We tried a “QS Guide to Tools” a few years ago, but found that keeping up with changes and eliminating low-quality spam/promotion contributions was pretty hard. That’s just to state the challenge.
There was a good discussion in 2014 of some existing resources in this topic: “A new tool guide for the QS community.” I’ve added a comment to restart it.
That’s a great list. I wish it had battery life in it too. And two other things I really care about - data export, and sleep tracking.
Looks like the Microsoft Band is the only option with GSR and good sleep data. but it only has 48hrs of battery life.
I just want a thing that I can wear all the time, charge like once a week and it can track my steps and my sleep. Anything like skinTemp or GSR is a bonus.
Oh sorry to not mention it: all of those devices are sleep trackers. I did not include devices that were only for activity tracking as I am solely interested by sleep tracking.
And yes I didn’t explore the data export part since I have come to the belief that not much useful data is being made available.
If you are simply interested by how much you sleep I would simply recommend a smartphone based app. After 100s of nights using bed-based, wrist-based and smartphone apps concomitantly I don’t get any more valuable info with one than another. I have very little belief in the accuracy of the sleep phases determined by those devices. For example 90% of my sleepwalking is when I am sound asleep, according to those devices. And in any sleep stage possible, when it should only be during the NREM part of my sleep.
Microsoft Band looks like the replacement I will go for, but I am going to wait a few months. Hopefully something new comes out before the Xmas period at the end of the year.
As an interim solution (until next generation of devices come out, hopefully at the end of the year) I’m going with a combination of Fitbit Surge for passively-collected biometric data plus Jawbone UP3 for sleep tracking (includes GSR and Fitbit Surge doesn’t identify sleep stages). Not ideal, but both devices/companies have established APIs. Would have went Garmin but lack of an open API was a dealbreaker.