Fitbit
Fitbit today announced a bunch of new sleep assessment features for premium users. Launched via the Fitbit app on Wednesday, Sleep Profile is the latest subscription-only data that Fitbit Premium members can use to understand their unique sleep type and identify their strengths and weaknesses.
Using a month’s sleep data from about 60,000 Fitbit users, the company studied 1,000 unique sleep traits, eventually breaking them down and aggregating them into 10 metrics. Five of them are already inside the Fitbit app, including sleep stages and duration. But the five new categories assess bedtime consistency, number of nap days, time before sound sleep, interrupted sleep, and ‘settling’, which presents the average number of short, unnoticed awakenings during the night. With these ratings, users can see daily, weekly, and monthly trends in each category and see where they are (and should be) within the data range of other users of the same age and gender.
Fitbit
Each month, users will also be assigned sleep time patterns based on their data. Each of the six species is named after an animal with similar sleep patterns: giraffe, bear, dolphin, hedgehog, parrot, and tortoise. According to Fitbit, aside from fun, these sleep pattern identifiers are meant to help stay in people’s minds and reflect how their patterns change over time. Animal-based sleep types are not a new concept sleep science or even wearable devices; Samsung introduced a similar feature in the Galaxy Watch 4 this year.
The Sleep Profile requires users to wear a compatible Fitbit device (Sense, Versa 2 or 3, Charge 5, Luxe, Inspire 2) at least 14 days per month to receive ratings. As mentioned, the feature is exclusive to Fitbit Premium subscribers who pay $10 a month to access insights and a mid-sized library of fitness and mindfulness content, among other perks protected by a paywall.
