3 reasons the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 is my favorite smartwatch for sleep tracking

Ever since buying the Fitbit Charge 2 in 2016, I’ve been a huge fan of smartwatches and fitness trackers. While smartwatches are great for their “smart” features and workout tracking capabilities, that’s not why I love them. I can pull out my phone to check a notification or pace myself during a long run without a wearable. The underlying health metrics that modern smartwatches measure are irreplaceable, though.

To get a complete picture of my health, I need to wear a smartwatch or fitness tracker to bed for sleep tracking — something that proved to be trickier than expected. After trying almost every category of tracker from brands like Apple, Samsung, Google, Whoop, and Garmin, I came up empty on my search for something I could comfortably wear to bed. That is, until the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 came out.

The Galaxy Watch 8’s odd redesign solved my comfort issues, and with Samsung’s growing health software in tow, the watch quickly became my favorite for sleep tracking. Here’s why.

By now, you probably know that Samsung switched to a squircle chassis for the Galaxy Watch 8 series, following in the Galaxy Watch Ultra’s footsteps. The screen itself is still circular, creating a controversial look. The squircle case takes up more space on your wrist, spreading out the internal components while making the overall profile thinner.

The result is a Galaxy Watch 8 case that’s 11% thinner than its predecessor, measuring only 8.6mm thick for both the 40mm and 44mm sizes. More importantly, Samsung moved to a new lug design with this generation. The so-called dynamic lug system eliminates backwards compatibility with older Galaxy Watch models, but the benefits are worth it. With lugs that stick straight out of the Galaxy Watch 8 horizontally, rather than at a downward angle like most watches, this one sits flatter on your wrist.

The thin, flat design and dynamic lugs are claimed to improve health sensor data by helping the sensor remain flush with your wrist, and I believe it. Paired with the official Samsung fabric band, the Galaxy Watch 8 is the most comfortable and lowest-profile watch I’ve ever used.

For comparison, the Google Pixel Watch 4 is 12.3mm thick, and the Apple Watch Series 11 is 9.7mm thick. The average OnePlus Watch, Garmin, or Amazfit will be thicker, too. It’s worth noting that none of those measurements are technically accurate, since Apple, Google, and Samsung all omit the protruding health sensors on the back from their official thickness specs. Every brand is fudging the numbers in the same way, so we can compare them.

The Galaxy Watch 8’s subtle wrist presence is the biggest reason I love wearing it to bed for sleep tracking. Subjectively speaking, I find its sensors dig into my skin less than those of any other flagship smartwatch. The thin profile means that, as a side sleeper, the Galaxy Watch 8 doesn’t cause discomfort on my wrist or against my mattress.

I’ll take the quirky squircle design if it helps the Galaxy Watch 8 be thinner and sit flatter on my wrist, so I can get through a whole night of sleep tracking without yanking it off.

Everyone will want different things from their smartwatch’s sleep-tracking metrics. I don’t want granular data I need to comb through daily. Instead, I prefer quick, glanceable data points that give me an idea of how I slept and how I’ll feel throughout the day. I want to know whether I can handle a tough workout later in the day or if I’m showing early signs of a cold — not by counting the time spent in each sleep cycle, but with a simple number.

By those criteria, the Sleep and Energy scores shown in the Samsung Health app are exactly what I need. I get a simple Sleep score out of 100 points that takes into account my actual sleep time, deep sleep time, REM sleep, restfulness, and sleep latency. Samsung’s algorithms dig through the data so that I don’t have to.

The related Energy score helps provide a more complete picture of your daily feeling. It adds your previous day’s activity, activity consistency, sleeping heart rate, and sleeping heart rate variability to the data points used by the Sleep score. I judge these scores by comparing how my Galaxy Watch 8 thinks I should feel to how I actually feel. More often than not, it’s spot on.

As a bonus, it’s great that Samsung Health does have the in-depth metrics ready to review when you need them — they just aren’t the focus. Samsung does a better job at explaining these metrics than any other smartwatch or fitness tracker brand. There are full-paragraph explanations for even the smallest data points or charts. The app clearly tries to educate users about the scientific reasoning behind each feature, and the experience feels thoughtful.

There are fun things about sleep tracking on the Galaxy Watch 8 that set it apart, like Samsung’s “sleep animals.” After about a week of sleep tracking, Samsung assigns you an animal based on your sleep habits. I’m a penguin, which means I get enough sleep but wake up too often during the night. Like with the Sleep and Energy scores, it’s all about communicating complex metrics in simple ways.

The Galaxy Watch 8 is quite comfortable, but sometimes I don’t want anything on my wrist. After a long day of workouts or regular wear, my wrist occasionally needs a break. That’s why the Samsung Galaxy Ring integration with the Galaxy Watch 8 is crucial for sleep tracking. It gives wearers a secondary option to keep their Sleep and Energy scores accurate when they don’t want to keep the Galaxy Watch 8 on at night.

It might sound like a stretch to suggest that a $400 accessory be used as a companion accessory for the Galaxy Watch 8, but that’s how it performs best. The wearable industry as a whole is trending toward secondary sleep trackers, too. Garmin and Amazfit both sell sleep tracking bands that are more comfortable than their regular smartwatches. However, they both go on the wrist, whereas the Galaxy Ring lets users give their wrists a break when needed.

For those willing to pay a premium for a smartwatch and smart ring combo, Samsung’s experience in sleep tracking is second to none. Many of its competitors in this space either sell a sleep tracker or a smart ring, but not both.

The best sleep tracker for me might not be the best one for you. My needs are fairly simple — a smartwatch needs to be comfortable enough to stay on my wrist the entire night with great software and easily-digestible data. Surprisingly, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 is the first to consistently meet that bar. Throw in Gemini’s ability to make setting alarms a breeze, and the Galaxy Watch 8 has become a staple in my nighttime routine.