My smartwatch told me I was asleep while I was making coffee

So I've had this fitness tracker for about 8 months, and I always wondered why my sleep score was so low. I'd wake up feeling fine, but the app would say I only got 4 hours of 'restful' sleep. This morning, I was standing at my kitchen counter in Seattle, grinding beans for my 6 AM brew, and I felt my wrist buzz. I looked down and the screen said 'Great job! You just completed a 2 hour sleep cycle.' I was literally holding a coffee grinder. The thing had been counting my quiet morning routine as a nap this whole time. I guess it just sees no movement and a low heart rate and calls it sleep. Now I'm wondering how many of my 'deep sleep' stats are just me reading a book or watching a movie. Has anyone else had a gadget totally misinterpret a basic human activity like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

andrew8541mo ago

My Fitbit logged a two-hour nap during a long movie last week.

spencer_hayes711mo ago

My watch did the same thing during the last Lord of the Rings movie. It kept logging my relaxed heart rate as sleep. I turned off the auto sleep tracking for the next movie night. Just manually logged my actual sleep later. It fixed the problem.

wade_perez24d ago

Honestly, has anyone tested what their watch does during something like a meditation session or just sitting still for 45 minutes? I tried it with mine once during a boring work meeting where I didn't move at all, and it logged me as taking a nap. I bet half the people with sleep tracking are actually getting credit for deep sleep while they're just sitting on the couch scrolling their phone.