Sleep tracking question regarding accuracy of sleep detection

[weezin]

I’ve worn an Apple Watch for sleep tracking for several years in and off. One thing I’ve found is that the watch will show that I’m asleep when I know that I’m awake.

For example, if I’m woken up in the middle of the night and it takes me about 20 minutes to go back to sleep, the watch will show the wake up correctly and then show me sleeping for maybe 18 of the 20 or so minutes that I’m awake (presumably because I’m laying still and not moving).

Does this happen to anyone else? It really makes me question my own perception of what happened at night when I ready these sleep summaries that don’t seem to match how I felt the night went.

 

[Night Spring]

The only way to precisely tell when you are awake or asleep when lying down and staying still is by EEG. So it's not surprising that the watch thinks you are asleep in the circumstances you describe.

For what it's worth, sleep studies have shown that people tend to overestimate the time they are awake during the night. I took a course on sleep in college, and our professor told us about a case where this person came in saying they stayed awake all night. When asked how they knew they weren't sleeping, they said, "I'll look at the clock, and see it go 1am, 2am, 3am..." So this person was hooked up to the EEG in a sleep lab, and sure enough, they'd wake up about once every hour and look at the clock, but otherwise they were asleep through the night.

Point is, you can't know whether your perception of being awake or Apple watch's analysis that you were asleep is right, unless you get hooked up to an EEG. 🤷

 

[weezin]

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense to me. I do think that I probably overestimate the amount of time that I’m awake as well but it would be nice to know fairly accurately how much time I’m spending awake. Otherwise sleep tracking doesn’t seem to have any value for me. Seems like the cracking on a wearable accessory like this is probably not for me. Cheers!

 

[johnb300m]

With my SE, the watch's capability of sensing when I've started sleeping and when I've ended sleeping, is pretty terrible without a sleep schedule.
However, tracking sleep and wake time during the night seems super accurate. It always logs the times I wake up for the dogs in the middle of the night.