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With smart tech, it’s now possible to quantify your sleep quality by tracking mid-sleep wake-ups, body movements during sleep, snoring intensity, heart rate, and more. Some smartwatches even assess your energy levels and suggest whether you should take on (or avoid) energy-consuming tasks at certain points in time based on your sleep data. You can measure these data points using several wearable sleep trackers that come in the form of rings, bands, and smartwatches — all of which monitor different aspects of your sleep. All you have to do is wear these devices nightly to obtain an overall picture of how you sleep, see which areas need improvement, and determine the steps you can take to get a better night’s rest.
But some smart watches stand out among the rest for their accuracy, comfort, and unique feature sets. If you’re looking for some of the best wearable sleep trackers, we’ve highlighted a few of the most accurate and reliable ones out there. We opted only for products with ratings of four stars or higher from at least 500 Amazon reviewers, as well as positive reviews from reputable outlets. And, to complement your sleep tracker wearable, consider getting your hands on other cheap gadgets that can help you sleep, such as smart light bulbs.
Oura Ring 4
Using proprietary Smart Sensing technology, the Oura Ring 4 analyzes your sleeping habits, stress levels, heart rate, workout routines, and more to provide personalized results. You do need a subscription to access these features, however, for either $5.99 a month or $69.99 a year. Otherwise, you’ll have access to three basic daily scores: Readiness, Sleep, and Activity. The ring is compatible with both Android and iOS, and its battery can last up to eight days on one charge, so you can wear it often without the hassle of frequent recharges. Unlike bulkier smartwatches, this sleep ring is made of lightweight titanium, so you’ll barely feel it as you sleep. And since titanium is waterproof, you can wear it worry-free when washing your hands during nightly bathroom runs.
One advantage the Oura Ring has over smartwatches is its snug fit. If you’re a restless sleeper, the sensors on the bottom of smartwatches may shift as you sleep, increasing the odds of inaccurate data collection. Conversely, smart rings easily stay fixed in one place all night, which helps yield more consistent and accurate results. Should you ever find that your Oura Ring’s sleep tracking is inaccurate, however, you can likely resolve that by charging the ring, syncing it with the app, or simply sleeping longer each night.
One CNET writer stated that the Oura Ring 4’s personalized sleep suggestions “helped [them] establish a more realistic bedtime when [they] first started using it, especially as a first-time parent.” Whether you’re a parent or not, if you’re looking to achieve more consistent sleep routines, this device could be the one for you. You can grab the Oura Ring 4 for $349 on Amazon, where it holds a solid 4-star rating from just over 7,400 users. It’s also the number-one best seller in the Smart Ring category.
Whoop 5.0
With 4.2 stars on Amazon following over 3,200 reviews, the Whoop 5.0 ($199) stands out for its 14-day battery life, which is the longest among the products in this roundup. It can reliably track key metrics like heart rate variability, wake time, and menstrual cycle 24/7. Unlike the other smartwatches we’ve highlighted here, this one has a screen-free design, making it ideal for those worried about being distracted by a bright watch face. It can almost accurately track the four sleep stages, monitor the quality of your sleep to come up with overall sleep metrics — which are lab-level accurate, per the company’s claims — and even suggest how much sleep you need based on your daily activities, which makes the Whoop 5.0 particularly effective at optimizing your sleep patterns.
You can even input relevant routine behaviors in the Journal section of the Whoop app to track extra details that could be impacting your sleep. These metrics include caffeine intake, eating habits, and more. If you enter custom data points consistently, you can obtain more relevant health data tailored to specific daily variables, which you could then adjust as needed if they prove to be impacting your sleep.
In its review of the Whoop 5.0, CNET was impressed by the Whoop’s sleep tracking abilities, given it outlines not only how long you’ve slept but also your time spent in each sleep stage. The team at GearLab also found the Whoop 5.0 provided the most thorough sleep data breakdown among all the other sleep trackers they’d reviewed. This fitness tracker has even been used by Cristiano Ronaldo himself, who claims to rely on it daily for tracking his health data.
Samsung Galaxy Watch6
Starting at $198.99, the Samsung Galaxy Watch6 — whose overall Amazon rating of 4.4 is supported by nearly 700 reviewers — allows you to monitor sleep stages, sleep times, skin temperature, and more to obtain accurate insights about your sleeping patterns. The watch can also detect snoring, so long as your phone is placed nearby to record audio overnight. It has an average battery life of 22 hours with regular use and with always-on display mode activated; however, with the Watch5 lasting about 30 hours under the same circumstances, battery life isn’t a standout feature of the Watch6. It does shine in the tracking department, though, for several reasons.
After you’ve worn the watch consistently for seven days, you can use its advanced sleeping coach feature that prompts you to answer health-related questions in exchange for personalized missions, checklists, and sleep-related guidance to improve your overall sleep quality. With these features, the watch works as an active coach — not just a passive tracker — that guides you toward better sleep. In Buzzfeed’s product testing, the Samsung Galaxy Watch6 had generated a sleep score of 33 for the reviewer, and the device indicated that they did not enter deep sleep the night prior. Those results matched how fatigued the user felt that day, pointing to the watch’s reliable scoring output.
In a detailed review by PC Mag, the reviewer underscored the detail in the watch’s sleep scoring factors, which are broken down into five categories: total sleep time, sleep cycles, awake time, physical recovery, and mental recovery. They appreciated how the Samsung Health app uses this granular data to flag notable concerns, such as lack of REM sleep, and then offers suggestions for tackling those same concerns.
Fitbit Inspire 3
The Fitbit Inspire 3 is one of the best sleep trackers you can get on a budget. Priced at just $98.49 on Amazon, it’s the most affordable sleep tracker on this list. The product holds 4.2 stars from over 24,000 buyers, with 68% of the reviews being five-star ratings.
With its compact design and silky silicone band, the watch is far less bothersome to wear overnight compared to bulkier alternatives. Furthermore, it has a battery life of up to 10 days, allowing you to reliably track your sleep without the annoyance of daily charging — although Fitbit does recommend charging the watch every few days. The Inspire 3 is equipped with SpO2 sensors to obtain blood oxygen measurements as you sleep, and it also outputs sleep duration, sleep quality, and sleep stage readings to come up with a convenient aggregated nightly sleep score. As with the Oura Ring 4, some users may feel the Fitbit’s sleep tracking accuracy isn’t quite right, but this can often be fixed by cleaning the device’s contact points, fastening the watch, or simply restarting the device.
In CNET’s own comparison of some of the best sleep trackers on the market, the outlet pinpointed the Fitbit Inspire 3 as a “dependable option for those starting their sleep-tracking journey” given its relatively lightweight feature set. But if you opt for a Fitbit premium membership, you can access additional features. These include personalized sleep profiles following just 14 days of consistent use, along with guided programs and mindfulness sessions that can help you sleep better.
Apple Watch Series 11
Rated 4.8 stars on average by over 4,500 Amazon shoppers, the Apple Watch Series 11 (normally $399, but known to go on sale for $299) can collect a slew of data overnight — including vitals like heart rate, respiratory rate, and wrist temperature — to help make precise sleep quality analyses. With this model, Apple upgraded to all-day battery life under “normal use,” which includes overnight sleep tracking. CNET confirmed that claim, stating the device could provide 27 to 32 hours of usage per charge cycle.
Overall sleep data is based on the number of times you wake up during sleep, the time spent in each sleep stage, bedtime consistency, and collective sleep time. You can view these specific measurements on either your Apple Watch or in the Health app on your linked iPhone to understand which elements are contributing to a lower sleep score. Apple tried to be as precise as possible with sleep scoring in the Apple Watch Series 11, so it developed its scoring algorithm in accordance with guidelines released by major sleep foundations — namely the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, National Sleep Foundation, and World Sleep Society.
What separates this watch from the others on this list is its ability to detect sleep apnea, even in those who don’t have an official medical diagnosis for it. With this detection feature, you can be proactive in managing the condition when you may not have suspected it was there at all. All of this is possible through the combined efforts of multiple sensors, including an electrical heart sensor, an optical heart sensor, a blood oxygen sensor, and more.
Google Pixel Watch 4
The Google Pixel Watch 4 has a 30-hour battery life, so it can last nearly two full days on a single charge. It features Google’s one-of-a-kind Actua 360 domed glass display, which is scratch-resistant, so you don’t have to worry about damaging the interface in your sleep. The watch uses advanced machine learning models to accurately track your sleep cycle and the time you spend in each stage. After a night of tracking your heart rate, skin temperature, and other essentials, the watch wakes you up to a detailed morning brief that offers insights into your sleep quality. With this watch, you also won’t have to enable or disable bedtime modes every day, since it automatically triggers them per a set routine.
A CNET reviewer underscored how the watch was able to advise them that working past a certain time would be counterproductive based on previous sleeping patterns and energy levels, and it also suggested skipping workouts in exchange for a nap. This demonstrates the watch’s ability to deliver context-aware recommendations that are helpful for the user in real time. Wired also highlighted the fact that the device can tell if you’ve woken up in the middle of the night, incorporating the data into overall sleep metrics to generate scores that are “quite precise.” The device is available on Amazon for $349.99 (sometimes on sale for $309.99) and boasts a 4.6-star average rating from over 800 customers.
Methodology
For this roundup, we referred to reviews from experts who tested the sleep trackers herein and found that they outputted accurate, reliable metrics that aligned with their sleep time or perceived sleep quality. We also assessed these sleep trackers’ feature sets through extensive research on company websites and articles from reputable outlets, as well as by going through customer reviews on retail platforms. All products herein hold ratings of four stars or higher from at least 500 Amazon shoppers.
