This includes:
- Heart Rate
- Respiratory Rate
- Motion
Using these 3 points of data, the Rem-Fit should be able to offer significantly better sleep tracking analysis than other products.
Set up is very simple. I downloaded the App, registered and logged in. To set up the hardware, you roll it out around chest height under your sheet, the main section of the tracker has a magnetic cap which is switched on when in one position, then off if you flip it 180 degrees. It is quite straight forward, and the strap under the sheet is flat and smooth enough not to be too noticeable when you sleep.
Once set up it is a straight forward process to pair the device.
Unlike Fitbit, it won’t automatically switch to sleep mode. I like this because Fitbit is useless at guessing when I go to sleep, I go to bed to read, and it assumes I sleep. What you can do is set a time to start tracking, or manually start it. Admittedly, some people may not like this, if you fall asleep at random times it could be annoying, but it is good for me.
When you wake up in the morning, I would tell it that I was awake. You then get your sleep tracking data. The app analyses all the data to give you a sleep quality score, you can then view a breakdown of your score with specific deductions for certain events. It might give positives, but I sleep so bad, all mine were deductions.
So, for example, I had deductions for:
- Bradycardia (slow heart rate)
- Tachypnea (fast breathing)
- Restlessness
- Getting up multiple times
- Lack of deep sleep
- Falling asleep taking too long
- Waking up too often.
In the main stats page, you also get a summary of your average breathing, heart rate and time to fall asleep. You can then pull down this for a detailed breakdown of these stats. So, you can see an hourly graph of your sleep levels, when you got out of bed, heart rate, and breathing rate.
This level of insight and advice is above, and beyond any other sleep tracking device, I have used. Admittedly, I am quite educated about sleep and am aware of most of the issues it presented me, so nothing was particularly new to me, apart from the tachypnea. But, as a stats obsessed person, it was great to see.
Other sleep tracking data from Garmin and Fitbit is just useless. They show general movement through the night, at best I can get a rough idea of how I slept, but with the level of movement I have during the night it’s just all pointless to me. Neither of them can identify correctly when I get up out of bed, and my good nights often look as bad as my bad nights.
I am getting used to the heat of my new mattress, I quite often move from one side of the bed to the other, and the strap underneath me seemed to keep track no matter where I was in bed.
Overall, if you are interested in your quality of sleep, the Rem-Fit sleep monitor seems to offer the best tracking functions on the market that I am aware of. However, there is quite a large caveat with this; it costs £150 just for the tracker itself, which is more than a Fitbit or Garmin, which track multiple health stats all day. It isn’t a like for like comparison, though, and I would say this is for someone who takes fitness, health or sleep very seriously.
There is an alternative to the £150 price tag though. The Rem-Fit Sleep 400 mattress comes with the sleep monitor for free. The mattress itself is comparatively priced, so combined with the sleep monitor it is a great buy.
