Fitbit's latest features help you get a handle on your sleep cycle

Along with adding a new activity tracker, the Alta HR, to its lineup today, Fitbit has announced some exciting new sleep tracking tools for its full range of trackers. Called Sleep Stages and Sleep Insights, the two new features are ultimately meant to make your sleep tracking more accurate, more detailed and more useful.

First up is Sleep Stages, which is meant to improve upon Fitbit's current sleep tracking by taking more factors into account. Rather than just relying on accelerometer data and machine learning algorithms, Sleep Stages also takes heart rate variability into account to help determine not only how long you slept, but how long you spent in each stage of sleep. The result is a readout that can give you a deep look at time spent in light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, and awake minutes throughout the night.

As for Sleep Insights, this new feature takes all of your Fitbit data into account to help find trends that might be affecting your sleep. Think things like diet and exercise patterns. Fitbit will then offer up suggestions on how to improve sleep based on that data. For example, Fitbit might notice that you tend to sleep better on nights after a run.

Sleep Stages will work with the new Alta HR, Blaze and Charge 2, while Sleep Insights should work with all trackers except the Zip. Both features are set to roll out in late March and will be available across all of Fitbit's apps, including Windows 10.

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Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl