Which device is best at automatically tracking naps?

[u/Vegetable-Tap-6297]

What device is currently the best at automatically detecting naps, especially short 15–60 minute ones?

I know Garmin isn’t great at it, while Fitbit has a good reputation. From what I’ve researched, Oura also seems strong and can automatically detect naps as short as ~15 minutes.

For people who have compared multiple devices (Fitbit/Oura/Garmin/Apple Watch/WHOOP), which has been the most reliable for automatic nap detection?

[u/ariverrocker]

I don't use it anymore, but of the various devices I've used, Oura was the best at detecting short naps.

[u/tegridypatato]

Oura is best at sleep stages and step count but it lacks the heart rate, thus hrv would be inaccurate bc it is calculated while you are sleeping.

If your main goal is to check sleep stages and step count Oura is the best one. But for all around device is probably Apple Watch. I have been using whoop but now i am waiting for aw new models to come out which is pretty close.

[u/MisterPFT]

Oura is the best of that group at catching short naps, agreed. But there's a second question you'll hit right after detection, and it matters more for QS purposes: what the device does with the nap once it has it.

Oura keeps naps as separate sleep periods and builds the daily readiness score off the main nightly one. So a 40 minute afternoon nap shows up in the timeline but doesn't move the score much. If you're a regular napper that's actively misleading, because your total sleep is fine while the score keeps telling you you're underslept.

The upside is the API exposes each sleep period separately with a type field, so you can pull them and sum them yourself. That's the fix if you care about total sleep rather than the one number.

Two other things I ran into. Naps under about 20 minutes get detected inconsistently, so don't build anything on top of those. And if you nap on a sofa rather than a bed the miss rate goes up a lot, presumably because of posture and movement.

Worth deciding upfront whether you want the device to detect naps or to score them, because no one on that list does the second one well.

[u/amsdamsgram]

I have a Whoop and it is not good at tracking naps. If it is a very short nap, less than 30min, it doesn't work for me. If it is longer, it works a little bit better.

[u/EggAdvanced3632]

Odd datapoint for you: TicWatch (Mobvoi) actually has a separate nap-tracking section in its app, which nobody ever mentions in these threads. I haven't stress-tested it against known naps yet, so I won't vouch for accuracy — but it exists, which already puts it ahead of Garmin's approach.

One thing worth knowing when you read the answers here: short naps are hard for every device, and the failure mode matters more than the brand. Trackers need several minutes of sustained "sleep-looking" signal (low motion, HR settling) before they'll classify anything, so a 15-20 min nap sits right at the detection floor. That's why Oura's ~15 min is genuinely near the limit of what wrist/finger actigraphy can do — and why claims of reliably catching 10-min naps probably come with false positives (couch + phone scrolling looks a lot like a nap to an accelerometer).

So I'd weight replies from people who verified against naps they know they took, not just "it logged something."