I only skimmed this post (I’m not in the market), but boy, the author really worked hard to gather and analyze all this data. Upvoted for effort. I tried some sleep tracking with my Apple Watch a...
I only skimmed this post (I’m not in the market), but boy, the author really worked hard to gather and analyze all this data. Upvoted for effort.
I tried some sleep tracking with my Apple Watch a few years ago, but I didn’t feel like the data helped me to make any significant tweaks to my already pretty healthy routine. I have been religiously sleeping between 9 PM and 5 AM for almost a decade at this point, and very little disturbs my sleep. Still, I was mighty impressed by this post.
Here’s his conclusion:
Summarizing all of that into my advice right now: Get Whoop for 9.5/10, reliable, convenient sleep tracking with an excellent app (once you get to know it a bit). Get Oura for 10/10 tracking, if you're ok with the ring form factor.
I'm not really in the market either, and too lazy to parse their gee-whiz-marketing websites to figure out the answer to this question myself, but does anyone know if either Whoop or Oura require...
I'm not really in the market either, and too lazy to parse their gee-whiz-marketing websites to figure out the answer to this question myself, but does anyone know if either Whoop or Oura require the paid subscription service, or do they have some useful level of functionality that works without ongoing subscription fees? An AI told me that Oura has near-useless levels of functionality without subscribing and that Whoop is a paperweight, but wondering if anyone has experience that can confirm or deny that.
https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409086524819-Oura-Membership https://support.whoop.com/s/article/Canceling-Your-Membership?language=en_US So it looks like Oura rings are still...
Can I use my Oura Ring without an Oura Membership?
Oura Membership unlocks the full potential of the Oura App, allowing you to access detailed insights and personalized guidance. Without an active membership, you’ll only be able to see your three daily Oura scores (Readiness, Activity, and Sleep), ring battery, basic profile information, app settings, and the Explore content. Without an active membership, you cannot access the Oura API, but you can still download all of your personal data through Oura on the Web.
Gen2 users do not require an Oura Membership and will not be charged membership fees. We’ll continue to support the Gen2 ring with routine software and firmware updates for the foreseeable future. However, due to hardware differences, many new features introduced in Gen3 and Oura Ring 4 are not compatible with Gen2.
If you’re a Gen2 user interested in upgrading to a Gen3 or Oura Ring 4, keep in mind that you’ll need to sign up for a monthly or annual Oura Membership. With Oura Membership, you’ll get access to advanced insights, enhanced tracking, and a range of new features designed to give you a deeper understanding of your health and wellness.
So it looks like Oura rings are still somewhat usable with no subsciption since you can still see your basic scores and download the detailed data to use elsewhere, but WHOOP is completely useless without a sub.
I question the value of this comparison, largely because it's on an arbitrary made-up thing called a "sleep score". A quick search says that academics don't have a universally agreed upon sleep...
I question the value of this comparison, largely because it's on an arbitrary made-up thing called a "sleep score". A quick search says that academics don't have a universally agreed upon sleep score, the scores that these products use all appear to be completely proprietary with no real way to determine if the scores they give you correlate to the quality of your sleep. These trackers are not even accurately measuring your sleep phases like they claim to, because they are not attaching to all of the parts of your body that a sleep study in a medical context would do; they are making heuristic guesses based on the limited data they have access to.
Regardless, I also question the need to have such fine-grained understanding of your sleep. Unless you suspect you have a sleeping-related disorder, you probably don't need even the most basic sleep data. There is a much simpler and more accessible technology for that: just take note of how you feel in the morning. Journal details like when you go to sleep and wake up, and when you shut down the screens for the day. Some sleep disorders like insomnia may actually be cured with such methods. In any case, people generally don't care about sleep; they care that sleep is affecting their life, and noting it down means you're actually measuring the thing you care about.
I can't speak for the author, of course, but I feel that this is in the same vein as "biohacking", a scene full of people who seem to want to put the cart before the horse. They want to try to min-max their health because they want to work harder, but their health is bad because they are devoting too much of themselves to work.
Of course if you do have a sleep related disorder, you should be doing whatever the doctor tells you to do, not trying to fix things yourself with biohacking. If you have sleep apnea, for instance, CPAP machines almost universally have sensors and reporting utilities built into them that tell you the effectiveness of the therapy they provide. I actually do have sleep apnea, and I also have some complications that make CPAP therapy difficult, and so I have been using an Apple Watch, because it lets me know how much sleep I was able to get when I unconciously remove the mask in the middle of the night. I just use the built-in health app to track sleep, and I can tell you that even it's "limited" reporting is far more than I find actually helpful. I used to check it every morning, but now I realize that it's not actually telling me anything that my body isn't already telling me. It turns out that a very small amount of mindfulness is better than tracking tools. But to play a bit of devil's advocate, perhaps such mindfulness could be better developed with the aid of tracking tools than by yourself.
Kinda disappointed he only included the Apple Watch with the AutoSleep app. I don't know how accurate it is, but I've been using the Zepp app for a few years now with my Amazfit Bip U Pro watch,...
Kinda disappointed he only included the Apple Watch with the AutoSleep app. I don't know how accurate it is, but I've been using the Zepp app for a few years now with my Amazfit Bip U Pro watch, and I think it's got pretty solid sleep tracking and data visualization. It gives a pretty detailed breakdown of all my individual sleep sessions (tracking heart rate, light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, and any sleep interruptions, including suspected hypopnea events), overall sleep stats, and weekly/monthly trends. E.g. Here is my sleep last night (which was a 92 score), along with all the other info and stats it shows me.
p.s. They have a new "premium" ($10/mo) service called Zepp Aura, but I haven't bothered with it and likely never will since the standard/free stats are more than enough for me... and I have absolutely no use for an AI sleep assistant, AI tuned music, or any of the other BS features of Aura.
p.p.s. Thanks again, @chromakode and @UniquelyGeneric, for the sleep mask encouragement and recommendation, BTW. I have been using that Alaska Bear blindfold style mask every night since then, and it has genuinely helped improve my sleep quality (and the speed I fall asleep) by a great deal. :)
So happy to have improved your sleep! I don’t have too much skin in the game because my problem (if I can call it that) is not that I can’t sleep, but that I choose to avoid sleep. I’m a night owl...
So happy to have improved your sleep!
I don’t have too much skin in the game because my problem (if I can call it that) is not that I can’t sleep, but that I choose to avoid sleep. I’m a night owl who still has a 9-5, and so I generally choose to forgo sleep for whatever digital rabbit hole I’ve chosen for the night.
My one anecdote relevant to this thread is when I used a sleep tracker in college. My freshman dorm neighbor across the hall was enrolled in a psych course that included a sleep study across the whole class. Each use used an electronic headband to track their sleep phases (I don’t know which one it was, but it was top of the line at the time!). One day he approached me to see if I could wear it for a weekend because his long-distance girlfriend was visiting for the weekend. Out of curiosity’s sake I agreed.
This guy had a pristine sleep schedule, going to bed from 11pm-8am every day like clockwork. I guess the sleep scores are similar to IQ and normalized, so most of the class was middling around 100. My dude was a top performer with a high score of 120 or so. Meanwhile, I’m a night owl who went out to drink that weekend, and as freshmen do, I stayed out late and came back drunk. I knew enough to put on this goofy headband and clocked in my sleep for the night (here’s a case where I got a proper 8+ hours due to the weekend).
The result? The highest sleep score in the whole class for the rest of the semester: 141. 40% deep sleep. 40% REM sleep. 20% light sleep. Was this likely due to REM Rebound? Yes. Could alcohol have influenced the score? Potentially, supposedly alcohol disrupts proper sleep cycles, but maybe my general sleep deprivation is stronger. Is it healthy? Unclear, I haven’t changed much regarding sleep over the years, even seeing a sleep doctor. I have been diagnosed with delayed sleep phase disorder, but I hesitate to call it a disorder when my life has been relatively successful as-is. I wonder if there’s a similar form of masking that those with ADHD are prone to.
I don’t know whether this anecdata is even meaningful to the type of people who need to track their sleep to actively improve it, but it’s a story I keep with me whenever people comment on my sleep habits. I may not get the most sleep, but when I do, I get the best sleep ^_^
I'm actually an extreme nightowl (bordering on being an insomniac) too. I would much rather be playing computer games late at night than sleeping, and so I often do exactly that! Which you can...
Meanwhile, I’m a night owl...
I'm actually an extreme nightowl (bordering on being an insomniac) too. I would much rather be playing computer games late at night than sleeping, and so I often do exactly that! Which you can probably tell from that 61% sleep regularity score, with my sleep and wakeup times all over the map. And keep in mind that is with me actually trying my damnedest to sleep more regularly over the last few months! :P
I am really trying to focus on improving my mental and physical health in general these days, so am trying my best not to pull all-nighters anymore like I have regularly done pretty much my entire life (even back during elementary and highschool). And when I do sleep I am also trying to make it as high quality of a sleep as I can now, which is why I'm genuinely grateful for that sleep mask advice.
I stayed out late and came back drunk. I knew enough to put on this goofy headband and clocked in my sleep for the night (here’s a case where I got a proper 8+ hours due to the weekend).
The result? The highest sleep score in the whole class for the rest of the semester: 141
Heh, whenever I do some moderate-heavy drinking the exact opposite always (without fail) happens to me; Regardless of how little sleep I got the night before, or have gotten that week, I can only ever sleep 3-4 hours after having drank. And it's not even due to things that you would expect causes most people to wake up early after drinking; I don't get heartburn from it, or woken up because I have to pee. It's even so consistent that it's actually a tiny bit dangerous for me, since I have often used getting drunk to reset my sleep schedule after I have seriously fucked it up with too many late night or all night gaming sessions. :/
I'm glad you like your sleep mask! I have a few different ones that I use, based on my needs and I use them most nights until I get sensory ick from them and take a break. My sleep definitely...
I'm glad you like your sleep mask! I have a few different ones that I use, based on my needs and I use them most nights until I get sensory ick from them and take a break. My sleep definitely takes a hit then! I've also started wearing a bonnet to keep my hair up but not tied back as I sleep, and that's helped a ton too! My hair is less mangled, and my neck doesn't get as sweaty. I noticed about 3 months ago that I've started sweating a lot more in my sleep than I used to, even with no blankets or clothes on, so I started trying to cool my room down as much as comfortable and the silk bonnet helps keep my scalp cool while I keep my hair out of the way. Still sweaty, but less so.
I thankfully haven't gotten any sensory icks from the sleep mask so far. But I'm also a super hot sleeper too... despite me having short cropped hair, sleeping in just my undies, only ever...
I thankfully haven't gotten any sensory icks from the sleep mask so far. But I'm also a super hot sleeper too... despite me having short cropped hair, sleeping in just my undies, only ever sleeping with my blanket/sheets barely covering my upper torso, and having my apt temp set to 20°C/69℉ at night. But even with all that I still sweat a lot at night. I also sweat a ridiculous amount while working out too though, so I suspect there isn't much I can do about it. I'm just a sweaty person. :( And I have had to just learn to live with it, and clean my bedding and sleep mask more often than most other people probably have to.
Cool to see this data and Whoop and Oura stay in the back of my mind for something I'd like to try. I was a bit confused initially why the author compared to a third party app on Apple Watch but...
Cool to see this data and Whoop and Oura stay in the back of my mind for something I'd like to try. I was a bit confused initially why the author compared to a third party app on Apple Watch but didn't also test the default sleep tracking feature, then I remembered AW doesn't include a sleep score. That third party app is one of the most popular ones on Apple Watch though, so it has value for many.
It's interesting to me that the author says the numbers were all wrong. I compared that app's data to a sleep study and a Fitbit together about 2 years ago, and the sleep study data was the same...
It's interesting to me that the author says the numbers were all wrong. I compared that app's data to a sleep study and a Fitbit together about 2 years ago, and the sleep study data was the same as the sleep app's data for me, while the Fitbit was close, but a little under.
I use it religiously now to track my sleep as I have a few conditions that make me chronically fatigued or make my sleep less restful than it should.
Fun article. I always like seeing quantitative data. My doctor suggested I try tracking my sleep, so I've been looking into sleep trackers. Kind of a curious finding that the Oura and Autosleep...
Fun article. I always like seeing quantitative data. My doctor suggested I try tracking my sleep, so I've been looking into sleep trackers.
Whoop vs Oura: 0.65
Oura vs AutoSleep: 0.47
Whoop vs AutoSleep: 0.14
Whoop and Oura seem to enjoy the highest correlation at ~0.65 ... If we think that Whoop is good (which I think it is), AutoSleep looks almost like a noise generator.
Kind of a curious finding that the Oura and Autosleep have ok correlation given the conclusions about Autosleep. Seems like Oura correlates at least moderately well with the other three trackers, while Whoop only correlates well with Oura. Seems likely related to how the other trackers hit 100 often while Oura topped out at 92, but we'd have to see more data to know.
Also, there's some qualitative discussion on correlation between sleep quality and quality of life. Not sure if this was scored in a journal, or just going off vibes. Anyone ever tried scoring their day and comparing it to sleep data or know of someone who did that?
I've been relying on The Quantified Scientist's reviews on YouTube for reviews of health/sleep tracking devices. It seems thorough enough for me to not find anything wrong in his testing. His...
I've been relying on The Quantified Scientist's reviews on YouTube for reviews of health/sleep tracking devices. It seems thorough enough for me to not find anything wrong in his testing.
His results were quite different compared to Karpathy's. Apple Watches were the best in heart rate and sleep tracking according to his tests, whereas Oura and Whoop were a step below, but not bad.
I have a Fitbit Sense 2 myself and I'm content with its sleep tracking.
I only skimmed this post (I’m not in the market), but boy, the author really worked hard to gather and analyze all this data. Upvoted for effort.
I tried some sleep tracking with my Apple Watch a few years ago, but I didn’t feel like the data helped me to make any significant tweaks to my already pretty healthy routine. I have been religiously sleeping between 9 PM and 5 AM for almost a decade at this point, and very little disturbs my sleep. Still, I was mighty impressed by this post.
Here’s his conclusion:
I'm not really in the market either, and too lazy to parse their gee-whiz-marketing websites to figure out the answer to this question myself, but does anyone know if either Whoop or Oura require the paid subscription service, or do they have some useful level of functionality that works without ongoing subscription fees? An AI told me that Oura has near-useless levels of functionality without subscribing and that Whoop is a paperweight, but wondering if anyone has experience that can confirm or deny that.
https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409086524819-Oura-Membership
https://support.whoop.com/s/article/Canceling-Your-Membership?language=en_US
So it looks like Oura rings are still somewhat usable with no subsciption since you can still see your basic scores and download the detailed data to use elsewhere, but WHOOP is completely useless without a sub.
I question the value of this comparison, largely because it's on an arbitrary made-up thing called a "sleep score". A quick search says that academics don't have a universally agreed upon sleep score, the scores that these products use all appear to be completely proprietary with no real way to determine if the scores they give you correlate to the quality of your sleep. These trackers are not even accurately measuring your sleep phases like they claim to, because they are not attaching to all of the parts of your body that a sleep study in a medical context would do; they are making heuristic guesses based on the limited data they have access to.
Regardless, I also question the need to have such fine-grained understanding of your sleep. Unless you suspect you have a sleeping-related disorder, you probably don't need even the most basic sleep data. There is a much simpler and more accessible technology for that: just take note of how you feel in the morning. Journal details like when you go to sleep and wake up, and when you shut down the screens for the day. Some sleep disorders like insomnia may actually be cured with such methods. In any case, people generally don't care about sleep; they care that sleep is affecting their life, and noting it down means you're actually measuring the thing you care about.
I can't speak for the author, of course, but I feel that this is in the same vein as "biohacking", a scene full of people who seem to want to put the cart before the horse. They want to try to min-max their health because they want to work harder, but their health is bad because they are devoting too much of themselves to work.
Of course if you do have a sleep related disorder, you should be doing whatever the doctor tells you to do, not trying to fix things yourself with biohacking. If you have sleep apnea, for instance, CPAP machines almost universally have sensors and reporting utilities built into them that tell you the effectiveness of the therapy they provide. I actually do have sleep apnea, and I also have some complications that make CPAP therapy difficult, and so I have been using an Apple Watch, because it lets me know how much sleep I was able to get when I unconciously remove the mask in the middle of the night. I just use the built-in health app to track sleep, and I can tell you that even it's "limited" reporting is far more than I find actually helpful. I used to check it every morning, but now I realize that it's not actually telling me anything that my body isn't already telling me. It turns out that a very small amount of mindfulness is better than tracking tools. But to play a bit of devil's advocate, perhaps such mindfulness could be better developed with the aid of tracking tools than by yourself.
Kinda disappointed he only included the Apple Watch with the AutoSleep app. I don't know how accurate it is, but I've been using the Zepp app for a few years now with my Amazfit Bip U Pro watch, and I think it's got pretty solid sleep tracking and data visualization. It gives a pretty detailed breakdown of all my individual sleep sessions (tracking heart rate, light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, and any sleep interruptions, including suspected hypopnea events), overall sleep stats, and weekly/monthly trends. E.g. Here is my sleep last night (which was a 92 score), along with all the other info and stats it shows me.
p.s. They have a new "premium" ($10/mo) service called Zepp Aura, but I haven't bothered with it and likely never will since the standard/free stats are more than enough for me... and I have absolutely no use for an AI sleep assistant, AI tuned music, or any of the other BS features of Aura.
p.p.s. Thanks again, @chromakode and @UniquelyGeneric, for the sleep mask encouragement and recommendation, BTW. I have been using that Alaska Bear blindfold style mask every night since then, and it has genuinely helped improve my sleep quality (and the speed I fall asleep) by a great deal. :)
So happy to have improved your sleep!
I don’t have too much skin in the game because my problem (if I can call it that) is not that I can’t sleep, but that I choose to avoid sleep. I’m a night owl who still has a 9-5, and so I generally choose to forgo sleep for whatever digital rabbit hole I’ve chosen for the night.
My one anecdote relevant to this thread is when I used a sleep tracker in college. My freshman dorm neighbor across the hall was enrolled in a psych course that included a sleep study across the whole class. Each use used an electronic headband to track their sleep phases (I don’t know which one it was, but it was top of the line at the time!). One day he approached me to see if I could wear it for a weekend because his long-distance girlfriend was visiting for the weekend. Out of curiosity’s sake I agreed.
This guy had a pristine sleep schedule, going to bed from 11pm-8am every day like clockwork. I guess the sleep scores are similar to IQ and normalized, so most of the class was middling around 100. My dude was a top performer with a high score of 120 or so. Meanwhile, I’m a night owl who went out to drink that weekend, and as freshmen do, I stayed out late and came back drunk. I knew enough to put on this goofy headband and clocked in my sleep for the night (here’s a case where I got a proper 8+ hours due to the weekend).
The result? The highest sleep score in the whole class for the rest of the semester: 141. 40% deep sleep. 40% REM sleep. 20% light sleep. Was this likely due to REM Rebound? Yes. Could alcohol have influenced the score? Potentially, supposedly alcohol disrupts proper sleep cycles, but maybe my general sleep deprivation is stronger. Is it healthy? Unclear, I haven’t changed much regarding sleep over the years, even seeing a sleep doctor. I have been diagnosed with delayed sleep phase disorder, but I hesitate to call it a disorder when my life has been relatively successful as-is. I wonder if there’s a similar form of masking that those with ADHD are prone to.
I don’t know whether this anecdata is even meaningful to the type of people who need to track their sleep to actively improve it, but it’s a story I keep with me whenever people comment on my sleep habits. I may not get the most sleep, but when I do, I get the best sleep ^_^
I'm actually an extreme nightowl (bordering on being an insomniac) too. I would much rather be playing computer games late at night than sleeping, and so I often do exactly that! Which you can probably tell from that 61% sleep regularity score, with my sleep and wakeup times all over the map. And keep in mind that is with me actually trying my damnedest to sleep more regularly over the last few months! :P
I am really trying to focus on improving my mental and physical health in general these days, so am trying my best not to pull all-nighters anymore like I have regularly done pretty much my entire life (even back during elementary and highschool). And when I do sleep I am also trying to make it as high quality of a sleep as I can now, which is why I'm genuinely grateful for that sleep mask advice.
Heh, whenever I do some moderate-heavy drinking the exact opposite always (without fail) happens to me; Regardless of how little sleep I got the night before, or have gotten that week, I can only ever sleep 3-4 hours after having drank. And it's not even due to things that you would expect causes most people to wake up early after drinking; I don't get heartburn from it, or woken up because I have to pee. It's even so consistent that it's actually a tiny bit dangerous for me, since I have often used getting drunk to reset my sleep schedule after I have seriously fucked it up with too many late night or all night gaming sessions. :/
I'm glad you like your sleep mask! I have a few different ones that I use, based on my needs and I use them most nights until I get sensory ick from them and take a break. My sleep definitely takes a hit then! I've also started wearing a bonnet to keep my hair up but not tied back as I sleep, and that's helped a ton too! My hair is less mangled, and my neck doesn't get as sweaty. I noticed about 3 months ago that I've started sweating a lot more in my sleep than I used to, even with no blankets or clothes on, so I started trying to cool my room down as much as comfortable and the silk bonnet helps keep my scalp cool while I keep my hair out of the way. Still sweaty, but less so.
I thankfully haven't gotten any sensory icks from the sleep mask so far. But I'm also a super hot sleeper too... despite me having short cropped hair, sleeping in just my undies, only ever sleeping with my blanket/sheets barely covering my upper torso, and having my apt temp set to 20°C/69℉ at night. But even with all that I still sweat a lot at night. I also sweat a ridiculous amount while working out too though, so I suspect there isn't much I can do about it. I'm just a sweaty person. :( And I have had to just learn to live with it, and clean my bedding and sleep mask more often than most other people probably have to.
Cool to see this data and Whoop and Oura stay in the back of my mind for something I'd like to try. I was a bit confused initially why the author compared to a third party app on Apple Watch but didn't also test the default sleep tracking feature, then I remembered AW doesn't include a sleep score. That third party app is one of the most popular ones on Apple Watch though, so it has value for many.
It's interesting to me that the author says the numbers were all wrong. I compared that app's data to a sleep study and a Fitbit together about 2 years ago, and the sleep study data was the same as the sleep app's data for me, while the Fitbit was close, but a little under.
I use it religiously now to track my sleep as I have a few conditions that make me chronically fatigued or make my sleep less restful than it should.
Fun article. I always like seeing quantitative data. My doctor suggested I try tracking my sleep, so I've been looking into sleep trackers.
Kind of a curious finding that the Oura and Autosleep have ok correlation given the conclusions about Autosleep. Seems like Oura correlates at least moderately well with the other three trackers, while Whoop only correlates well with Oura. Seems likely related to how the other trackers hit 100 often while Oura topped out at 92, but we'd have to see more data to know.
Also, there's some qualitative discussion on correlation between sleep quality and quality of life. Not sure if this was scored in a journal, or just going off vibes. Anyone ever tried scoring their day and comparing it to sleep data or know of someone who did that?
I've been relying on The Quantified Scientist's reviews on YouTube for reviews of health/sleep tracking devices. It seems thorough enough for me to not find anything wrong in his testing.
His results were quite different compared to Karpathy's. Apple Watches were the best in heart rate and sleep tracking according to his tests, whereas Oura and Whoop were a step below, but not bad.
I have a Fitbit Sense 2 myself and I'm content with its sleep tracking.