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AutoSleep. 
About Sleep Rings & Quality.

Sleep Rings

AutoSleep 4 introduces a concept called Sleep Rings. You can think of these as the flip side to your Apple Watch's Activity Rings. Instead of filling them by moving, exercising and standing, you fill them simply by sleeping. 

If you wear your Watch to sleep, then your sleep data will be represented by three rings. 

☾ - Time Asleep

This reflects the time that you spent asleep. You fill this ring by sleeping enough hours to meet the sleep hour target that you set in the AutoSleep wizard. 

% - Sleep Quality

This indicates the quality of your sleep. It is based on time slept, restlessness and heart rate. It's the most useful metric for monitoring how much quality sleep time you have had. 

♥ - Average Heart Rate

This is your average heart rate during the time that you were asleep. The ring reflects the quality of the nocturnal dip in heart rate. This is measured as the percentage difference between your average heart rate when not engaged in physical activity and your average heart rate when sleeping. If you are interested in understanding more about nocturnal dip, there is an interesting study here. 


Sleep Ring Breakdown


On the Quality tab, there is a breakdown of each individual ring with a comparison to the trailing 7 days. 

Z - Deep Sleep

There is also a fourth ring which provides the time spent in "Deep Sleep" and again compares this to the trailing 7 days. This time is determined by meeting a sufficient nocturnal dip in heart rate combined with minimal movement. Refer the "Profile" section below to change how this and the heart rate ring are displayed. The main value of this ring is to compare it against your own historical data rather than to other people. 


Scrolling down further present the Sleep Quality Graph. 

Sleep Quality Graph

Here you will one graph per sleep session. A sleep session is defined as any period that you have been asleep with a break under 90 minutes in duration. 

  • Restlessness

The blue graphics indicate the periods that you were asleep. The higher they rise, the more active you were.

In the above chart, it indicates that 91% of the time asleep was spent with a low level of, or no tossing & turning. 

The Restful sleep percentage is the percentage of time asleep that you were significantly still. 

  • Awake

The green graphics indicate periods in which you were awake. 

If you use the "Lights Off" feature, this section will indicate how long it took to fall asleep after turning off the lights. 

It will also look at the total time in bed and calculate the time that you spent awake during this period. If using Lights Off, the time to fall asleep is included in this total. 

  • Heartrate

The dots plot your heart rate during the time that you were asleep. Brighter dots indicate that the heart rate had a significant nocturnal dip (see heart rate ring above). 

This displays your average heart rate whilst you were asleep as well as the minimum and maximum values recorded for each period of sleep.  

It compares this to your average resting heart rate recorded for the day, that is, it excludes any time that you were active or working out. It displays this as a percentage. Ideally you should be seeing at least a 10% drop in average heart rate, as this is a good measure of deeper sleep. 

  • Deep Sleep

Periods of deeper sleep are shown as purple blocks. This is determined according your profile setting (below). 


Profile

To deliver more relevant sleep quality analysis, the profile section is broken up into three types. These have an influence over the way the heart rate ring is represented and deep sleep is calculated. 

  • Athlete
This is meant for people that have a high level of heart fitness. Normally this results in a significant nocturnal dip in heart rate. Often around 20%. The main reason for this setting is to change the calculations so that fluctuations in heart rate and deep sleep can be more easily portrayed. 
  • Normal
This is the default. It is suitable for most people. 
  • High ♥
This is primarily to allow people that don't experience a nocturnal dip in heart rate to be able to reflect deep sleep. People with pacemakers, heart problems and lower levels of heart fitness should choose this option. It removes the requirement of nocturnal dip from deep sleep tracking and changes the presentation of the heart rate ring.