Here are eight of the best sleep trackers you can buy right now.
You can eat well, exercise, find a great job and read all the self help books you like, but if you’re not getting enough sleep all the good habits and routines you try to stick to in the day won’t have the same effect.
Over the past few years everyone from health professionals to celebs have been obsessed with the magical superpowers of sleep. And it makes sense. Lack of sleep can impact your mood, your energy levels, your skin and a long-term lack of sleep can have serious mood and health consequences.
But the sad truth is many of us just aren’t getting enough shut eye. Luckily, there are plenty of devices on the market designed to provide us with a better night’s sleep, whether that’s through wake-up lamps, devices that track your sleep and even apps that recommend what you can do to rest more effectively.
Most top fitness trackers monitor movement and heart rate during sleep, while a growing range of non-wearables sit above or below your mattress and even on your bedside table. These help you track your breathing, snoring, temperature and allow you to follow those trends over time.
Leading the way are traditional wearable providers like Polar, Nokia/Withings and Fitbit, who have all added powerful sleep tracking to their devices, while there’s also an abundance of excellent non-contact options from sleep specialists ResMed, Beddit and Emfit.
We’ve collected together eight of our favorite sleep tracking devices designed to keep tabs on how you sleep, provide you with data about how much you toss and turn in the night and hopefully equip you with enough insights to shake up your routine and finally get some rest.
It’s been an interesting time for Withings. Nokia bought the health and wellness firm last year, but has since sold it back to Withings co-founder Éric Carreel. That means that the Withings trackers, which became Nokia trackers, are now Withings trackers again. Confused? Us too. It’s just worth scrubbing up on the basics so you don’t fret if you get yourself a Nokia Steel, it’s the same thing.
Both the Nokia Steel and Nokia Steel HR fitness watches are able to track your sleep, but here we’re going to focus on the less capable but cheaper watch of the two.
This analog watch is perfect for minimalists who want access to reams of insightful data without an additional screen bombarding them with endless smartphone notifications. You get the time, and a 0-100% dial for your daily activity. All other insights, including sleep, are synced back to the Nokia Health Mate app.
The major advantage of this approach is the six month plus battery life (slightly tempered by the need to replace rather than recharge). In our experience of fitness trackers, all it can take is one missed recharge to get you out of the habit of wearing.
There’s automatic sleep tracking with detailed insights into sleep cycles, time awake and sleep duration.
The app tells you when you went to bed and how long it took you to fall asleep. The watch’s silent alarm will also wake you gently at the optimum point of your sleep cycle.
More specialist than the Nokia/Withings Steel above, the Nokia/Withings Sleep is a pad you can slip under your mattress to keep a track of your sleep quality without having to wear anything on your wrist.
It means you can just jump into bed and you don’t have to worry about putting on an extra tracker, and if you do own a fitness tracker or smartwatch you can rest assured that it’ll be possible to charge it while you sleep.
