Garmin Vivosmart 5 : Adds New Sleep Score & Sleep Insights

Garmin, the leading company in fitness trackers has just released their latest fitness tracker, the Vivosmart 5. This new tracker is a big improvement over its predecessor and has some great features that will help you track your sleep health. The most notable addition is the Sleep score and insights feature. This will give you a detailed report of your sleep health, including how well you slept, how long it took you to fall asleep and more.

1. A Brand New Feature Added for The First Time in the Vivosmart Series.

For the first time in the Vivosmart series, sleep insights is now added into it’s health features. This will help users get a detailed report of their sleep health, including how long it took them to fall asleep and how many times they woke up during the night. This new feature is a great addition for those who want to track their sleep health and get insights into their sleep patterns.

For a low cost fitness tracker, this extra health feature brings extra value to the Vivosmart series and makes it a great option for those looking for a fitness tracker. Its all very well looking at the data after a good night’s sleep, but what about those who don’t? The new feature will also help them understand their sleep patterns and work out how to get a better night’s sleep, using the Garmin connect app.

The advanced sleep tracking with sleep score is a great addition for a balanced health tracking. This addition is in my opinion geared around Holistic health. All of the top smart watch brands have added new features like this to keep up with the demands of the health and wellness community.

The Vivosmart series has always been a great fitness tracker, but with the addition of sleep score and insights, it is now a complete package for tracking your stress, activity and sleep.

2. What is The Advanced Sleep Tracking with Sleep Score

Sleep times and sleep stages are identified by looking at heart rate, heart rate variability, and body movement data. If you enter your age information when you set up the app, it will be easier to track your sleep and make sure it is accurate.

The app uses the following sleep stages

• Light Sleep : Light sleep is the first stage of sleep. Eye movements and muscle activity slow during light sleep as your body gets ready for deep sleep.
• Deep Sleep : As you transition to deep sleep, eye and muscle movements stop completely. Your heart rate and breathing slow. At this point, you become difficult to rouse and are disoriented if awakened. It’s generally agreed that deep sleep has a myriad of health benefits. For example, it helps aid muscle recovery.
• Rapid Eye Movement (REM) Sleep : REM sleep is considered the final stage of a sleep cycle. Dreams are common during REM sleep. REM sleep stages tend to start short and grow longer throughout the night. The REM sleep stage is believed to be when your brain has a chance to process and make sense of data. It may even be linked to how you learn new skills.
• Awake : In general, it’s best for sleep to be continuous through the night, with few to no stretches of awake time.

What is Sleep Score

You can see your nightly score (0-100) and get insights about how your daily activities and lifestyle choices affected your sleep. These tips will appear when an opportunity is identified to help you understand how factors such as daily stress levels, activity patterns and bedtimes influenced your sleep.

How is Sleep Score Calculated

Your sleep score is based on how long you slept and how good it was. Sleep duration is compared to how long people your age are supposed to sleep. The quality of your sleep score comes from how well you slept, how stressed you were, how many times you woke up, and other factors.

Sleep architecture is the way you sleep. You spend time in different sleep stages: light, deep, and REM sleep. The stress element is how your heart rate changes over time. When your heart rate is low and your heart rate variability is high, it means you are stressed.

Other contributors to your sleep score include restlessness, the number of times you are awake for longer than 5 minutes, and the total amount of time you spent awake.

Vivosmart 5 Also Tracks Sleep Based on Movement

Some older Garmin devices and devices that don’t have wrist-heart rate monitoring capabilities use movement-based sleep tracking to analyze movement captured with an accelerometer. This algorithm also considers the time of day and provides basic insight into sleep. It can estimate whether you are awake, in a light level of sleep or a deeper level of sleep. However, detection of specific sleep stages is not possible in these devices.

3. Is the Vivosmart 5 Sleep tracking Accurate?

As a disclaimer Garmin has made it clear that the Vivosmart 5 is not a medical device. Garmin also states that the device should not be used to cure a medical condition. The Vivosmart 5 provides estimates of your sleep health.

Is it accurate? unfortunately it is quite average. Compared to the top sleep tracking watch’s like Apple Watch 7, Fitbit Sense or the Fitbit Charge 5. The Vivosmart 5 sits a few levels down from that. It’s not just the one watch, it is actually across all Garmin Watch’s.

The algorithm that collects the information from your heart rate variation and the accelerometer, doesn’t quite distinguish accurately what sleep stage you are in.

4. Final Conclusion

The Vivosmart 5 is a great fitness tracker, but with the addition of sleep score and insights, it is now a complete package for tracking your stress, activity and sleep. The advanced sleep tracking with sleep score is a great addition for a balanced health tracking.

This addition is in my opinion geared around Holistic health. All of the different data points that the Vivosmart collects, helps give you a more complete picture of your overall health and wellness.

Please be aware that the results are not as accurate as the Fitbit Sense, Fitbit Charge 5 or the Apple Watch 7. I would recommend purchasing those smart watch an trackers if sleep health is critical to you.