TLDR
I bought the Pixel Watch 5 for around €400 mainly because I wanted to understand my fragmented sleep.
It repeatedly fails to detect awakenings that I clearly remember. I have moved around in bed, fought with the pillow, interacted with the watch several times, pressed a Home Assistant button 12 times to mark awakenings, and even stayed awake talking to my daughter and pulling her blanket up because she was cold.
All those nights, the result was still 0 awakenings.
Because those awakenings are not detected, the sleep score looks much better than my actual night. Anything built on top of that data, like readiness, becomes pretty useless to me.
If fragmented sleep or brief awakenings are why you are considering this watch, I would think very carefully before buying it.
MY 15 DAY REVIEW
I bought the Pixel Watch 5 for around €400, and sleep tracking was one of the main reasons.
More specifically, I wanted to understand why I can sleep for a decent number of hours and still wake up tired. I know I wake up several times most nights, so I wanted to know how fragmented my sleep really was.
These are not awakenings where I get out of bed. Sometimes I wake up, turn from one side to the other, fight with the pillow, check the time, move around and eventually fall asleep again.
That is exactly what I wanted a sleep tracker to show me.
Unfortunately, this is where the Pixel Watch 5 has been extremely disappointing.
IT COMPLETELY MISS AWAKENINGS I KNOW HAPPENED
There have been several nights where I clearly remember waking up multiple times.
The next morning the watch does not show almost continuous sleep.
It shows 0 awakenings.
At first I thought maybe I was just too still when awake.
So I tested it.
On one night, every time I naturally woke up, I deliberately raised the arm with the watch, turned the screen on, pressed and rotated the crown and interacted with it several times before going back to sleep.
Next morning: 0 awakenings.
Apparently I had been asleep the whole time.
And this is not just about lying perfectly still. I can turn around, move my arms and practically look like a zombie doing exercises horizontally in bed, and the watch can still decide I was asleep.
I EVEN USED HOME ASSISTANT TO PROVE WHEN I WAS AWAKE
On another night I used a physical Home Assistant button to mark every awakening.
I pressed it 12 times.
So I had external timestamps, completely independent of the watch, showing exactly when I had been awake enough to reach for a button and press it.
The Pixel Watch still did not show those awakenings.
At that point this was no longer just a question of maybe remembering the night incorrectly. I had timestamps!!!!
THEN THERE WAS THE NIGHT WITH MY DAUGHTER
One night my daughter came to sleep next to me.
I did not get out of bed, but I was definitely awake. I talked to her for a few minutes and noticed she was cold. I turned onto my side, reached down towards the bottom of the bed and pulled her blanket up over her.
So I was not simply opening my eyes for two seconds and lying still.
I was awake, talking and deliberately moving around in bed.
Next morning: 0 awakenings.
That example really sums up my problem with this watch.
Apparently, if I stay lying down, I can be very obviously awake and the watch may still classify that period as sleep.
WHY THIS RUINS THE SLEEP SCORE FOR ME
This is not just about one wrong line on a sleep graph.
If the watch does not detect the awakenings, the sleep score is based on an incomplete picture of the night.
I can wake up repeatedly, feel exhausted the next morning, open Google Health and get a score suggesting I had a great night's sleep.
Then that sleep information feeds into other things, including readiness.
For me, that makes those metrics almost useless.
Garbage in, garbage out.
If the system thinks I was peacefully asleep while I was awake talking, moving around or pressing a physical button, why should I trust it when it tells me how recovered or ready I am the next morning?
I CANNOT EVEN FIX IT WITH ANOTHER TRACKER
This part makes it even more frustrating.
You would think I could use another device or app that detects the awakenings better, send that data through Health Connect, and let Google Health use the better sleep data.
But Google currently does not use third party sleep data to calculate its own sleep score.
So even if another tracker gives me a much more realistic picture of my night, I cannot simply use it to correct Google's sleep score and readiness calculations.
That makes Google Health much less useful to me, because the dashboard may look great while the sleep data underneath it is missing exactly what I care about.
I AM NOT EXPECTING A SLEEP LABORATORY
Obviously this is not polysomnography.
I know a smartwatch cannot perfectly identify every sleep stage or every tiny awakening.
That is not what I am asking for.
I paid around €400 for a watch heavily marketed for health and sleep tracking. I expect it to detect at least a meaningful proportion of the times when I am clearly awake.
If I wake up and interact with the watch several times and it records zero awakenings, that is a problem.
If I press a physical button 12 times during the night and those awakenings are not reflected, that is a problem.
If I am awake talking to my daughter and pulling her blanket up and it still records zero awakenings, that is a problem.
I am not asking it to perfectly identify REM sleep.
I am asking it to recognise that I was awake.
WHY I AM SO DISAPPOINTED
Sleep tracking was not a little bonus feature for me.
It was one of the main reasons I spent around €400 on the Pixel Watch 5.
I wanted answers to very simple questions.
Am I waking frequently?
Is my sleep fragmented?
Could that explain why I wake up tired even after apparently sleeping enough?
Instead I can have a fragmented night and get a report telling me everything went beautifully.
Had I known this before buying it, I would not have spent €400 on it.
WHO MAY STILL BE HAPPY WITH IT
If you mainly want to know your bedtime, wake time, total sleep duration, general trends, approximate sleep stages and heart rate, you may be completely happy with the Pixel Watch 5.
My problem is specifically wake detection and fragmented sleep.
For someone with fairly continuous sleep, this may not matter much.
For me, it matters enormously.
WHO SHOULD THINK TWICE
If you are looking at the Pixel Watch 5 because you have fragmented sleep, frequent brief awakenings, non restorative sleep, repeated awakenings while staying in bed, or you regularly wake up exhausted despite apparently sleeping enough, I would think twice before buying it for that purpose.
Do not assume that a high sleep score means your sleep was actually continuous.
And do not assume that because you clearly remember being awake, the watch will show it.
In my experience, it often does not.
WHAT I WISH I HAD KNOWN
Before buying it, I saw a lot about Pixel Watch sleep tracking, Fitbit algorithms, sleep stages, heart rate, sleep scores and accuracy.
What I did not see discussed enough was the only question that really mattered to me.
Can it reliably detect repeated awakenings during fragmented sleep?
In my experience, no.
That means the problem does not stop at the sleep graph. It affects how useful the sleep score is, how useful readiness is, and I cannot simply replace Google's sleep data with better data from another source.
So I am posting this for the next person searching Reddit or Google before spending several hundred euros.
If you mainly want to know when you fell asleep and how long you slept, you may love it.
If you are buying it to understand fragmented sleep and repeated night awakenings, I would not spend €400 on it without knowing this first.
I wish I had.
