(Disclaimer: The model I’ve been using is a Spartan Sport WHR Baro, provided to me by the company in my role as (unpaid) beta tester for them.)

Sleep is important, even if the 5 a.m. club or similar initiatives would have you wake up early no matter what your sleep type, others would have you work through the quiet of the night so that you hustle…

But how much do you sleep?

Wearables as well as a host of dedicated bedside tracking tools have jumped into this field. With update 1.11 (released October 2017), the Suunto Spartan Collection has joined in that fray.

Sleep tracking on a Suunto Spartan with WHR (wrist heart rate) counts

• from which time to which time you have (probably) slept,
• how long that was (and how long that was compared to your target),
• how much time you seem to have spent awake and in deep sleep (going by movement or lack thereof)
• what your average heart rate during the sleep was (provided you have turned on the “Daily HR” in Settings -> Activity).

Watch here to learn all about it, or read on below the video:

Video Manual

Activate Sleep Tracking

In “Settings” -> “Sleep” or using the shortcut of long-pressing the middle button while on the sleep tracking screen, you can turn on (or off) sleep tracking. That also immediately asks you to input the usual times when you go to bed and when you wake up, to help the watch recognize that.

Good Morning / Sleep Summary Screen

When you wake up and push a button – or even better, when you exit DND mode (more on that below) – all preferably close to the usual time you have said you get up, the watch greets you with a “Good morning! Looks like you were sleeping” and, next up, the sleep summary screen.

This gives you

• Time you were asleep (and difference to your sleep target time)
• Average heart rate in sleep
• Time when you fell asleep and woke up (as per the watch)
• Time awake and
• Time in deep sleep, and the
• 7-day average (time and graph)

You can also get to this screen from the “Sleep” menu or the menu shortcuts in the sleep tracking screen.

Sleep Tracking Screen

The Sleep screen among all the tracking screens (reached by swiping down from time display) shows

• the length of the last night’s sleep on the first display,
• one swipe left, the last 7 days’ average sleep duration (in hours and minutes and, for each of those days, by a bar on a graph),
• and one more swipe left, the average HR during the last 7 nights’ sleep, together with another graphical overview of the average values for each of those nights (in bars and values).

The Role of DND (Do Not Disturb)

Automatic or manually-activated “Do Not Disturb”-mode is rather important in its interaction with sleep tracking.

The mode is made/meant to provide quiet times during which no notifications will be displayed on the watch, but it also prevents it from entering standby mode. In that, activated when the watch detects no movement, not only the display is switched off.

On WHR models, the optical heart rate sensor is also turned off in standby.

The result is that standby, even if it happens while the watch is worn (but not moved, for example in deep sleep), would result in gaps in the heart rate measurement.

With DND active, this is prevented and the watch keeps on recording HR even when you are not moving because you are sleeping fast and sound.

DND can be activated and deactivated either manually or automatically.
It is the first item in the shortcuts menu reached by holding the middle button while in time display. To exit, just push any button and the “Exit” text appears at the top of the watch; push the top button to actually exit DND mode.
Or, you go into the “Settings” menu, to “Sleep”, and set “Auto Do Not Disturb” times when the watch should automatically switch to DND mode.

Sleep well 😉