Garmin is stepping up its product releases. After releasing four new watches—the Forerunner 570 and 970, Vivoactive 6, and Venu X1—the American brand is unveiling the Index Sleep Monitor. As its name suggests, it focuses on sleep tracking. But what we discover next is that it's not just another smartwatch.
For added comfort and longer battery life, the monitor is integrated into an armband. Like the rest of the Garmin line, it's expensive, but still less than a smartwatch. It has just been released, at a price of 169.99 euros, less than a first-price sports watch, at 199.99 euros (Forerunner 55).
In a small device with worn on your arm during the night, in two adjustable sizes (S-M and L-XL), the cuff provides 10 measurements.
No revolution, everything resembles what we already find in a watch. The Sleep Monitor Index will analyze breathing, breathing variations, heart rate variation (HRV), blood oxygen saturation, skin temperature, stress, menstrual tracking, and will add overall sleep scores, a "body battery" level, and a night overview based on sleep phases.
As a selling point, Garmin adds that the armband has a battery life of 7 days, and can also act as a smart alarm, identifying when the person is in a light sleep to wake them up more gently.
Wearing an armband will also be more comfortable than a watch, but still less so than a connected ring, one of the best accessories for tracking sleep, notably from brands like Oura or Ultrahuman. By taking measurements with your fingertips, the sensors in the rings allow for recording measurements that are more faithful to reality. These watches are still more expensive than the Garmin armband.
However, we would have liked Garmin to go further in monitoring, for example by offering an electrical sensor for HRV tracking. The brand does not specify, but the armband will contain a simple optical sensor for cardiac activity, which does not allow for an accurate measurement of heart rate variability, data that is nevertheless essential for giving an accurate opinion on the level of recovery of the central nervous system.
The armband will still be able to detect a change in an individual's health, even if Garmin has not communicated on this subject. Not sure that the brand has obtained the certifications to alert its customers about a risk of illness, but with the respiration rate, heart rate monitoring, skin temperature, blood oxygen level and stress level, it will be easy to predict an infection.
0 Comments