Sorry Apple Watch and watchOS 9 I prefer to sleep alone TechRadar Skip to main content TechRadar is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's why you can trust us. Sorry Apple Watch and watchOS 9 I prefer to sleep alone By Lance Ulanoff published 9 June 2022 Isn't our sleep sacrosanct? (Image credit: Shutterstock) Audio player loading… When someone's had a good night's sleep, they say, "I slept like a baby." No one says, "I slept like a middle-aged man." Sleep is a precious commodity that, in the stock market of life, steers into a bear market once you hit middle age. I haven't slept through the night in a decade. No mattress or pillow satisfactorily cushions my body and I've enough middle-of-the-night, half-looking trots to the bathroom to qualify as a midnight marathon runner. Enter technology to solve - nay - track my woes. Most wearable technology now offers sleep tracking as if all of humanity cried out at once for a binary entity to stand watch over their dreams. I've worn a few of them. Most recently, I spent the night with both the Withings Scanwatch Horizon and an Apple Watch 7 (one on each wrist) to compare their sleep-tracking skills. At the time, the Scanwatch Horizon was a more adept tracker. Apple's watchOS 9, which it unveiled this week at WWDC 2022, is set to change that equation. The updated wearable OS, which is in developer beta now and will ship this fall, adds "sleep stages." This means the watch will know when I'm in REM (Rapid Eye Movement, associated with dreams), Core (also known as "slow-wave sleep," and an essential part of sleep), or Deep Sleep (actually a part of Core Sleep). It'll do all this using just the watch's accelerometer and heart rate sensor. Apple updating sleep app with Sleep stage data #WWDC22 pic.twitter.com/ubKD72muJHJune 6, 2022See more A good sleep should feature all of these stages. My sleep features REM and not nearly enough Core, at least that is what I'm certain watchOS 9 would show me in its new, detailed charts. I'm not arguing with the obvious benefit of a sleep tracker, which can give form to the patterns and problems of your sleep. On the other hand, I don't need a smartwatch to tell me I wake up every 25 minutes or so. During that aforementioned test, my sleep was worse than usual because I was wearing two bulky watches on my wrists. At least the Apple Watch is slimmer, lighter, and smoother. Sleeping with the Withings Scanwatch Horizon was insane. I would roll over on my hand and the watch's rotatable bezel would cut into my ribs. Just because the Apple Watch is more comfortable doesn't mean it feels like a natural part of my sleep. Without painting too much of a picture, I like to be relatively unencumbered in bed. I wear PJ bottoms and nothing else. Lying in bed with a watch on, I often feel like The Princess and the Pea. It's a small gadget with a big impact on my comfort. Leaving aside comfort, I struggle to understand how having all those details about my sleep troubles is going to improve the situation. I think it'll simply put an exclamation point on it. "So, you thought you were sleeping terribly? Let me show you the monstrosity it truly is! How are you even surviving?!" Sleep, like eating, is a fundamentally human thing - it's a living thing. It's also when we are most vulnerable. Why must we introduce technology to it? I prefer the purity of a technology-free sleep (I say as I reach for the alarm on my iPhone, which I position right next to my bed). When watchOS 9 arrives as a public beta next month, I'll probably try the sleep tracking - for work purposes - but as soon as that's done, I'll take the watch off before bed, and enjoy another fitful night. I already know all I need to know about my abysmal sleep habits, with or without an Apple Watch and watchOS 9. Speaking of the Apple watch, does anyone know why it took so long for Apple to add heart rate training? Lance UlanoffUS Editor in ChiefA 35-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases and "on line" meant "waiting." He's a former Lifewire Editor-in-Chief, Mashable Editor-in-Chief, and, before that, Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff Davis, Inc. He also wrote a popular, weekly tech column for Medium called The Upgrade. Lance Ulanoff (opens in new tab) makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Live with Kelly and Ryan, Fox News, Fox Business, the Today Show (opens in new tab), Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, and the BBC. See more Wearables news TechRadar Newsletter Sign up to get breaking news, reviews, opinion, analysis and more, plus the hottest tech deals! Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. MOST POPULARMOST SHARED1The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me2Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie3Google Pixel Tablet is what Apple should've done ages ago4RTX 4090 too expensive? 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