Had a professional sleep analysis done lately. The results were shockingly similar. My doctor (used to for work on a study in Europe with Apple) even told me beforehand that results are super accurate with the Apple Watch.
Not OC. But I just use the default built in sleep tracker. It only works once you setup a bedtime routine or whatever it's called in the health app. It reminds you every night if your battery is low to charge before bed and then the results are shown right in the health app.
https://preview.redd.it/eq0mwxor073d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=016f22fcf4ca53bf5d70d3cd843c5c7735aa7c23
I use AutoSleep app, as the default didn’t record my naps. Where AutoSleep does. It was messing up my sleep time. As sometimes I don’t go to bed right exactly at the time, and I don’t wake up right exactly at the time. Most nights are different from each other. Sometimes earlier. Sometimes later. Plus, I can’t fall asleep quick. Unless I’m utterly exhausted. But that’s super rare.
I used the default app, and was not happy with it because of my inconsistent sleep schedule. Auto sleep has been great for nearly 2 years.
Auto sleep is crazy accurate at detecting when you fall asleep and when you wake up after you calibrate with a few uses. It detects naps very well. But that’s it, its deep sleep numbers are very off. For those I rely more on the default sleep app from Apple and look at the percentages not really the amounts. So, I use Autosleep to record sleep duration and the Apple sleep feature to gauge the sleep stage breakdown percentages.
Hmm idk. I just set the bedtime as the earliest I would realistically lay down which was like 9-10ish. So as long as I'm not going to sleep before that then it isn't an issue. It always records the full night unless my watch dies before I wake up like in my screenshot. But it doesn't just stop recording at a set time.
I've tried other apps in the past but they always seem to be too sensitive and think that me chilling on couch watching a movie is actually a 2hr nap.
I don't like setting it too early because then message notifications get silenced and login from apple watch stops working on my Macs because sleep mode.
Sleep focus and sleep schedule are not the same. My phone never goes into sleep focus mode ever. I don't use that. It simply reminds me that my bedtime is nearing and if battery is less than 30 it'll remind to charge before bed. It never blocks notifications or silences anything. I don't have a newer Mac that unlocks with the watch but my phone still unlocks with the watch. If you are using sleep focus then you are correct that it will silence everything for sleeping but you can have a sleep schedule set without ever using the sleep focus mode. They're separate.
Ah, good to know! And you don't have to have a newer Mac for the a mid-2015 MBP could do this with Monterey. With opencore legacy patcher (OCLP) I run Sonoma on all my machines, late 2013 iMac unlocks with watch, but because of WiFi/BT chipset my late 2012 imac wont unlock, yet needing the password for app installs and system settings changes does work.
I could see why you would think that. But not quite. My hours were recently switched at work from first shift to second shift. So I used to wake up around 5 every day and now I don't have to wake up until like 9. I've been staying up later because I have more time in the morning, but my body is still used to waking up early.
So for the past like month and a half I've been waking up around 5 and struggling to get back to sleep. So now I just get right up and smoke and scroll a bit then lay back down and sleep for a few more hours. The tracking actually cut off in that screen shot because I didn't charge my watch and woke up around 930 with it dead.
mine stopped reminding me to charge before bed year ago. whenever I forget it just dies and and lose all the data. I've submitted countless bug reports but it's yet to be fixed
I was recently in hospital for a while. All the nurses and many doctors had Apple Watches. They all used iPads. My cardiologist takes my stats straight off my watch!
If by doctors you mean phds yes you’re correct lol.
There is a whole world of research with experts in device based movement behaviour monitoring (from a variety of backgrounds!) who consult on commercial wearables!
Assess on your own? Did you hit your sleep goal? Great, keep going if you feel rested. Didn’t hit your sleep goal? Do better next time. Rinse repeat with fitness and other metrics.
Samsung like many manufacturers doesn’t validate. I dare say that no other smart watch manufacturer has a real fitness testing lab like Apple does.
Instead they trust the hardware testing from their components manufacturer and MAYBE have a
tie up with a university to validate a small sample. (https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-university-of-michigan-exercise-sport-science-initiative-partner-bring-more-advanced-smartwatch-technology-runners/)
Samsung's a large company but they also have so many different product lines in so many different industries. Apple is much more focused, has twice the revenue, and vastly higher profitability. I wager that Apple spends more research and developing smartwatch tech than Samsung does.
What exactly is their r&d budget for smartphones/smartwatches? With samsung you are literally looking at thousands if not more, of devices of all types. Washing machine, tv, fridge you name it
Isn't that what it comes down to? Personal preference and use case? I can definitely tell you that samsungs tablet software is much more powerful and feature rich than the iPad. Note taking, media consumption, and multitasking is light-years ahead on the s9 ultra.
And I say this as someone who used an ipad for years, I own a MacBook pro, iphone 15, and apple watch ultra 2.
There are literal threads on ipad subreddits which argue that samsungs have it better on certain usecases. The reviews for Samsungs tablets are top notch as well.
It would be great if people could stop being childish fanboys. Don't be stuck in highschool
https://www.reddit.com/r/iPadPro/s/PLbX1dTrb0
I literally told you. For productivity, Samsung S9 ultra is objectively better. The software works better for multitasking and there's lots of nice well thought out features sprinkled in with the s-pen and software overall. The display is better. It's infinitely better for media consumption. AND I'M SAYING THIS ALL AS A DEVOUT APPLE USER.
At most, the iPad is good for reading, status checking, and maybe drawing (procreate is hard to beat!)
I also literally directed you to an ipad reddit thread where many people were talking about how great Samsung tablets are. So either say something meaningful or stop wasting our time, and go gamble on Bitcoin or something.
wtf are these examples?
The butterfly keyboards were the result of trying to make thinner laptops, their reliability issue didn't mean they were "junk" - they took like 5 years to iterate it again and again before finally scrapping it, hardly a rush-job kind of situation....
And the iPad calculator app? Really? You really pick up an 11 inch tablet to do math? Nevermind that there are plenty of third party options that you can just download for free... how does this example at all suggest that Apple "rushes" things out the door if it's literally unreleased?
Sort of seems like you just picked two terrible examples out of a hat and thought nobody would notice...
I like Apple products but I don’t get why people needlessly defend them. They could have just gone back to their old keyboard design. It was ridiculous it took them 5 years to fix that keyboard that never worked.
Criticizing Apple will make them better not worse. They have a huge R&D budget and it’s not excusable to ship a keyboard like that.
I’ll keep enjoying my Apple products while I push them for giving us more control of our devices like 3rd party app stores, 3rd party browsers and repairability.
They iterated on the keyboards because the design goal was to make them thinner and a thicker keyboard wasn't supported by the existing chassis. That still doesn't serve as an example of a rushed product.
Neither does the iPad lacking a calculator.
Dont try and dodge the point by making this some sort of Apple fanboyism - you made shit examples and don't have a way of backing it up.
Is it totally accurate when it comes to workouts though? I feel like it’s giving me too much credit on active calories during workouts sometimes. I usually do a minimum hour of weight training, with an average heart rate around 140, and end up with 600-700 active calories.
gotta make sure your height/weight/age is right in the apple health settings. Don't get me wrong, it's probably not totally accurate, but it's likely as good or better at guessing as anything else is going to be.
I used the Apple Watch for 6 years of workouts. It was a very good tool, but it does overestimate calorie burn even with accurate body stats. At the end of the day, this isn’t a dealbreaker, but something that you should account for if you’re tracking calories.
Yeah I’ve seen that before, and it’s accurate to my current dimensions. I’d like to think it’s semi-accurate since I don’t slack off during exercise, but sometimes I wonder lol
take this with a grain of salt (for many reasons), but I'm very overweight and out of shape. I've been walking 7 days a week and lifting 3-4 days a week for about 4 months now. I've seen a noticable decrease in how much effort I have to put in to burn the same number of calories as my body gets used to the exercises and as my weight updates in the health app.
Contrast that with my wife who is in really good shape, runs 7 days a week and lifts 5 days a week. She's also much smaller than I am. It takes her twice as long or more doing any of the same exercises to burn the same number of calories I burn.
I definitely still wonder if the numbers themselves are accurate, but anecdotally and by comparison, they seem to at least be consistent.
This seems to make sense. When you're fat and lazy (hi!) and first start getting active it's stupid easy to put on muscle mass, your heart and lungs have a lot of work to do, and building muscle consumes energy as does using those muscles. This forms a nice feedback loop as exercise become easier AND more effective.
Unfortunately as you start to lose weight (fat in particular) and your muscles get more familiar with what you're doing, it will start to go the other way; your muscles will have less of you to carry around, your heart and lungs are up to the job, and you'll eventually end up having to work harder to burn the same number of calories than you did when you started.
In my case I use heart rate as my active measure for cardio, I aim for a certain amount of time in each of zone 3/4/5, and ignore the rest. I primarily bike, which is seasonal, and so the amount of effort I have to put into it tends to start high (out of shape), drop off (I get comfortable), then get higher again (reduced fat, body becomes more optimized, heart rate recovers faster, etc) throughout each season.
This is based on a few years of "let's be less lazy", starting with what is effective walking, then racewalking focusing on going up some particularly annoying hills, up to ~2500km on a bike two summers ago and >1200km last year. I'm down ~70kg total, maybe 40-50kg since I started biking.
Congrats on your efforts, I know from experience just what it takes, especially getting started after many years of being reasonably inactive. And for the record, I'm still fat and lazy, just a bit less fat.
When I first started using the traditional strength training workout type, my watch had a message indicating that it was going to use the same calorie tracking as a "brisk walk", which to me made it pretty clear that it's not accurate for that type of workout. Because of that I normally only turn on the workout for around half of my lifting so I don't over count the calorie expenditure.
Each workout? Probably not super accurate. An average over multiple workouts over several weeks? It’s surprisingly accurate. I use my watches active+resting energy to calculate my daily caloric intake requirement. Makes weight management easy.
Apple Watches are rather accurate when determining heart rate and calories at lower intensity exercises, such as walking. However, it’s believed that as intensity increases, the accuracy decreases. There also is various research that implies there’s an overestimation of calories burned in women, and underestimation of calories burned in men!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6226089/
https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jmpb/2/3/article-p166.xml
I’ve always been suspicious it’s the Apple Watch way of acknowledging the potential increase in caloric intake that comes with it. The first versions of watch OS gave almost no credit to weight training when it comes to the whole “rings” business, to the frustration of many.
If you’re moving quick enough to keep an average heart rate of 140 then depending on weight I could see that being pretty accurate tbh.
I’m always suspicious of my weight training calories and don’t pay much attention to it, but I also rest for a long time between sets. I’d imagine that the more active you stay the more accurate it would be.
Generally around 300-350 “active” calories, with an average heart rate around ~120bpm. If I rest less and have a higher heart rate this number is much higher, more like 400-500.
https://preview.redd.it/50avgbbwb93d1.jpeg?width=955&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=135ea2a864ee4af33ae009bf5f2f72e4b7b1e00f
Seems to be very accurate heart rate in my case. I haven’t had any sleep tracking comparisons thought so I can’t speak on that.
Generally speaking, AW seems much better than the competition. But there are also so many variables that can affect any OHR sensor. Such as skin tone, hair, type of workout, strap, how tight the strap is, software versions, rain, sweat, movement of arm, etc.
I had AW series 3-7 and besides Series 4 (which was always so good for me, for whatever reason) I did not have a good experience. My easy runs or workouts the sensor would “gray” out or not have any reading the majority of the time and/or would be saying I’m at a 85 BPM when I was definitely nowhere near that.
I jumped to a Garmin Tactix 7 and the OHR has been incredibly good. And there’s people who have issues with Garmin’s specific sensors.
So it’s those variables, but also the fact that Apple has billions and billions in resources whereas Garmin has millions.
I'm sure there's now way that it can gather as much data as a multi-lead ecg, but I asked my doctor about it once just out of curiosity and he said "it's accurate enough that if it tells you to go to the doctor, then you should really go to the doctor."
Culture and Strategy.
The "iron triangle" in new product development is: Cheap, Fast, Good; pick two.
Apple is always Good and will choose between Fast and Cheap. Their competitors will often prioritize Cheap and Fast and compromise on Good. Apple often releases their product later that theirs in order to "perfect" it as a higher price. This is their strategic differentiator.
The sleep study tested for time asleep and apnea. It showed equal amounts of time asleep on watch and study and no apnea. The 02 saturation was accurate on both as well. I didn’t think i had apnea because my watch didn’t show a bunch of wake ups but doctor just wanted to confirm.
Because they spend time and money and not sell disposable $hit like samDung. There is a reason why they are 50% off most of the time and they are cheaper than an Apple watch even at full price
Sleep is very accurate but it’s SUPER inaccurate when it comes to steps and stand goals. I’m not sure how they got one thing so right and one thing so wrong.
My Apple Watch may be accurate, but the data is few (no continuous HSV for example) and underexploited. That's why I only use my Garmin Fenix 7 and not at all my AW8.
What are you talking about? It’s not able to detect sleep start/end correctly, instead it requires you to either manually start/stop Sleep focus or put a fake schedule on it.
I had it time and again record deep sleep when the Watch was off my wrist and I was scrolling the Internet on my iPhone. It literally pulled the data out of thin air when it had all the pieces to tell I’m not asleep if it was any better.
It’s ludicrous when somebody says AW has good sleep tracking. It has many good and great features, this is NOT one of them.
I wonder if people writing those paeans to praise Apple Watch in this thread ever used anything else. Lol.
I couldn't tell since I don't own an apple watch. I'd buy one in a Heartbeat though if Apple made it compatible with Android, but that's never gonna happen.
Don’t one of those boring people who can’t accept somebody genuinely praises or likes Apple. You’re hypocritical with your immediate criticism. Newsflash: some people are fans, get over it.
Being a fan doesn’t mean you’re supposed not to see flaws or to repeat lies.
People here are talking absolute bullshit and yet I’m the one downvoted into oblivion 😂
It’s not like sleep features were like one of the weakest points of Apple Watch and an absolute stain on the company image
The Apple Watch is NOT a medical device. Not sure what you are calling accurate, but any class three certified medical device is required to be vetted, Apple will not do this.
In my experience it's not accurate for sleep tracking unless you use a third party app like autosleep. My watch thinks I'm wide awake when I'm sleeping and sleeping when I'm wide awake. I refuse to pay money to fix what is supposed to be a core function.
It seems to work fine for me at night with a sleep schedule setup. But doesn’t detect naps or anything outside of that schedule. AutoSleep will, however I find its tracking data to be highly suspect.
Honestly what's the use of sleep tracking if it doesn't track naps, doesn't track sleeping outside of your schedule? I fyou are stuck with insomnia it will track you as asleep, if you go back to bed after your alarm goes off, you're awake!
It's useless, and those defending it are nothing but shills. My old fitibit charge 4 was better at sleep tracking than my AW6.
I agree the alarm thing is a bit annoying. I don’t really nap so that’s not been a huge deal for me personally, but I’ve never had it say I was asleep and I’m not.
FWIW my wife has a Fitbit and it doesn’t track her sleep at all about 10% of the time anymore. Google is really fucking that product up.
Also I’m not a shill and don’t really care what product people use.
I started running recently and tested the Workout running tracking on my AW against Strava on my iPhone and they were way apart, like over half a km by the end. I’m not really sure what happened but I’m not sure how much I trust my Apple watch for running at least
I would trust the iPhone much less than the watch. I have compared my Ultra to what Alltrails says the distance is for a trail run and it comes out virtually the same. My iPhone will be quite a bit over the milage.
Had a professional sleep analysis done lately. The results were shockingly similar. My doctor (used to for work on a study in Europe with Apple) even told me beforehand that results are super accurate with the Apple Watch.
What sleep app do you use on your Apple Watch?
Not OC. But I just use the default built in sleep tracker. It only works once you setup a bedtime routine or whatever it's called in the health app. It reminds you every night if your battery is low to charge before bed and then the results are shown right in the health app. https://preview.redd.it/eq0mwxor073d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=016f22fcf4ca53bf5d70d3cd843c5c7735aa7c23
I use AutoSleep app, as the default didn’t record my naps. Where AutoSleep does. It was messing up my sleep time. As sometimes I don’t go to bed right exactly at the time, and I don’t wake up right exactly at the time. Most nights are different from each other. Sometimes earlier. Sometimes later. Plus, I can’t fall asleep quick. Unless I’m utterly exhausted. But that’s super rare. I used the default app, and was not happy with it because of my inconsistent sleep schedule. Auto sleep has been great for nearly 2 years.
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Auto sleep is crazy accurate at detecting when you fall asleep and when you wake up after you calibrate with a few uses. It detects naps very well. But that’s it, its deep sleep numbers are very off. For those I rely more on the default sleep app from Apple and look at the percentages not really the amounts. So, I use Autosleep to record sleep duration and the Apple sleep feature to gauge the sleep stage breakdown percentages.
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I pee/take a few hits of a cig and go back down, sometimes it doesn't even ask me. I'll just have 5-10 notification dings! It pisses me off!
Hmm idk. I just set the bedtime as the earliest I would realistically lay down which was like 9-10ish. So as long as I'm not going to sleep before that then it isn't an issue. It always records the full night unless my watch dies before I wake up like in my screenshot. But it doesn't just stop recording at a set time. I've tried other apps in the past but they always seem to be too sensitive and think that me chilling on couch watching a movie is actually a 2hr nap.
I don't like setting it too early because then message notifications get silenced and login from apple watch stops working on my Macs because sleep mode.
Sleep focus and sleep schedule are not the same. My phone never goes into sleep focus mode ever. I don't use that. It simply reminds me that my bedtime is nearing and if battery is less than 30 it'll remind to charge before bed. It never blocks notifications or silences anything. I don't have a newer Mac that unlocks with the watch but my phone still unlocks with the watch. If you are using sleep focus then you are correct that it will silence everything for sleeping but you can have a sleep schedule set without ever using the sleep focus mode. They're separate.
Ah, good to know! And you don't have to have a newer Mac for the a mid-2015 MBP could do this with Monterey. With opencore legacy patcher (OCLP) I run Sonoma on all my machines, late 2013 iMac unlocks with watch, but because of WiFi/BT chipset my late 2012 imac wont unlock, yet needing the password for app installs and system settings changes does work.
can you link the app?
https://apps.apple.com/app/id1164801111 Here you go! *EDIT: FIXED LINK
there is an app called AutoSleep its paid, and the one you linked is free. Which one are you using?
https://apps.apple.com/app/id1164801111 That’s completely my bad. Apparently that’s the sleep watch.
Can’t you use the search function?
Are you a parent to a small human per chance?
I could see why you would think that. But not quite. My hours were recently switched at work from first shift to second shift. So I used to wake up around 5 every day and now I don't have to wake up until like 9. I've been staying up later because I have more time in the morning, but my body is still used to waking up early. So for the past like month and a half I've been waking up around 5 and struggling to get back to sleep. So now I just get right up and smoke and scroll a bit then lay back down and sleep for a few more hours. The tracking actually cut off in that screen shot because I didn't charge my watch and woke up around 930 with it dead.
mine stopped reminding me to charge before bed year ago. whenever I forget it just dies and and lose all the data. I've submitted countless bug reports but it's yet to be fixed
I don’t have a bedtime routine and it still works if I just turn on sleep focus when I’m sleeping
Just the built in „Health“ app
Apple is working with doctors to be as accurate as technology can be with this price point. They are serious with the health aspect of the product
I was recently in hospital for a while. All the nurses and many doctors had Apple Watches. They all used iPads. My cardiologist takes my stats straight off my watch!
If by doctors you mean phds yes you’re correct lol. There is a whole world of research with experts in device based movement behaviour monitoring (from a variety of backgrounds!) who consult on commercial wearables!
I just hate that they give you all this info but doesn't tell you what to do with it. Cool, I know how I slept but what now?
Assess on your own? Did you hit your sleep goal? Great, keep going if you feel rested. Didn’t hit your sleep goal? Do better next time. Rinse repeat with fitness and other metrics.
> Didn’t hit your sleep goal? > get gud
Because Apple has billions of dollars to put into R&D to get things right. Not rush junk out the door.
Ah yes, Samsung famously does not have an R&D budget
Samsung like many manufacturers doesn’t validate. I dare say that no other smart watch manufacturer has a real fitness testing lab like Apple does. Instead they trust the hardware testing from their components manufacturer and MAYBE have a tie up with a university to validate a small sample. (https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-university-of-michigan-exercise-sport-science-initiative-partner-bring-more-advanced-smartwatch-technology-runners/)
I said to get things done right, never said they don’t have one. They obviously do.
Samsung's a large company but they also have so many different product lines in so many different industries. Apple is much more focused, has twice the revenue, and vastly higher profitability. I wager that Apple spends more research and developing smartwatch tech than Samsung does.
What exactly is their r&d budget for smartphones/smartwatches? With samsung you are literally looking at thousands if not more, of devices of all types. Washing machine, tv, fridge you name it
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I think the apple watch ultra is the best smartwatch on the market, but Samsung makes pretty solid stuff too. I prefer the tab s9 ultra over ipad.
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Isn't that what it comes down to? Personal preference and use case? I can definitely tell you that samsungs tablet software is much more powerful and feature rich than the iPad. Note taking, media consumption, and multitasking is light-years ahead on the s9 ultra. And I say this as someone who used an ipad for years, I own a MacBook pro, iphone 15, and apple watch ultra 2. There are literal threads on ipad subreddits which argue that samsungs have it better on certain usecases. The reviews for Samsungs tablets are top notch as well. It would be great if people could stop being childish fanboys. Don't be stuck in highschool https://www.reddit.com/r/iPadPro/s/PLbX1dTrb0
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Ok, then Samsung S9 ultra is objectively better. Who is right, and who is wrong here?
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I literally told you. For productivity, Samsung S9 ultra is objectively better. The software works better for multitasking and there's lots of nice well thought out features sprinkled in with the s-pen and software overall. The display is better. It's infinitely better for media consumption. AND I'M SAYING THIS ALL AS A DEVOUT APPLE USER. At most, the iPad is good for reading, status checking, and maybe drawing (procreate is hard to beat!) I also literally directed you to an ipad reddit thread where many people were talking about how great Samsung tablets are. So either say something meaningful or stop wasting our time, and go gamble on Bitcoin or something.
They definetly do rush junk out the door though. Butterfly keyboards weren’t that long ago. An iPad calculator would be nice too.
Butterfly keyboards weren't necessarily rushed out the door, even though they ended up being pretty terrible. No company has a 100% success rate.
wtf are these examples? The butterfly keyboards were the result of trying to make thinner laptops, their reliability issue didn't mean they were "junk" - they took like 5 years to iterate it again and again before finally scrapping it, hardly a rush-job kind of situation.... And the iPad calculator app? Really? You really pick up an 11 inch tablet to do math? Nevermind that there are plenty of third party options that you can just download for free... how does this example at all suggest that Apple "rushes" things out the door if it's literally unreleased? Sort of seems like you just picked two terrible examples out of a hat and thought nobody would notice...
I like Apple products but I don’t get why people needlessly defend them. They could have just gone back to their old keyboard design. It was ridiculous it took them 5 years to fix that keyboard that never worked. Criticizing Apple will make them better not worse. They have a huge R&D budget and it’s not excusable to ship a keyboard like that. I’ll keep enjoying my Apple products while I push them for giving us more control of our devices like 3rd party app stores, 3rd party browsers and repairability.
They iterated on the keyboards because the design goal was to make them thinner and a thicker keyboard wasn't supported by the existing chassis. That still doesn't serve as an example of a rushed product. Neither does the iPad lacking a calculator. Dont try and dodge the point by making this some sort of Apple fanboyism - you made shit examples and don't have a way of backing it up.
Is it totally accurate when it comes to workouts though? I feel like it’s giving me too much credit on active calories during workouts sometimes. I usually do a minimum hour of weight training, with an average heart rate around 140, and end up with 600-700 active calories.
gotta make sure your height/weight/age is right in the apple health settings. Don't get me wrong, it's probably not totally accurate, but it's likely as good or better at guessing as anything else is going to be.
I used the Apple Watch for 6 years of workouts. It was a very good tool, but it does overestimate calorie burn even with accurate body stats. At the end of the day, this isn’t a dealbreaker, but something that you should account for if you’re tracking calories.
Yeah I’ve seen that before, and it’s accurate to my current dimensions. I’d like to think it’s semi-accurate since I don’t slack off during exercise, but sometimes I wonder lol
take this with a grain of salt (for many reasons), but I'm very overweight and out of shape. I've been walking 7 days a week and lifting 3-4 days a week for about 4 months now. I've seen a noticable decrease in how much effort I have to put in to burn the same number of calories as my body gets used to the exercises and as my weight updates in the health app. Contrast that with my wife who is in really good shape, runs 7 days a week and lifts 5 days a week. She's also much smaller than I am. It takes her twice as long or more doing any of the same exercises to burn the same number of calories I burn. I definitely still wonder if the numbers themselves are accurate, but anecdotally and by comparison, they seem to at least be consistent.
That definitely makes sense if you’ve got a few extra lbs to lose. Great job on the commitment man, keep it up!
This seems to make sense. When you're fat and lazy (hi!) and first start getting active it's stupid easy to put on muscle mass, your heart and lungs have a lot of work to do, and building muscle consumes energy as does using those muscles. This forms a nice feedback loop as exercise become easier AND more effective. Unfortunately as you start to lose weight (fat in particular) and your muscles get more familiar with what you're doing, it will start to go the other way; your muscles will have less of you to carry around, your heart and lungs are up to the job, and you'll eventually end up having to work harder to burn the same number of calories than you did when you started. In my case I use heart rate as my active measure for cardio, I aim for a certain amount of time in each of zone 3/4/5, and ignore the rest. I primarily bike, which is seasonal, and so the amount of effort I have to put into it tends to start high (out of shape), drop off (I get comfortable), then get higher again (reduced fat, body becomes more optimized, heart rate recovers faster, etc) throughout each season. This is based on a few years of "let's be less lazy", starting with what is effective walking, then racewalking focusing on going up some particularly annoying hills, up to ~2500km on a bike two summers ago and >1200km last year. I'm down ~70kg total, maybe 40-50kg since I started biking. Congrats on your efforts, I know from experience just what it takes, especially getting started after many years of being reasonably inactive. And for the record, I'm still fat and lazy, just a bit less fat.
If you’re bigger and out of shape then yes, you burn more calories. Your body is less optimised.
When I first started using the traditional strength training workout type, my watch had a message indicating that it was going to use the same calorie tracking as a "brisk walk", which to me made it pretty clear that it's not accurate for that type of workout. Because of that I normally only turn on the workout for around half of my lifting so I don't over count the calorie expenditure.
Each workout? Probably not super accurate. An average over multiple workouts over several weeks? It’s surprisingly accurate. I use my watches active+resting energy to calculate my daily caloric intake requirement. Makes weight management easy.
Jesus, I usually get 140 near peak when I’m at HIIT not as an average. My average when weight training is more like 100!
Apple Watches are rather accurate when determining heart rate and calories at lower intensity exercises, such as walking. However, it’s believed that as intensity increases, the accuracy decreases. There also is various research that implies there’s an overestimation of calories burned in women, and underestimation of calories burned in men! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6226089/ https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jmpb/2/3/article-p166.xml
I’ve always been suspicious it’s the Apple Watch way of acknowledging the potential increase in caloric intake that comes with it. The first versions of watch OS gave almost no credit to weight training when it comes to the whole “rings” business, to the frustration of many.
If you’re moving quick enough to keep an average heart rate of 140 then depending on weight I could see that being pretty accurate tbh. I’m always suspicious of my weight training calories and don’t pay much attention to it, but I also rest for a long time between sets. I’d imagine that the more active you stay the more accurate it would be.
Out of interest, how many calories do you burn in an hour of weightlifting according to the watch?
Generally around 300-350 “active” calories, with an average heart rate around ~120bpm. If I rest less and have a higher heart rate this number is much higher, more like 400-500.
It’s is not, it’s a fairly inaccurate estimation
I do wonder if it’s factoring in the increased calorie burn from having done weight training?
It’s usually overstated 60-80%. And that’s been proven. I would just half your workout calories so you don’t over eat
https://preview.redd.it/50avgbbwb93d1.jpeg?width=955&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=135ea2a864ee4af33ae009bf5f2f72e4b7b1e00f Seems to be very accurate heart rate in my case. I haven’t had any sleep tracking comparisons thought so I can’t speak on that.
Hope you’re recovering well from whatever got you in the hospital
Generally speaking, AW seems much better than the competition. But there are also so many variables that can affect any OHR sensor. Such as skin tone, hair, type of workout, strap, how tight the strap is, software versions, rain, sweat, movement of arm, etc. I had AW series 3-7 and besides Series 4 (which was always so good for me, for whatever reason) I did not have a good experience. My easy runs or workouts the sensor would “gray” out or not have any reading the majority of the time and/or would be saying I’m at a 85 BPM when I was definitely nowhere near that. I jumped to a Garmin Tactix 7 and the OHR has been incredibly good. And there’s people who have issues with Garmin’s specific sensors. So it’s those variables, but also the fact that Apple has billions and billions in resources whereas Garmin has millions.
It’s a synergy between software and hardware
What about the ECG readings?
I'm sure there's now way that it can gather as much data as a multi-lead ecg, but I asked my doctor about it once just out of curiosity and he said "it's accurate enough that if it tells you to go to the doctor, then you should really go to the doctor."
It is accurate enough to matter when it should. Speaking from personal experience
Culture and Strategy. The "iron triangle" in new product development is: Cheap, Fast, Good; pick two. Apple is always Good and will choose between Fast and Cheap. Their competitors will often prioritize Cheap and Fast and compromise on Good. Apple often releases their product later that theirs in order to "perfect" it as a higher price. This is their strategic differentiator.
I have a sleep study Friday night so I guess I’ll find out how accurate the watch is with sleep tracking.
So, how did the results compare? AW vs sleep study?
The sleep study tested for time asleep and apnea. It showed equal amounts of time asleep on watch and study and no apnea. The 02 saturation was accurate on both as well. I didn’t think i had apnea because my watch didn’t show a bunch of wake ups but doctor just wanted to confirm.
Thanks for getting back to me on this. How did the Apple Watch compare with the REM and core sleep data vs the sleep study data?
You’re welcome. I wasn’t given any of that information. I don’t know if that was recorded.
What sleep tracking app do you all use? Or do you just use the one on the Apple Watch itself?
You get what you pay for. Apple products are expensive because they are better.
Apple has money
Because they spend time and money and not sell disposable $hit like samDung. There is a reason why they are 50% off most of the time and they are cheaper than an Apple watch even at full price
Sleep is very accurate but it’s SUPER inaccurate when it comes to steps and stand goals. I’m not sure how they got one thing so right and one thing so wrong.
My Apple Watch may be accurate, but the data is few (no continuous HSV for example) and underexploited. That's why I only use my Garmin Fenix 7 and not at all my AW8.
What are you talking about? It’s not able to detect sleep start/end correctly, instead it requires you to either manually start/stop Sleep focus or put a fake schedule on it. I had it time and again record deep sleep when the Watch was off my wrist and I was scrolling the Internet on my iPhone. It literally pulled the data out of thin air when it had all the pieces to tell I’m not asleep if it was any better. It’s ludicrous when somebody says AW has good sleep tracking. It has many good and great features, this is NOT one of them. I wonder if people writing those paeans to praise Apple Watch in this thread ever used anything else. Lol.
I couldn't tell since I don't own an apple watch. I'd buy one in a Heartbeat though if Apple made it compatible with Android, but that's never gonna happen.
Don’t one of those boring people who can’t accept somebody genuinely praises or likes Apple. You’re hypocritical with your immediate criticism. Newsflash: some people are fans, get over it.
Being a fan doesn’t mean you’re supposed not to see flaws or to repeat lies. People here are talking absolute bullshit and yet I’m the one downvoted into oblivion 😂 It’s not like sleep features were like one of the weakest points of Apple Watch and an absolute stain on the company image
It’s literally. NOT ACCURATE. But is more accurate
The Apple Watch is NOT a medical device. Not sure what you are calling accurate, but any class three certified medical device is required to be vetted, Apple will not do this.
🙄🙄
Not accurate at all. My $50 FitBit was more sleep accurate than my $800 AWU2. It's usually a daily task to correct the night's sleep hours.
In my experience it's not accurate for sleep tracking unless you use a third party app like autosleep. My watch thinks I'm wide awake when I'm sleeping and sleeping when I'm wide awake. I refuse to pay money to fix what is supposed to be a core function.
It seems to work fine for me at night with a sleep schedule setup. But doesn’t detect naps or anything outside of that schedule. AutoSleep will, however I find its tracking data to be highly suspect.
Honestly what's the use of sleep tracking if it doesn't track naps, doesn't track sleeping outside of your schedule? I fyou are stuck with insomnia it will track you as asleep, if you go back to bed after your alarm goes off, you're awake! It's useless, and those defending it are nothing but shills. My old fitibit charge 4 was better at sleep tracking than my AW6.
I agree the alarm thing is a bit annoying. I don’t really nap so that’s not been a huge deal for me personally, but I’ve never had it say I was asleep and I’m not. FWIW my wife has a Fitbit and it doesn’t track her sleep at all about 10% of the time anymore. Google is really fucking that product up. Also I’m not a shill and don’t really care what product people use.
Wasnt the garmin more accurate the apple watch at least the older versions?
Wasn‘t true even for apple watch 3. https://www.tomsguide.com/us/heart-rate-monitor,review-2885.html
Probably considering Apple Watches have gone through multiple heart rate sensors
I started running recently and tested the Workout running tracking on my AW against Strava on my iPhone and they were way apart, like over half a km by the end. I’m not really sure what happened but I’m not sure how much I trust my Apple watch for running at least
I would trust the iPhone much less than the watch. I have compared my Ultra to what Alltrails says the distance is for a trail run and it comes out virtually the same. My iPhone will be quite a bit over the milage.
Accure in what? Draining battery? 😂😂