Since I had a heart attack four years ago, I’ve been on a journey to understand my health. A crucial part of my recovery and focus has been my sleep, and it’smade even more important by the fact that my heart attack took place in the middle of the night while I was fast asleep. Thankfully, I woke up, but our sleep can tell us a lot about our underlying health.
Virtually every wearable now offers some form of sleep tracking, but like most things in technology, not all devices are created equal. Beyond just data, there’s also the question of which is most comfortable to track your sleep, which device gives you the most reliable data, and ultimately, how you can ensure you track your sleep wherever you are.
The latter is a key point for me. I’ve previously owned the Sleep Number smart bed, and with more options like Eight Sleep, they promise a lot of valuable data. The key problem? This is only truly useful if you never travel, as you won’t be able to travel with your mattress. But as I found out, even a great smart mattress isn’t all that useful for long-term health tracking.
If buying a smart mattress isn’t in your near future, what’s the best form factor for tracking your sleep? To put this to the test, I picked two ubiquitous form factors and one less so. Let’s explore whether you should use a smart ring, a smartwatch, or a smart display to track your sleep.
Wait, a smart display that tracks your sleep?
Yes, there’s a smart display that can track your sleep! It’s one of the less publicized features in the Nest Hub 2nd Gen and, frankly, I’m surprised that other companies that use the Google Assistant platform haven’t also followed suit.
A smart display naturally has challenges of portability, but its fixed position on your nightstand can mean it’s ideally placed to oversee your sleeping habits and patterns. Here’s a sleep report generated by the Nest Hub 2nd Gen:
The data provided by the Nest Hub 2nd Gen goes into a fair amount of detail, but less than I would have hoped for from a dedicated bedside device like this. Instead, it seems like the data provided by a smart ring that uses a physical connection to track your sleep is more reliable and thorough.
How about a smart ring like the Oura Ring 4?
The Oura Ring 4 is the best smart ring for most people right now, and it continues Oura’s legacy of being the standard bearer that the best alternatives are aiming to challenge. The new fully recessed sensor design allows for more contact points and should — in theory, at least — offer more advanced and accurate data.
Does it deliver when it comes to tracking your sleep? Let’s see how the Oura Ring 4 tracked the same period of sleep:
There’s no doubt that the Oura Ring 4 delivers a wealth of insights into your sleep. If you just want the basics, it offers the same timings, sleep stages, and broad insights as the other devices.
Beyond that, however, it also allows you to dig deeper into your sleep, with far more insights on factors like blood oxygen, efficiency, and detailed heart rate tracking.
Can you just use the Apple Watch on your wrist?
For most people, buying a new device just to track your sleep won’t make sense. Instead, a lot of people will use the device they have on them, and with the Apple Watch proving to be the best smartwatch for most users, how does it compare?
In watchOS 11, Apple revamped its sleep algorithm to ensure that it provided more contextual and valuable information. Does it deliver? Here’s the same sleep period tracked on the Apple Watch Series 10:
Apple Health is fairly simple to use, but while there are more insights provided on a day-to-day sleep metric, these aren’t retained when revisiting sleep patterns a week or two later. Instead, you see a more simplified and less detailed overview of your sleep that covers the basics, but fails to let you dig deeper into the data.
My preferred way to track my sleep
As I mentioned above, sleep is one of the most important things for me to track, and ultimately, this test has shown me that the convenience of a smart ring makes it the best way to track my sleep. The Samsung Galaxy Ring offers exceptional sleep tracking, but so does the Oura Ring 4, and having just compared these two rings, the latter is going to be the one that stays on my finger.
There’s a convenience to having a smart ring that I charge once per week versus a smartwatch that I need to remember to charge several times per week. I love the simplicity of the Nest Hub display, but its lack of portability — unless I travel with it and a Wi-Fi router — means that it’s not suitable for the months I spend on the road each year.
Of course, you don’t have to use an Oura Ring, just like you don’t have to use an Apple Watch. If you’re an Android user, you can always buy alternatives like the RingConn Gen 2 smart ring (which also works with the iPhone) or use the Pixel Watch 3 or Galaxy Watch 7, both of which offer excellent sleep tracking as well.
However, the smart ring form factor makes it far easier to ensure you’ll have all the data you need to spot health problems early, which can be crucial in ensuring that they’re not fatal.