In fact, when you are dreaming, your body is usually temporarily paralyzed, an evolutionary development that kept our ancestors (and us) from acting on our dreams and accidentally doing harm to ourselves. The process of measuring your body’s movement is called “actigraphy.” When you are asleep, your body is mostly motionless, give or take an involuntary jerk here or there. Basically, it’s a fancy gyroscope and it measures your wrist movement. Inside your device is a “tri-axis accelerometer,” which probably sounds like the kind of technobabble but is, in fact, not all that intricate. Whether you’re talking about a Fitbit or a smartwatch or now also hybrid smartwatches, they are tracking the same data : movement. What exactly are sleep trackers tracking? What exactly are sleep trackers tracking?.How exactly does it even do that? Well, that’s what we’re going to investigate today as we examine how sleep trackers work and which ones are worth your time.

Tracking your sleep patterns can provide you with a lot of useful information for your health needs, but it’s still a little strange to think your watch is collecting information on you while you’re unconscious.

That last function is where the cool/weird dichotomy really comes into play. One of the most common tools of Smartwatches is health tracking apps that provide you with insights about how far you’ve walked, your heart rate, and your sleep patterns. Now, your wristwatch can have all the functionality of your mobile phone, which, again, is cool, but can also be weird. Those same phones broadcast our location 24/7 and provide us with a never-ending stream of news and political commentary. Admittedly, though, some technology is a little weird. We can talk face-to-face with someone 2,000 miles away, read an entire book, and see satellite images of the whole planet, all via our phones. Woman sleeping with a sleep tracking bracelet.

Smart watch with sleep tracker