The best Garmin watches all offer detailed sleep tracking and analysis, which includes a sleep score that condenses all the metrics tracked by the watch into a simple rating out of 100.
It’s a useful way to track how well you sleep over time and compare your ratings with others, with new data from Garmin revealing that the average sleep score for its users in 2024 was 72.
That’s a pretty impressive rating and a rise on the average from 2023, which was 70. Garmin also found that three out of four users had fair or good sleep scores.
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What does sleep score track?
Along with basic stats like the total time you spend asleep, the sleep score also considers metrics like your heart rate and heart rate variability, how restless you were, and how much time you spent in deep, light and REM sleep.
I’ve tested pretty much every Garmin watch launched in the last five years or so, and while sometimes they can be generous in interpreting periods when I’m awake as light sleep, I still find it a useful way to keep tabs on the trends in my sleep.
This is especially important for me when marathon training and trying to recover well, and the score also makes it easy to see how things can affect sleep — drinking alcohol is a surefire way to drop your sleep score, for one.
Elite athletes sleep better
The data Garmin revealed also showed that elite athletes had a higher average sleep score than normal users, averaging 74.
Garmin defined elite athletes as the top 1% of its users regarding distance running or cycling, with the people in this category consistently logging either 95 miles a week of running or 210 miles a week of cycling in the last 12 months.
It’s not surprising that people who are that active also need to sleep a lot, but it’s a useful reminder for us normal runners and cyclists that if you want to learn from the best, one thing worth taking away is how much time they spend on recovery.
Users in the U.S. sleep less well than others
Garmin also shared a breakdown of how users in different countries slept, with the U.S. having one of the lowest average sleep scores of 73, though that’s still above the overall average score of 72.
Users in Iceland and Finland posted the highest average sleep score of 77, with Venezuela just behind with an average of 76.
How to improve your sleep score
It’s not always easy to improve your sleep, but there are steps you can take to try, like exercising regularly, sticking to a consistent sleep schedule and improving your sleep environment by keeping electronics away.
If you are trying to improve your sleep, then I urge you to check out the sleep section on Tom’s Guide, which is full of expert advice on how to sleep better.