Best sleep tracker: keep track of your sleep patterns with these great gadgets

published 20 July 2020

You may think the last thing you need to get comfortable and rested on a night is a piece of tech strapped to your arm or to your bed. But the best sleep trackers are designed to help you keep tabs on how long you sleep and the quality of your rest so you can begin to make changes to your routine for the better.

UPDATED: While the best sleep tracker may well be a dedicated device, the Apple Watch is set to add sleep tracking in Watch OS7. Set for release 'in the Autumn', the software update finally brings the most sought-after feature for Apple Watch since its release in 2015.

Why? Because it’s official: we’re not getting enough sleep. And, according to the sleep experts, this lack of quality rest can have a negative impact on our moods, stress and long-term health.

There are lots of things you can try to improve your sleep, from buying one of the best mattresses to trying CBT to deal with stress, but getting a better understanding of your sleep patterns and your sleep behaviour can be an important first step.

There are lots of fitness trackers and smartwatches with sleep tracking already built-in. But not all sleep tracking tech is created equal. We’ve collected together our favourite devices with sleep tracking smart features, as well as gadgets built solely for sleep, which you don’t wear but strap to your bed or place on your bedside table.

If there’s a device or wearable gadget that helps you track your sleep, and sleep more soundly as a result, then upvote your favourite or let us know in the Shortlist entry box below.

We recommend two Fitbits in our best sleep trackers list below, but more of the Fitbit range can track your sleep. Check out our guide to the best Fitbit.

Best sleep tracker

Known as the Withings Sleep, and in some places the Nokia Health Sleep, this device is smart sensor that slides under your mattress. Once it’s there you don’t need to touch it again and it’ll track your sleep throughout the night.Because the Withings Sleep is under your bed, it won’t distract you throughout the night and instead can track everything about your sleep and your movement throughout the night, including your sleep stages and heart rate.All of this important sleep data goes to an app on your smartphone, which also rates your sleep and gives you a Sleep Score, as well as providing tips and coaching for improving your sleep.

One of the best fitness trackers around if you don’t want a fancy smartwatch, the Inspire HR keeps tabs on your activity, workouts and it’s also a fantastic sleep tracker thanks to Fitbit’s Sleep Stages.This is a way of visualising your sleep the morning after using the Fitbit app, which shows you the different stages of your sleep, including awake, light, deep and REM. This is more detailed than many other trackers and means you have much more information about the quality of your rest.

The Versa is another great wearable from Fitbit. Pricier than the Inspire HR, it’s an all-round fitness smartwatch. It can track your activity, workouts and, with a bold, bright screen, allows you to see notifications, add apps and lots more.
Like the Inspire HR, which also makes our list, it uses your movement data and heart rate to tell you how long you sleep and which stages of sleep you were in throughout the night.
The Fitbit Versa may not be the cheapest tracker around, but there’s now a Lite version available for £129.15 from Amazon, which is just as good at tracking your sleep. If you want the latest and greatest tech, check out the Fitbit Versa 2, the upgraded wearable with Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa now built-in, which is available for £199 from John Lewis.

You’ve heard of smartwatches, but what about smart rings? The Oura Ring does all the same things most fitness trackers can do, but all of the important sensors are packed into a tiny ring you can slip onto your finger.Oura claims, due to the placement of these sensors, the ring is perfect for tracking all kinds of things, especially sleep. It can keep tabs on your movement, heart rate and temperature, and then gives you sleep quality measurements, detailed sleep stage results and guidance about how to get better sleep.The Oura Ring app is great to use and also lets you see your sleep trends over time, as well as how your sleep impacts on your performance and activity.

All of the smartwatches and fitness trackers from Withings can track your sleep (that’s why they’re some of our favourites). But the Withings Steel HR tends to be the best of the bunch.This is a great-looking hybrid smartwatch, which means it has sensors and smart features built-in, but it masquerades as a regular watch and has no screen – just a stylish watch face. It has 24/7 heart rate monitoring, activity tracking and detailed sleep tracking, which shows you how long you slept each night, breaks your sleep down into stages and provides details about heart rate interruptions as you slept.

The Beddit Sleep Montior looks substantial is actually small and thin at only 2mm thick. It can easily slip underneath your mattress.Once it’s in place, the strip of sensors tracks how long you’re asleep for, your heart rate, your breathing, the temperature of your bedroom, humidity levels and even your snoring.It’ll also send you sleep reports, reminders and nudges to sleep to your phone or Apple Watch. And just in case you were wondering, it’s able to work and track your sleep even if there’s someone else in your bed too.

If you’re serious about sleep tracking, this is the under-mattress sensor for you. Like other devices on the list, including Beddit and Withings Sleep, the Emfit QS HRV Sleep Monitor slides under your mattress and can track all kinds of metrics, including how long you sleep for, your heart rate, the quality of your sleep and lots more.
Be warned: there’s a lot of data to wade through on the app (or via the web) each morning, which is why it’s no surprise this is a sleep tracker aimed at athletes or those who are very serious about their training and performance each day.

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Becca has been writing about tech, science and the future for nearly ten years. She loves fitness tech, science fiction movies and spending way too much time in virtual reality.

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Best sleep tracker: keep track of your sleep patterns with these great gadgets

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