How does Sleep score work?

[IKICan]

Can someone please explain Sleep Score to me

Moderator edit: Updated subject for clarity.

[bliss_s]

Just in case anyone's interested--my "sleep score" went up dramatically by simply moving the watch to the palm side of my wrist at bedtime, from 60's or low 70's each night to consistent mid 80's-- and I'm a short sleeper between 5 and 6 hours every night. I do have consistent sleep schedule: 12:15 am till 6:15 am daily.

[ZenaLouise]

I don’t understand why my sleep score has dropped when all 3 stages have an increased score? Plus I slept for longer,?

[Dominique]

@ZenaLouise : longer time spent asleep doesn’t automatically/always translate into a higher total sleep score, as you can see illustrated in this other post.

[Luigi802]

I'm 36 years old and for some reason it always seems like the better sleep score I get, the more tired I am?

For example I usually get around 6ish hours of sleep a night (I know that's not good), however last night I got a solid 7 hours, with a sleep score of 81 and I'm more tired than usual!!??

[Tizib]

Hello there!
There are many reasons for your predicament....
1) As you relax into sleeping more, your body realizes you have years of sleep debt and now it is knocking on your door like the credit card debt companies.... they don’t forget your debt...
2) Your restoration score could be low which might point to either a bad mattress or a medical issue such as breathing problems ( check your nighttime oxygen consumption next)
3) You might not be cycling through ten and deep sleep
4) you might be getting sick
It took me twenty years to realize I had always been a poor sleeper....
I have been on a journey to better sleep for the past 4 years.... with some ups and downs. But, at least now I understand..... and I can take all the necessary steps to improve.
Also, congratulations on your 81 score. At the very least you now know your body is capable of more and hopefully better sleep.
Thank you for sharing
Tiziana

Sent from my iPhone

[SleplssElsewher]

My theory on that is that often our body can get used to functioning
with poor sleep and get accustomed to getting that level of insufficient
sleep. It's like your body comes to think of 70% sleep as a "full"
sleep; kind if like the wonky memory of a lithium battery. Then, when
you get more sleep your body becomes "confused" about the amount of
sleep it needs. It recognizes that it actually needs more sleep - so is
"tired".

I would say your response to the extra sleep may be an indicator of
chronic sleep deprivation.

[Esso1962]

I think you are right. Additional sleep, once sleep-deprived, can trigger such a reaction from your body.

If you would keep up the extra hour per night (by going to bed earlier), over time you will feel more rested and you build up some reserves. Just keep going!!

[SleplssElsewher]

Here is an interesting article from the Scientific American. It makes a strong case for why the SSS (Stupid Sleep Score) is just... well just.... so stupid!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-unusual-cure-for-not-enough-sleep/

[daggs]

This is can not be the best answer. It isn't an answer. 

The score is the score, based on scores... uh thanks

But what does it mean? What are the individual scores? How does getting not enough sleep give you a high score? So need the scales being used, how its weighted. Because it just sounds random and not quantifiable. 

Haven't found any information on this yet. 

[Daxp]

A long sleep with little or no REM or deep sleep won't get you a very good score. Yes, you were asleep but maybe something you ate or something in your sleep environment prevented your body from getting the deeper sleep. On the other hand, a short sleep with a ton of REM and deep sleep will get you a good score. My guess is their sleep score algorithm heavily weighs REM and deep sleep over sleep duration.

[pastimz]

My Fitbit is a charge HR---too old to give me any type of sleep score. It does not measure REM at all, just asleep and restless. Hence the fact I always have a zero sleep score. For a while it did not give me my average sleep per week but I noticed several weeks ago that that was back. Thank you, Fitbit for listening to your customers for the average sleep per week.

[MamaDog48]

Thank you so much for your reply. To me that makes perfect sense without getting overly technical. I’ve actually stopped wearing my Fitbit in favor of a Timex Ironman that doesn’t annoy me with sleep scores. Just kidding of course - hopefully the internet critics won’t attack but nothing surprises me anymore ! 😎

Sent from my iPhone

[Fitjules28]

Thank you SteveH for explaining that. I’m new to Fitbit and was very puzzled by my sleep score total after more than 9 hours sleep! I was wondering how on earth that came out as ‘good’. I can see now now that my erratic breathing brought the score down- although I have no idea how to fix that. 

[DubZiv]

I think the sleep score is a joke and Fitbit is having a laugh. Last night I slept for 6:45 for a score of 72. I woke up feeling relatively refreshed. However, the night before, I slept for 3:38, for a score of 75. What the...? I felt terrible all day. How can you sleep twice as long for a lower sleep score? Last night, my REM and Deep times were pretty good - 1:11 and 1:23, as opposed to 0:58 and 0:35 and I got a 22 out of 25 for Restoration - 97% below resting heart rate. Something doesn’t make sense here.

My Deep/REM scores were identical on the two nights, which is ridiculous. But more ridiculous is my Time Asleep score, which was 34/50 for 3:38, and only 29/50 for 6:45. Fitbit seems to give a wildly disproportionate weighting to time awake. Because last night I woke up and it took me a while to fall back asleep, I got a much lower sleep score. That makes no sense, because I still slept over 3 hours more.

To illustrate my point about time awake: the previous night (ie. 3 nights ago) I scored only 70 for 6:15 total sleep. But, on that night I was awake for even longer so Fitbit broke my sleep into 2 parts, and I had to manually merge them. Before I merged them, the first sleep period was about 4 hours, and...wait for it...my sleep score was 75!! So by going back to sleep for a couple of hours, my score dropped by 5 points, only because I was awake longer. 

[DubZiv]

“The more you sleep, the better your score”

Except this is not true. 
As I wrote in my previous reply to the OP, where I provided real examples, getting more sleep can result in a lower sleep score. This seems counterintuitive.  The reason seems to be that the longer you are awake, the worse your sleep score, even if you sleep longer. If it were me, I would prioritise Time Asleep over time awake. A longer “time awake” might suggest a lower quality of sleep, but in my case I was awake for a block of time, and actually slept well for the time I was asleep, and I had decent Deep and REM times, and an excellent Restoration score.  It makes zero sense that I could sleep twice as long, have better Deep and REM times, and get a lower score, or that I could fall back asleep for a couple of hours of quality sleep, and my sleep score goes down.

I would prefer it if “the longer you sleep, the better your score”, were actually true, and I wish Fitbit would address this.

[TJGrix]

I’m also confused!  I have a sleep goal of 6.5 hours; I slept just over 7 hrs last night, and only got a score of 43 out of 50?

[MamaDog48]

Hi - I originally wrote the post about the sleep score several months ago I am grateful to know that I’m not alone. It’s disheartening to see that Fitbit has not addressed our concerns anywhere that I can find. I stopped using my Fitbit fir awhile then decided to give it one more try. The sleep scores were all over the place, similar to what all you folks have described. Well, the old Fitbit lives in the drawer now. I feel like I’m sleeping better and definitely not stressing about scores, how many times I wake up or the quality of my sleep or why I didn’t even get a score. My Timex came out of retirement and I’m happy.

Sent from my iPhone

[SlaveWages]

Yeah, they also forced a clock feature on mine. I don't want to know what time it is but I can't help but to accidentally see the clock sometimes when using the Fitbit.

[jeffosoft]

Id loved to tell you but it doesnt work for me 😞

[Xray3261]

• How do you set up for sleep score. I am not seeing mine