Sleep Plus Stages™ sleep tracking

Sleep Plus Stages automatically tracks the amount and quality of your sleep and shows you how long you spent in each sleep stage. It gathers your sleep time and sleep quality components into one easily glanceable value, sleep score. Sleep score tells you how well you slept compared to the indicators of a good night’s sleep based on the current sleep science.

Comparing the components of the sleep score to your own usual level help you recognize which aspects of your daily routine may affect your sleep and may need adjusting. Nightly breakdowns of your sleep are available on your watch and in the Polar Flow app. Long-term sleep data in the Polar Flow web service helps you analyze your sleep patterns in detail.

  1. The first thing you need to do is set your preferred sleep time in the Polar Flow or on your watch. In the Flow app, tap your profile, and choose Your preferred sleep time. Choose your preferred time and tap Done. Or sign into your Flow account or create a new one at flow.polar.com, and choose Settings > Physical settings > Your preferred sleep time. Set your preferred time and choose Save. Set your preferred sleep time on your watch from Settings > Physical settings > Your preferred sleep time.

    Sleep time preference is the amount of sleep you want to get each night. By default, it is set to the average recommendation for your age group (eight hours for adults from 18 to 64 years). If you feel that eight hours of sleep is too much or too little for you, we recommend you adjust your preferred sleep time to meet your individual needs. By doing this, you’ll get accurate feedback on how much sleep you got in comparison to your preferred sleep time.

  2. Continuous heart rate tracking needs to be enabled for Sleep Plus Stages to function. To enable Continuous HR tracking go to Settings > General Settings > Continuous HR tracking and select On or Night-time only. Tighten the wristband firmly around your wrist. The sensor on the back of the watch must be in constant touch with your skin. For more detailed wearing instructions, see Wrist-based heart rate measurement.
  3. Your watch detects when you fall asleep, when you wake up and how long you spent sleeping. The Sleep Plus Stages measurement is based on recording the movements of your non-dominant hand with a built-in 3D acceleration sensor and recording your heart’s beat-to-beat interval data from your wrist with an optical heart rate sensor.
  4. In the morning you can see your sleep score (1-100) from your watch. You get sleep stages information (light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep) and a sleep score after one night, including feedback on sleep themes (amount, solidity and regeneration). After the third night, you get a comparison to your usual level.
  5. You can record your own perception of your sleep quality in the morning by rating it on your watch or in the Flow app. Your own rating is not taken into account in the sleep charge calculation, but you can record your own perception and compare it to the sleep charge assessment you get.

When you wake up you can access your sleep details via the Nightly Recharge watch face. Press OK to open the Nightly recharge status details and then scroll down to Sleep charge details with the DOWN button. Press OK to open the details.

You can also stop the sleep tracking manually. Already awake? is shown on the Nightly recharge watch face when your watch has detected a minimum of four hours of sleep. Press OK to tell the watch that you're awake. Confirm with OK and the watch summarizes your sleep instantly.

The sleep charge details view displays the following information:

  1. Sleep score status graph
  2. Sleep score (1-100) A score that summarizes your sleep time and sleep quality into a single number.
  3. Sleep charge = Sleep score compared to your usual level. Scale: much below usual – below usual – usual – above usual – much above usual.
  4. Sleep time tells you the total duration between when you fell asleep and when you woke up.
  5. Actual sleep (%) tells the time spent asleep between the time you fell asleep and when you woke up. More specifically, it is your sleep time minus the interruptions. Only the time you actually spend asleep is included in actual sleep.
  6. Continuity (1-5): Sleep continuity is a rating of how continuous your sleep time was. Sleep continuity is evaluated on a scale from one to five: fragmented – fairly fragmented – fairly continuous – continuous – very continuous.
  7. Long interruptions (min) tells the time you spent awake during the interruptions longer than one minute. During a normal night's sleep there are numerous short and long interruptions when you actually awaken from your sleep. Whether you remember these interruptions or not depends on their duration. The shorter ones we don’t usually remember. The longer ones, for instance when one might get up for a sip of water, we can remember. Interruptions are illustrated as yellow bars on your sleep timeline.
  8. Sleep cycles: A normal sleeper typically goes through 4-5 sleep cycles over the course of a night. This equals to a sleep time of approximately 8 hours.
  9. REM sleep %: REM stands for rapid eye movement. REM sleep is also called paradoxical sleep as your brain is active but your muscles are inactive to avoid acting out dreams. Just as deep sleep restores your body, REM sleep restores your mind, and enhances memory and learning.
  10. Deep sleep %: Deep sleep is the stage of sleep in which it is hard to be awakened since your body is less responsive to environmental stimuli. Most deep sleep occurs during the first half of the night. This sleep stage restores your body and supports your immune system. It also affects certain aspects of memory and learning. The stage of deep sleep is also called slow wave sleep.
  11. Light sleep %: Light sleep serves as a transition stage between wakefulness and the deeper stages of sleep. You can be easily awoken from light sleep since your responsiveness to the environmental stimuli remains quite high. Light sleep also promotes mental and physical recovery, although REM and deep sleep are the most important sleep stages in that regard.

How you sleep is always individual — instead of comparing your sleep stats to others, follow your own long-term sleeping patterns to get a full understanding of how you sleep. Sync your watch with the Flow app after waking up to see your last night’s sleep data in Polar Flow. Follow your sleep on a daily and weekly basis in the Flow app, and see how your sleeping habits and activity during the day affect your sleep.

Choose Sleep from the Flow app menu to see your sleep data. In the Sleep structure view you see how your sleep has progressed through different sleep stages (light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep) and any interruptions to your sleep. Usually sleep cycles proceed from light sleep into deep sleep and then to REM sleep. Typically, a night's sleep consists of 4 to 5 sleep cycles. This equals to approximately 8 hours of sleep. During a normal night's sleep there are numerous short and long interruptions. The long interruptions are displayed with the tall orange bars in the sleep structure graph.

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The six components of the sleep score are grouped under three themes: amount (sleep time), solidity (long interruptions, continuity and actual sleep) and regeneration (REM sleep and deep sleep). Each bar in the graph represents the score for each component. Sleep score is the average of these scores. By choosing the weekly view you can see how your sleep score and sleep quality (solidity and regeneration themes) vary during the week.

The Sleep rhythm section provides a weekly view of your sleep time and sleep stages.

To view your long-term sleep data with sleep stages in the Flow web service go to Progress, and choose the Sleep report tab.

Sleep report gives you a long-term view to your sleep patterns. You can choose to view your sleep details for a 1-month, 3-month or 6-month period. You’re able to see averages for the following sleep data: fell asleep, woke up, sleep time, REM sleep, deep sleep and interruptions to your sleep. You can view a nightly breakdown of your sleep data by hovering your mouse over the sleep graph.

Sleep report on Flow web​

Learn more about the Polar Sleep Plus Stages in this in-depth guide.