How can sleep stages be accurate?

[Rupertbear]

I have been very happy with Fitbit's sleep monitoring. It's shown accurately when I've woken up and when I've been restless, but the new colourful sleep stages? Oh dear!

I slept like a log last night, half an hour longer than my usual seven hours, I didn't even dream it was such a good sleep, yet it tells me I was awake six times (I didn't wake up at all) in REM sleep five times at all hours, and in deep sleep for two very short periods.

This is not helpful to me at all. I don't suppose there is a way I can opt for how it was? (MUCH simpler!)

Is this yet another change for change's sake? I do wish they'd just leave a good thing alone!

[Rich_Laue]

When the Heart Rate is on @FCD then calories are calculated by you ur heart rate. With heart rate turned off, Fitbit looks to the movement of the tracker.

Let w look at weights, how fast is the arm move ng up/down? The user would want to manually add weights. If the heart rate is on then Fitbit will see the increase in  your heart rate and award more calories. 

[FCD]

Is there a way to manually add calories?  I have settled on turning the heart rate off at night so I don't get the garbage output telling me I was awake for 2 hours when I slept thru the night.

Unfortunately today, I forgot to turn the heart rate on in the AM and calories burned seem to be way off.  Almost an exact activity day from a couple days ago, about 25K steps, one hour at the gym, 30 mins on the treadmill.  With heart rate on 3 days ago, I burned approximately 4000 calories, today 3500?  30 mins on the treadmill was different by 100 calories when I ran the same time and distance? My bad for not changing it, but even with reminders on my phone, sometimes you say I'll do it in a minute and forget.  The only reason I am doing it is because of FitBit's incompetence...

BTW, my heart rate is working, it's about 90 BPM's now vs resting at 68 BPM's since I'm pissed off ... looking for a bright spot...

[FCD]

BTW, thank you for the response and explanation Rich.  My rant below wasn't directed at you but the frustration of having to "Mickey Mouse" the system to get consistent numbers.  I'm a numbers junky and it bothers the heck out of me at the end of the day to not have the number I expected.

[Larry01]

It doesn't record my sleep time totally inaccurate. Typically my sleep time is 1 to 3 hours per night. Only once did it record my sleep time before midnight. I don't look at my fitbit for my sleep time, cause l know it's inaccurate.

I had my Charge 2 HR fitbit since Feruary 2018.

On my previous Charge HR l turned off the heart rate monitor before l went to bed and there wasn't a significant difference.

It's puzzling to me why it cosistently records sleep from approximately 3am to 6am but seldom shows any sleep before 3am. If this is true, l don't believe l could function throughput the day. Larry

[philchenevert]

Yeah, this is an old thread but I feel compelled to say that my Fitbit2 does an excellent job of giving me information about my sleep, especially the amounts of Total sleep, Deep sleep, REM sleep and awake times.  I love the new graphic displays that show over the night when and how much of each was happening.  Also the ability to compare my times with 'expected' or average times.   The only thing not shown is sleep efficiency (time in bed/time asleep) but I can figure that out myself.  All in all this is a great tool to help me focus on getting more of that wonderful healing stuff: sleep.!!!

    I believe there was an update that happened Spring of 2019 that allows this and I love it. Thanks FitBit.  If there is any way I can cooperate with FitBit to do some research I would love to do that. 

(I'm 78, a bracket that needs more research) this a recent graph..  great stuff!! 

[Rich_Laue]

@philchenevert let's go to https://beta.fitbit.com/ and sign up to be a beta tester. 

How accurate is the sleep recording. I can't say. Fitbit States that they do go back and look for ways to improve and several users have surprised the technicians, with its accuracy, when wearing the Fitbit during a sleep study 

[philchenevert]

Thanks Rich. Heading over to that site now.