The Best Sleep Tech for Catching Your ZZZs

pcmag.com:

Sleep deprivation is a real problem. Studies show that not getting enough rest can lead to impaired cognitive skills and health risks like diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, and obesity. And according to the Center for Disease Control, more than a third of American adults don't manage to get the recommended seven hours of shut eye per night.

While our smartphones and their blue light get blamed for keeping us awake, there's also a lot of tech out there intended to have the opposite effect. And you don't have to spend a lot to get a better night's rest.

Gaining insight into your sleeping patterns is the first step toward identifying problems and fixing them. Fortunately, sleep is an increasingly popular metric among fitness trackers and smartwatches. When evaluating your options, look for a device that can track your sleep stages, overnight heart rate variability (HRV), breathing (aka respiration) rate, blood oxygen saturation level (aka SpO2 or Pulse Ox), and skin temperature.

The Fitbit Charge 5 ticks all those boxes. It tracks the amount of time you spend in light, deep, and REM sleep, and its companion app offers graphs of your sleep stages, sleeping heart rate, and more. It also gives you a daily Sleep Score that can help you quickly gauge the quality of your shut eye. These insights can be a good wake-up call if you’re not getting enough rest. 

The Charge 5 and other Fitbit devices also track your Estimated Oxygen Variation, or the changes in your breathing as you slept. This information can potentially help you identify signs of sleep apnea and other sleep disorders.

Garmin and Polar wearables also generally do an excellent job of tracking your sleep. The Garmin Venu 2 has a Pulse Ox sensor that can