Charge 3 sleep information inaccurate

[MrPetter]

Hi guys!

Bought a Charge 3 for the sole purpose of tracking my sleep. I have a toddler and wanted to get more exact numbers to find a schedule that worked. Unfortunately the numbers are *way* off...

The unit misses my actual bed time with hours, often stops the measurement when I wake to see to the baby - but fails to start again when I am back in bed. On a night where I have no reason to believe I haven’t slept for at least six hours, the Charge 3 claims I’ve only slept for three hours.

This purchase was made because I was under the impression that Fitbit was superior in sleep tracking. Right now my old Withings Aura seems leagues more reliable. Will the Fitbit unit improve with use, i.e. as it “gets to know me” - if I manually change the sleep logs for a while? I will give this a couple of more nights, but if this keeps up I will try for a refund.

Petter

Moderator edit: subject for clarity

[AlejandraFitbit]

Welcome to the Community, @MrPetter.

If your sleep information isn't being accurate, I recommend trying the following:

1. Make sure to not take off your tracker during the night.
2. Do you remember being awake during the night? If yes, that solves it! Keep in mind that if your tracker will detect if you are awake and will stop the sleep tracking process. If no, proceed to step three.
3. Restart the tracker. See instructions in the help article: How do I restart my Fitbit device?.
4. Confirm that the tracker is snug on your wrist (with an HR tracker, the lights shouldn't be visible).
5. Try sleeping with the tracker on your non-dominant hand.
6. If the setting was set to sensitive, please switch it to normal. 
7. If steps 1-6 do not solve the issue, I suggest manually editing the sleep log to reflect the time slept. See instructions in the article: How do I change my sleep history?.​

Let me know the outcome. 🙂

[crazykemper · Accepted solution]

Sleep stages tracking is horrible. I’ve complained & even had my charge 3 replaced. Remedies given don’t work. Tried every solution several times yet my sleep pattern, my bed, etc hasn’t changed at all. I’ll get sleep stages for a night or two then nothing for weeks. I definitely believe it is software issue. There have certainly been an avalanche of complaints but no real solution. Maybe Google can solve it when they take over. Let’s hope so. Miserable when you count on Fitbit & doesn’t work 

[MrPetter]

Dear Alejandra,

Feedback numbering follows your ledger;

1. Uhm, yes. I am keeping it on. 🙂

2. I wake up, tend to my baby, go back to sleep. I would expect the tracker to cope; listing moments I awake to leave the bed as awake and periods that I sleep as asleep, Since we track the babies wake ups I have a fairly detailed understanding of my periods in bed as well. And by speaking to my wife as well as relying on my own experience, I am certainly asleep more than awake when in bed. One of the benefits of having a toddler. 🙂

3. Done

4. The lights are not visible; I have it snug enough to stay still but not so snug as to hurt me or constrain the skin too much. It stays in place over night.

5. That’s not my preferred setup; I keep a watch there during daytime, but I tried it anyway. No significant difference.

6. The device is on normal; sensitive should, as I read the explanation, screw up the tracking more

7. When I change it manually, the resulting pattern seems plausible. The wake/sleep time stamps within the given range corresponds at least somewhat to my written log.

So. My conclusion is that this is down to the firmware of the device. Studying discussions here it seems that something happened in the beginning of last year, and since a lot of users seem to experience that the tracker has deteriorated in its capability of correctly capturing and detailing primarily start and stop of sleep periods. I.e. whole hours of sleep is lost. In my log I may appear to have slept only one hour... if I manually add the four hours ahead of that, which I spent in bed, the app most often incorporates a few cycles of sleep/awake ahead of its originally reported single hour. Most often; not always.

Unfortunately, the manual edit of the sleep log is limited if there IS an interpreted sleeping period in the span; I.e. I can’t just add a single consistent “this was when I went to bed, this is when I finally got up” - I have to subtract the measured periods and then add multiple periods around it. This is a death blow to “put it on and forget about it”, which is most def what I am looking for in wearables overall and sleep trackers in particular,

Unless you can point to a known issue in the client development and tracking id to fix it, then I have to consider this device unfit for purpose and return it under local consumer law. Sorry.

Best,

Petter

[MrPetter]

Thanks for taking your time to answer. Please see my longer response to the mod. I unfortunately share your experience and have to draw the conclusion that while the tracker seems capable of tracking (at least reasonably well) something is seriously wrong in how the software interprets that data - in particular start/stop when you don’t sleep consistently.

//Petter

[crazykemper]

I couldn’t agree more

Sent from my iPhone

[SunsetRunner]

I’ve tried all suggested resolutions but the sleep tracker cannot cope with two or three bathroom visits a night. I’m really disappointed as it was one of the two main reasons I bought it. When is this going to be resolved, please?