Maybe it was the fact I went to bed later than usual. Maybe it was because I was getting a little sick. All I know is that I was dreaming vividly and deeply, awaking with a start as I tried to inhale air through a blocked nose at 7am the next day, shortly before my alarm went off, and jolted me back to reality.
At the time, I was wearing the Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro, which I’m currently testing to see if it’s worthy of inclusion in our best smartwatches guide. As I woke up slowly in the darkness, breathing returning to normal, I rolled over and peered at my smartwatch, my blurred vision coming into focus on its morning messages. It had already registered I was awake, and had sent through a report on my sleep.
Rated “average”, with a score of 78, I had slept for a little over six hours. My REM phase was much longer than usual, around 32% of my total time. Huawei said this was “a little high” and could indicate “excessive dreaming”. It advised me that “excessive dreaming makes you feel more tired when you wake up, prevents your body from recovering, and leads to reduced concentration and forgetfulness”. Sure enough, I felt drowsy and struggled to concentrate all day.
I was very impressed with the accuracy of Huawei’s statement, and a little shocked as the dream was so recently cut off as I woke up. Often, it’s tough to grapple or test even the best sleep trackers – such as the Oura Ring 4 and Samsung Galaxy Ring – properly. Under normal circumstances, how well-rested you are is largely based on feel. A score of 80-90 might be “good”, getting the required seven-to-eight hours, but it’s hard to gauge accuracy from that.
However, not only did Huawei provide me an accurate report straight away, via what it calls its TruSleep algorithm, but it also correctly identified I’d been dreaming heavily and vividly. It genuinely shocked me first thing in the morning how accurately it had read what was going on, and I’ve been testing wearables for years.
What’s more, it offered actionable advice in the Huawei Health app on how to proceed: eat more whole-grain foods and high-quality carbohydrates to maintain a normal blood sugar level, which helps you get a good night’s sleep. I hit the porridge straight away upon waking up.
Sleep trackers, the best fitness trackers, and other wellness technologies are getting better at this sort of thing. Just a few years ago, wearables used to provide us with metrics we didn’t know what to do with: stride length for our runs, sleep stages overnight, and heart rate graphs. They still do, of course, but more and more, I’m seeing apps and devices use this data to provide better insights and guidance, helping you to use the information in actionable ways.
I can’t help that I slept badly and dreamt heavily that night, but what I could do is reduce the impact that has going forward, and set myself up for success the next night by maintaining a normal blood sugar via ingesting some complex carbs over the course of the day. Without Huawei’s guidance, I would have rated the information interesting, but ultimately pretty useless.
Garmin’s Lifestyle Logging and Whoop’s Journal features allow you to add context of your own. Adding the tag “reading in bed” before a night with a good sleep score, and adding the tag “video games” before a night with a bad sleep score allows you to see your habits and how they affect wellness more clearly.
In the morning, you can add tags like “dreamt heavily” to bad nights, or “getting sick” to reduced activity levels. Over time, you can repeat the habits that lead to better scores and minimize the ones that don’t.
Context is king. Next time you buy a fitness tracker or smartwatch, choose one that offers as much context as you can find – or, like the best Garmin watches, one that allows you to add your own context.
