an airplane over the Atlantic, or otherwise dorked up with stupid early morning events.
So let’s focus on a more simplistic night that has some logical data. To begin, here’s that data at a high level between the different wearables:
Wakeup at a sensible time/cause:
Actual: ~12:20AM to 8:00AM Garmin Index Sleep Band: 12:21AM to 7:56AM Garmin Venu 3: 12:18AM to 7:56AM Whoop MG: 12:23AM to 8:03AM Oura Ring V3: 12:18AM to 8:01AM Apple Watch Ultra 2: 12:18AM to 8:02AM
But what if we dive a bit deeper into the Garmin vs Garmin comparisons. In this case, I had a Venu 3 on my wrist linked to an entirely different account (so things wouldn’t conflict. Here’s how they compared:
Most of these metrics are nearly identical. The only one that stood out to me was the Resting Heart Rate metric on this night seemed notably different – 35bpm vs 46bpm. The 35bpm seems a bit too low for me, so I went and checked every other night I also wore a Venu 3, and they were identical on all other nights. While matching Resting Heart Rate metrics to other companies can be messy (since there’s actually no standard on how exactly that is defined in terms of time length at a given value), the general consensus for these wearables for me is the mid-40’s.
Finally, one more night tidbit on comparative accuracy. Even on much less sleep, it didn’t have any issues tracking, and in fact easily tracked better than both Whoop & Oura. This morning, I was awakened by a small visitor, then said visitor was clanging around the rest of the house. I stayed in bed, attempting to go back to sleep, but only Garmin & Apple got that right. The others gave me an extra 30-40 minutes of sleep I very much wished I had:
Last night: Wakeup by small visitor:
Actual: Feel asleep ~2:30AM, woke up at 6:45AM Garmin Index Sleep Band: 2:29AM to 6:45AM Garmin Venu 3: 2:34AM to 6:45AM Whoop MG: 2:30AM to 7:23AM Oura Ring V3: 2:30AM to 7:27AM Apple Watch Ultra 2: 2:36AM to 6:42AM
Anyways, point here is in terms of overall accuracy, the Garmin Index Sleep band is consistently consistent with not only other Garmin & 3rd party wearables, but more importantly, my actual sleep times. As I’ve said many times, it’s the sleep times that I care most about. Ultimately, in most cases, if you’re getting 8 hours of sleep (and staying asleep), life will usually work out just fine, no matter what the wearable says about your sleep phases/stages.
Wrap-Up:
As I said at the beginning, this product won’t be for everyone. In fact, it’s almost entirely just for Garmin smartwatch owning people who don’t want to wear a watch to bed. Sure, there will be a handful of non-Garmin watch people that’ll use it to track sleep, akin to other sleep monitors, though I suspect that’ll be a small number. To that extent, regardless of which group one might be in, this product does a good job at doing what it says it does.
Even setting aside the software elements of it, I’m honestly just most impressed with the hardware aspects. The device is far better than the marketing materials make it seem. It’s super lightweight, incredibly comfortable, and with reasonably good battery life. Garmin noted they had minor concerns that people might forget they were wearing it, and simply go about their day. And I could totally see that, especially if you were in a hurry to get out the door. Point being, as is usually the case, Garmin tends to be strongest in their hardware, and that shows here as well.
Of course, it’s not cheap by any means. Though I’m not sure we’d have expected otherwise, it’s Garmin after all. There’s no subscription cost here, but then again, most sleep-only trackers don’t have a subscription cost unless they have some other feature/functionality (e.g. a mattress that somehow requires a subscription). There are really no features of Garmin Connect+ that would meaningfully leverage the Garmin Index Sleep Monitor as a standalone device (even the barely useful GC+ AI insights are almost entirely focused on activity data, not sleep data).
All of which then looks at the elephant in the room: Is the Index Sleep Monitor a precursor to Garmin making a direct 24×7 Whoop-like band competitor? I think the answer is, obviously. I don’t think that’s really a question. In all my conversations over the years, Garmin has consistently said they aren’t opposed to such a product down the road, but simply they had higher priority products to build. To me, the Index Sleep Monitor seems an awful lot like Garmin trialing some of these components/workflows. The bigger question is when, how much, and whether a subscription cost is involved? I suspect Polar’s announcement yesterday will play (heavily) into those decisions, especially given how strongly people seem to be in favor of what Polar is doing conceptually (sans-subscription).
In the meantime, if you’re looking to get sleep data into the Garmin platform without wearing a watch, this seems like a strong solution at a premium price.
With that, thanks for reading!
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It simply doesn’t do anything once you wake-up. I’ll try and wear it all morning or something and see if it fills in Body Battery data, but at present it seems to end it as soon as I wake-up before I put on my watch (or, perhaps that’s just coincidence).
It’s purely for nighttime data, so otherwise, just wearing it around simply burns battery for fun.
Thank you. There’s massive interest form people, who like me like analog watches, but still stress, body battery, training readiness, HR etc. daily data has some usefulness…
Activity tracking and steps seem to be software blocked, but yes, it would be nice if it still uploaded HR data, and that updated things that rely on HR data like body battery, calories, training readiness, etc.
Not sure why they will not allow HR and step tracking during the day. People will still need to buy a watch to track activities.
I took off my watch about 45 minutes ago (at 2:15PM, now 3:00PM), and it’s backfilling in 24×7 HR data, Body Battery data, PulseOx data, and Stress data. It is not updating step data. Woah.
Like others, I’ve been waiting years for Garmin to come out with a decent non-watch tracker with full body battery. Following this here to see how the date shapes up outside of sleep!
I’m also heavily interested in this as I wear a mechanical watch during the day and would like to get rid of the garmin on the second wrist (luxury problem, I know). Best would be a whoop-like non-distractive band offered in many options to choose from.
Typo – “In all ym conversations over the years,” should be “In all my”
I think this product is an interesting one versus the Withings Analyzer/Sleep. I appreciate the extra data and freedom of where you sleep on the bed, but it still requires wearing a device.
IMHO, wearing a device isn’t a problem. It’s the fact that you need to put it on / take it off that is a problem. I’ve been using Withings Sleep for years and the best part about it is the fact that it just works. No buttons to press, no devices to wear, no modes to toggle. Sure, there are some limitations there (no pulse oximetry, for example, although it has sleep apnea detection), but other than that it’s a perfect “set it and forget it” device for automatic data capture.
169USD was about the price I expected for s device like this. Now I’m just waiting for some independent testing of the sleep stage detection. My previous experience with Garmin’s sleep stage detection has been less than optimal.
Without wanting to do the math for each outcome parameter… you would probably need quite a few subjects studied over a prolonged time. And you would have to do proper polysomnography etc.. Do you know anyone wanting to cough up that kind of money outside of medicine. I don‘t.
Great write-up, as always. Though with the amount of content you have been publishing over the last couple of weeks, when did you find the time to sleep in order to test this? We appreciate all of it.
I assume so as well, it’s a pity. But it doesn’t seem like it’s accurate anyway, at least not for the RHR part. This could have been a really nice multifunctional product, Garmin missed with this release.
Another use case (apart from people who find wearing the watch to bed uncomfortable) is overnight charging – with the proliferation of AMOLED displays you need to charge the watch more often so it might seem logical to just leave it on a charger overnight and use this strap for sleep tracking.
The only issue is, of course, not forgetting to put the strap on.
Unless you use the new X1 on AOD, there is no need for any Garmin AMOLED watch to be charged every night.If that were an Apple band, it would make total sense. though.
It’s not every day, but it’s also not once per week like I had with Fenix 6 or Forerunner 955 – at least twice per week for me with the brightness on low, AOD on and the same amount of workouts.
This band would make more sense when it could be worn in additon to your watch and tell your watch to switch of all sensors once it is activated and thus extending your battery life by what…20%?? I am used to wear my watch at night because I don’t want to look for it on the bedside table IOT check time and when I need to get up and want to use the flashlight (that torch works best in darkness). It would be perfect when the watch would detect the band and ask you if you want to switch off all sensors. I imagine that is an easy fix. But until then, I won’t buy.
Are there any metrics that this band tracks that aren’t tracked with a Garmin watch? In other words, if you wear a Garmin watch to sleep, would this provide any additional metrics? Sounds like perhaps slightly improved sleep detection with this vs. a watch but no additional metrics?
My bad, as per comments below, smart alarm was released on the vivoactive 6, but omitted from the new Fenix and Forerunner devices. Way to go Garmin. 🙄
Also curious if there is any benefit to using it if you don’t mind wearing your Garmin watch to bed? E.g., the 965 does not have skin temperature, but I’m not sure that matters outside of tracking ovulation cycles (which wouldn’t apply to me).
“Whether or not you agree with this product (or its price)., what he’s saying is factually true – no matter the wearable company.” I think you might be missing something in the middle or before this sentence because it’s unclear who the “what” and the “he” is referring to (though maybe I missed something!). Was there a quote from a Garmin rep?
Recording an ecg requires an electrical circuit. For instance in Garmin watches the metal around the SpO2 monitor functions as one lead. The circuit is closed when you touch the bezel with your other hand and a single lead ecg ist generated. With only one point of contact there’s no ecg. Single lead chest wall ecgs use the average of the extremity leads (Wilson lead). Thus, unfortunately your idea is technically not feasible. Sorry!
The Smart Wake Alarm is currently on the Venu X1 & Vivoactive 6. It doesn’t appear to be on the FR970 or Fenix 8 though.
Not sure why Venu X1 got it, but not FR970, but then again, those products are super-tight in release dates, and often when Garmin gets close to release, they basically separate out incoming new things temporarily, and then in the next quarterly update we see them get reconsolidated.
I could be interested in this. I have an instinct 2. But garmin is known for not having really accurate HR data compared to apple. Im wondering if this could fix that problem with with sleep data.
Why is the battery life so short? (7-10 nights of sleeping)
It doesn’t have a screen and looks to be similarly sized compared to a smartwatch (slightly smaller)
Hello, I’m currently using a CPAP and was just curious about related data that it doesn’t track like O2 and HR and a more in depth breakdown of sleep apnea events. I’m not looking for medical grade equipment options (or associated costs) and my insurance doesn’t approve of the attachments to the CPAP that could do this.
Would this device be a decent option or would you suggest another product like those in your comparisons? I do have a Garmin account and a couple of watches if would make any difference on suggestions.
I think a product like that would make more sense if it captured all the metrics of a watch when you don’t want to wear a garmin watch (prefer to wear a normal watch but want the metrics for a garmin ecosystem.
I think this would be a much better way to upgrade watch sensors instead of buying a new $10000 watch. Keep old watch until it breaks and buy these band sensors at $160 every year or two. When sensors update.
Also this would be a good price for an all day screen less device hopefully they will eventually unlock it and not restrict it to just sleep or have a all day one that has double the battery. For ~$200.
If this was much better at measuring sleep than my Enduro 3, I would be happy to pay the price.
The Enduro 3 is just ridiculous bad at detecting when I am awake and when I sleep.
It doesn’t even notice that I got up in the middle of the night, let the dogs out, and got them all in again, which not only adds quite a few steps, but also two sets of stairs.
It mostly just takes my set going to bed and wake up times.
Will we get the smart alarms on the Fenix & Enduro too?
If your sleep tracking actually doesn’t recognize you waking up and walking stairs (!) your watch is 100% defective. I’m sure Garmin Support would want to know about this, and take very good care of you.
I have called support 3x in 10 years and they’ve been amazingly helpful every time. The people on the phone are true product specialists.
Nice review. How did the numbers compare to the Oura ring? I find that my Garmin fenix 7 overstates my HRV by 10-20ms every night. In particular, I’m curious how accurate the HRV and body temperature data are.
Would this work well for someone that only has a Edge device and wanted sleep data to feed in to their training metrics? I recently replaced my fenix with a AWU but i still do all my cycling workouts with my edge 1040.
Is there a way to turn off the Bluetooth connection at night? I always set my Garmin Fenix 8 to airplane mode to avoid the extra (albeit small) radiation exposure during sleep.
Good question. Plus it sits higher up on the body. Something like triple tap to switch on bluetooth and upload will be cool. Will save a bit of battery life as well.
The quantified scientist had a review of the app Sleep2 (in the review with the old name) with a Polar verity sense (or H10?) and he said it’s the best for sleep tracking at home.
When they add the option to use it as an external hr monitor during activities I would buy one. I don’t really care about steps, because I’ve got my watch to do so, although in certain situations the biceps would be more correct in that.
They could make it as simple as using any other hr sensor.. although it would probably be smart to have multiple bands because of sweat..
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I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2024 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
What happens if you wear it the whole day? Do they software block you?
Same qestion. Does it measure BB, Stress and recovery during the day
It simply doesn’t do anything once you wake-up. I’ll try and wear it all morning or something and see if it fills in Body Battery data, but at present it seems to end it as soon as I wake-up before I put on my watch (or, perhaps that’s just coincidence).
It’s purely for nighttime data, so otherwise, just wearing it around simply burns battery for fun.
Thank you. There’s massive interest form people, who like me like analog watches, but still stress, body battery, training readiness, HR etc. daily data has some usefulness…
Activity tracking and steps seem to be software blocked, but yes, it would be nice if it still uploaded HR data, and that updated things that rely on HR data like body battery, calories, training readiness, etc.
Not sure why they will not allow HR and step tracking during the day. People will still need to buy a watch to track activities.
Actually, holy cow, it’s doing exactly that.
I took off my watch about 45 minutes ago (at 2:15PM, now 3:00PM), and it’s backfilling in 24×7 HR data, Body Battery data, PulseOx data, and Stress data. It is not updating step data. Woah.
Will leave it on for a few more hours.
One more reason to keep wearing your watch at night…;-))
Like others, I’ve been waiting years for Garmin to come out with a decent non-watch tracker with full body battery. Following this here to see how the date shapes up outside of sleep!
That’s awesome! Are you able to turn off pulse ox? To should address the battery burn issue?
And come on Garmin – enable step tracking!
I’m also heavily interested in this as I wear a mechanical watch during the day and would like to get rid of the garmin on the second wrist (luxury problem, I know). Best would be a whoop-like non-distractive band offered in many options to choose from.
Could it be used as a Bluetooth broadcasting HRM?
lol
Typo – “In all ym conversations over the years,” should be “In all my”
I think this product is an interesting one versus the Withings Analyzer/Sleep. I appreciate the extra data and freedom of where you sleep on the bed, but it still requires wearing a device.
Thanks!
IMHO, wearing a device isn’t a problem. It’s the fact that you need to put it on / take it off that is a problem. I’ve been using Withings Sleep for years and the best part about it is the fact that it just works. No buttons to press, no devices to wear, no modes to toggle. Sure, there are some limitations there (no pulse oximetry, for example, although it has sleep apnea detection), but other than that it’s a perfect “set it and forget it” device for automatic data capture.
169USD was about the price I expected for s device like this. Now I’m just waiting for some independent testing of the sleep stage detection. My previous experience with Garmin’s sleep stage detection has been less than optimal.
Without wanting to do the math for each outcome parameter… you would probably need quite a few subjects studied over a prolonged time. And you would have to do proper polysomnography etc.. Do you know anyone wanting to cough up that kind of money outside of medicine. I don‘t.
Great write-up, as always. Though with the amount of content you have been publishing over the last couple of weeks, when did you find the time to sleep in order to test this? We appreciate all of it.
It probably already has most (if not all) of the sensors required to make it a 24/7 device. Could be updated via Firmware?
It does. could also be used as an external HR monitor. But the chances of Garmin providing feature updates to this are zero.
I assume you can’t use it as a arm optical heart rate monitor for workouts?
I assume so as well, it’s a pity. But it doesn’t seem like it’s accurate anyway, at least not for the RHR part. This could have been a really nice multifunctional product, Garmin missed with this release.
No step counter? Need to know for those nights I sleep walk 🧐
Another use case (apart from people who find wearing the watch to bed uncomfortable) is overnight charging – with the proliferation of AMOLED displays you need to charge the watch more often so it might seem logical to just leave it on a charger overnight and use this strap for sleep tracking.
The only issue is, of course, not forgetting to put the strap on.
Unless you use the new X1 on AOD, there is no need for any Garmin AMOLED watch to be charged every night.If that were an Apple band, it would make total sense. though.
It’s not every day, but it’s also not once per week like I had with Fenix 6 or Forerunner 955 – at least twice per week for me with the brightness on low, AOD on and the same amount of workouts.
This band would make more sense when it could be worn in additon to your watch and tell your watch to switch of all sensors once it is activated and thus extending your battery life by what…20%?? I am used to wear my watch at night because I don’t want to look for it on the bedside table IOT check time and when I need to get up and want to use the flashlight (that torch works best in darkness). It would be perfect when the watch would detect the band and ask you if you want to switch off all sensors. I imagine that is an easy fix. But until then, I won’t buy.
This is a great idea
Are there any metrics that this band tracks that aren’t tracked with a Garmin watch? In other words, if you wear a Garmin watch to sleep, would this provide any additional metrics? Sounds like perhaps slightly improved sleep detection with this vs. a watch but no additional metrics?
The smart alarm seems like the only new feature.
My bad, as per comments below, smart alarm was released on the vivoactive 6, but omitted from the new Fenix and Forerunner devices. Way to go Garmin. 🙄
Is this the Elevate v5 array?
Also curious if there is any benefit to using it if you don’t mind wearing your Garmin watch to bed? E.g., the 965 does not have skin temperature, but I’m not sure that matters outside of tracking ovulation cycles (which wouldn’t apply to me).
Yes, an Elevate Gen5.
Outside of skin temp, everything else is tracked by most watches (and skin temp in other gen5 watches).
Great write-up as always!
“Whether or not you agree with this product (or its price)., what he’s saying is factually true – no matter the wearable company.” I think you might be missing something in the middle or before this sentence because it’s unclear who the “what” and the “he” is referring to (though maybe I missed something!). Was there a quote from a Garmin rep?
Does it transmit HR over Bluetooth/Ant? I’m wondering if it’s possible also connect to the watch during workouts for more precise HR data.
Very intetested here too, an alternative strap for workouts could make this much more appealing, especailly to cyclists using a watch
@Ray is there a hardware limitation keeping it from being able to do AFIB detection, or is it a lack of jumping through all the certification hoops?
I actually can’t wear my watch 24/7 and therefore need to take it off when I go to bed because if I don’t I get skin reactions.
I would probably buy it today if it did nighttime AFIB detection.
Recording an ecg requires an electrical circuit. For instance in Garmin watches the metal around the SpO2 monitor functions as one lead. The circuit is closed when you touch the bezel with your other hand and a single lead ecg ist generated. With only one point of contact there’s no ecg. Single lead chest wall ecgs use the average of the extremity leads (Wilson lead). Thus, unfortunately your idea is technically not feasible. Sorry!
Ray, do you know if the smart alarm will find its way to the watches (at least the latest platform: Venu X1, Fenix 8 series and Forerunner x70)?
The Smart Wake Alarm is currently on the Venu X1 & Vivoactive 6. It doesn’t appear to be on the FR970 or Fenix 8 though.
Not sure why Venu X1 got it, but not FR970, but then again, those products are super-tight in release dates, and often when Garmin gets close to release, they basically separate out incoming new things temporarily, and then in the next quarterly update we see them get reconsolidated.
I could be interested in this. I have an instinct 2. But garmin is known for not having really accurate HR data compared to apple. Im wondering if this could fix that problem with with sleep data.
How smooth is taking off the band, putting on the watch and seeing the morning report? Do you see the report as soon as watch is on the wrist?
Why is the battery life so short? (7-10 nights of sleeping)
It doesn’t have a screen and looks to be similarly sized compared to a smartwatch (slightly smaller)
Hello, I’m currently using a CPAP and was just curious about related data that it doesn’t track like O2 and HR and a more in depth breakdown of sleep apnea events. I’m not looking for medical grade equipment options (or associated costs) and my insurance doesn’t approve of the attachments to the CPAP that could do this.
Would this device be a decent option or would you suggest another product like those in your comparisons? I do have a Garmin account and a couple of watches if would make any difference on suggestions.
I think a product like that would make more sense if it captured all the metrics of a watch when you don’t want to wear a garmin watch (prefer to wear a normal watch but want the metrics for a garmin ecosystem.
I think this would be a much better way to upgrade watch sensors instead of buying a new $10000 watch. Keep old watch until it breaks and buy these band sensors at $160 every year or two. When sensors update.
Also this would be a good price for an all day screen less device hopefully they will eventually unlock it and not restrict it to just sleep or have a all day one that has double the battery. For ~$200.
If this was much better at measuring sleep than my Enduro 3, I would be happy to pay the price.
The Enduro 3 is just ridiculous bad at detecting when I am awake and when I sleep.
It doesn’t even notice that I got up in the middle of the night, let the dogs out, and got them all in again, which not only adds quite a few steps, but also two sets of stairs.
It mostly just takes my set going to bed and wake up times.
Will we get the smart alarms on the Fenix & Enduro too?
If your sleep tracking actually doesn’t recognize you waking up and walking stairs (!) your watch is 100% defective. I’m sure Garmin Support would want to know about this, and take very good care of you.
I have called support 3x in 10 years and they’ve been amazingly helpful every time. The people on the phone are true product specialists.
Nice review. How did the numbers compare to the Oura ring? I find that my Garmin fenix 7 overstates my HRV by 10-20ms every night. In particular, I’m curious how accurate the HRV and body temperature data are.
Would this work well for someone that only has a Edge device and wanted sleep data to feed in to their training metrics? I recently replaced my fenix with a AWU but i still do all my cycling workouts with my edge 1040.
Is there a way to turn off the Bluetooth connection at night? I always set my Garmin Fenix 8 to airplane mode to avoid the extra (albeit small) radiation exposure during sleep.
Good question. Plus it sits higher up on the body. Something like triple tap to switch on bluetooth and upload will be cool. Will save a bit of battery life as well.
The quantified scientist had a review of the app Sleep2 (in the review with the old name) with a Polar verity sense (or H10?) and he said it’s the best for sleep tracking at home.
link to youtu.be
My point:
If somebody use a Garmin watch, that new hardware is useless.
There would only have to be one reason to buy the device:
It records sleep much better than the Garmin watches.
But I doubt that this is the case.
I assume that something like the Sleep2 app simply uses much better algorithms.
When DCR suggested this price will cause a double take, was anyone else expecting $399 or so?
When they add the option to use it as an external hr monitor during activities I would buy one. I don’t really care about steps, because I’ve got my watch to do so, although in certain situations the biceps would be more correct in that.
They could make it as simple as using any other hr sensor.. although it would probably be smart to have multiple bands because of sweat..
Do we have a list of compatible watches? I like the idea of not wearing my watch at night