GPS & Heart Rate Accuracy, Best Wearables, & Data w/ @TheQuantifiedScientist 80/20 EP4

0:00 on today's episode of the 8020 podcast we have Rob who is known as the Quantified scientist on YouTube he has a ton of videos measuring wearables Health trackers and giving us insights into which one is the most accurate So today we're going to talk about all the things of like why he does what he does The Trackers that he loves the most and what he's learned through all the testing Rob it's good to have you thanks for having me in your beautiful Studio thanks for having me we're in literally in his if you're watching the audio or listening to the audio we're in your studio space l says tqs for the Quantified scientist right here we' got Qs or is that Quantified Self well quantifi scientist quantifi a bit of both yeah we got the whole studio behind

0:45 the camera as well so it's really cool to just see where the videos are made so I'm honored thank you for having me over thank you for hosting me as well so really appreciate that um I think I know we talked a lot about we we've talked a lot the past few days and and one thing I wanted to ask you is kind of how you got started in the Quantified Self movement like what was the first piece that got you into it yeah so I'm a scientist just this background and I think the first step I took in the whole thing was originally just to communicate science to people because I wanted to measure something that was easily understandable and so that people could actually know what I do for a living which is data science so analyzing data so my first ever Venture into wearables was buying a fibit charge two at the time and correlating my heart rate with

1:33 what music I was listening to and then I saw that my heart rate was higher during IR Iron Maiden then during Bob Dylan for instance mostly just because I was doing like laundry and cleaning with Iron Maiden but that I could present also to to people to actually explain what you can do with data instead of just explaining my normal science which is uh yeah bit more complicated also from from the biology side and that's somehow snowballed into thinking oh I I learned some things about myself with this charge 2 at the time I thought this you you can actually measure a lot more I started talking with some of my friends who are scientists and it really grow into a big ns1 Quantified Self project where I've been getting weekly brain MRIs now for yeah over 200 weeks um

2:18 daily sleep EGS I also got love these like complicated sleep measurements of polography I measure my microbiome I've done 250 of those so the bacteria in my gut and a lot more and and it sort of became a scientific hobby project where we're now trying to create one of the biggest data sets out there for for a single individual to see what we can learn from the connection between the brain sleep and the gut so sort of like um the blueprint project blueprint project measurements um but in a bit of a different direction yeah so who's the most measured man in the world is it you or Brian Johnson yeah that's a good question I guess in terms of Pure Health maybe him in terms of MRIs I I beat him for sure yeah I think I beat everybody in the world in terms of real MRI scans like I I don't

3:05 think there's anybody with these number of MRI that could be a video title I've gotten the most MRIs ever I've been thinking Le to write to the Guinness World Book record to see if I can get it yeah I I have the email compiled already so I just need to press send it's sitting in your draft right there that's funny how did you get into science in the first place like what I know a lot of your work like you have a PhD a lot of your work right now is like under a university like how did you get into that Science World I think it's somehow naturally grew by the fact that I was always very quantitative in the things I did well as in in school all the Sciences were my best subjects I found that most interesting and I didn't like learning things by heart I felt it was always kind of silly but understanding

3:52 things and then using them was sort of natural to me so the so I actually studied chemistry originally um and this was more doing and understanding than purely learning by heart and somehow I grew then into more data science because I I think the lab is interesting but is takes a lot of time without results whereas I think in on the computer I can quickly get results quickly have things done have nice figures done explain things to people and that's also why I like YouTube because you quickly get a result you communicate it to people and it gives them something they can hopefully learn from yeah that's awesome and and what do you so you have a day job like you make YouTube videos but that's not your main thing you have a day job what's that what's what's your day job

4:38 yeah so in in normal life I do what's called a post do it basically means after you get your PhD which is also called a doctorate you do a post after doctor of dock uh and there I study the connection between the immune system so your white blood cells and different characteristics of the human body often having to do with their genetics um the way their genes are Reg at the things their genes produce and seeing why do certain people have a very poorly functioning immune system so you might have a group of people with a certain disease and we try to figure out what is different about their cells that they cannot fight the disease or maybe people are have a very strong immune system there's people who are infected with the HIV virus or the virus that can cause AIDS why is like 0.5% of the population

5:23 basically protected from Ever Getting AIDS even though they're infected um and these are the kind of questions we try to answer using big data so I have very very smart colleagues in the lab who collect all the data I get the data and I have to answer the questions and your focus is data science data science on that and like knowing that now knowing your background in science how do you use that in your YouTube channel and In the comparison of like wearables and health yeah so I think on the one hand I have some connections to people who can give me gold standard or silver standard reference devices so for sleep I work together with some sleep Labs so they can give me some devices that can somewhat reliably measure your sleep stages so I have reference data um or I use a chest STP which is just

6:09 commercially available for heart rate and then I can actually write code to analyze that in a systematic way and think about it at least in a in a somewhat structured way that I that it makes it a fair comparison to other devices and I mean any video I make has a lot of um weak points as well because it's mostly focused on me with a limited set of data but I think sort of the cost like time spent versus reward is sort of a balance I try to to make because if I just reviewed one device the whole year I would have a really good data set but then it would just be one device I test so I have a limited amount of time to spend but I think I still use the systematic same method for basically every watch that makes it a fair comparison and and what's your decision- making on how to test each product like what are the kind of limitations that you create for yourself so I basically

6:57 need to do the same type of workouts and the same type of environment for all watches as far as I can control it so I'll do the same interval workout on my home trainer most days of the week and it will be more or less comparable between days um so that's the same same test I do for every watch I do a certain amount of outdoor cycling sessions a certain amount of weightlifting sessions and I try to keep the protocol so to say more or less the same but still also using the workout as sort of a personal getting getting more fit tool um but I try to standardize things things and and make it yeah as Fair as possible so that what I communicate is is similar between devices yeah and I want to get more into the gold and silver standard stuff but in a little bit but first I want to ask about the N of one yeah I know you're

7:44 you started incorporating your friends now too yeah um how much can we trust an experiment that is an end of one like how much value can that provide like what what are the things that we should be like weary of and what are the things that we're like yeah that that you know that information is extremely valuable yeah it's there's definitely limitation there I still think um a lot of the tests on YouTube in general are males that are doing it like this is 95% of Health reviewers are males I think I don't know I'm guesstimating here but this must be it so I think even if you watch multiple channels you will still be mostly looking at male Centric data so the question is does it translate to to females that's the first sort of General thing just looking at my data I think the general large Trends as in which devices are doing really well

8:31 which are doing really poorly and which are in the middle will be more or less the same for most people wor itct to follow the same protocols that I do there will be some variations um I expect and I also see that in in testing it on some of my friends um but then it it does depend on me doing this exact type of protocol so I tend to have really a break if I do an interval I totally stop working out for for like a minute whereas somebody else might keep moving and that might have some influence because the heart rate doesn't doesn't drop as drastically all of a sudden which is much harder for a device often to to get that really big dip and big uh peak in heart rate so um I think the main thing is you will get some impression but watch some other reviewers as well get a general impression of which perform poorly and

9:16 which perform well and but I think you will mostly get similar Impressions between people heart rate is the the easiest I think think to get multiple sources sleep tracking is a harder one I think I'm one of the few people that systematically reviews this um just because there is less of a gold standard there um but there I recently went through the whole literature um like scientific literature and tried to look at all studies that studied the quality of different brands in terms of sleep stage tracking and this more or less aligned with my finding so I felt a bit more comfortable and knowing that the the results match up and the benefit of my testing compared to literature is that I just tested so many more devices and most literature is relatively outdated so you're always talking about one or two generations ago before the

10:03 whole scientific process is done there's already a new device out yeah and it's not just software or not just Hardware but it's also software tooly like Ora is a great example of this where even if they released Generation 3 of the ring so the the latest one they were still using the old sleep stage tracking algorithm which wasn't amazing um and then just with a firmware upgrade they they really really made it a lot better and the new software upgrade is amazing now would you say it's it's it's one of the best ones I think together it's almost at least on me it's close to Apple if I look at literature Ora and apple are are more similar I say but there are also not that many studies out on Apple watches um the main study that is out on on healthy sleepers is Apple

10:50 watches now and apple is sorry is Apple's own study so apple is the so the only study that is done on the latest gthm on healthy sleepers was produced by Apple like with apple watches um and the only other recent Apple study was on non-healthy sleepers like people with sleep problems and this is where I think on sleep is the major limitation where the moment you have major sleep issues all sleep trackers like reduce so significantly in their performance and this is something I cannot test and this I realized when I really put all the literature together I had a few studies that had poor sleepers and all the same Brands just shifted downwards in their performance and when you say shifted down in terms of performance you mean in terms of like the sleep stages were it more inaccurate more inaccurate um what

11:36 about like heart rate at night like heart rate should still be fine I think this is generally good um but I have a colleague for instance who has some problems with this like his heart rhythm isn't completely normal and the aura ring just doesn't measure his heart rate it just cannot because his he does an atypical Rhythm and you just cannot deal with that so as long as you're you don't have any heart issues it should be quite easy if you if you have a watch or a ring um to measure and most at rest J leag will be fine so I this this is another question I asked someone but I see a lot of these ads where it's like an inst uh it's an aura ring before and after like my deep sleep increased after I took the supplement one question is like what if I made decisions on the AA ring algorithm uh last year and I

12:24 optimized my deep sleep and then now they Chang the algorithm and all of a sudden my deep sleep is drastically different like how do I do I just like what happens there I feel like I just lost trust in the whole algorithm what if they change it again in a year from now and I'm changing my I'm making decisions based on this software yeah that's I think tricky in general this is also I think a marketing thing almost because they are getting more accurate so it should be a good thing but you might feel like you lose something in a way like if your deep sleep decreases with the new algorithm it might feel bad but it's good and the hope is that at at least the deep sleep that they had before was at least somewhat representative of the amount or if you have many nights and the algorithm is decent then if you have many Knights to compare like with and without whatever

13:11 intervention you did then hopefully it should at least be somewhat representative of the amount of deep sleep even if the new algorithm changes it I expect if you do the experiment again it would give you more or less the same result provided the algorthm was already at a decent decent level and where that minimum is I don't know um I mean there's there's so much Unknown about these kind of things still I think only now scientists are starting to embrace also using variables in their research um for so long the only thing they would do is phsg so polography with all these electrodes um then it be it sort of be seem to have become acceptable to also use like smaller EG devices where you only have a few electrodes which you can put on rather quickly um but you cannot do this on thousands of people whereas you can give thousands of people a

13:56 wearable and now the algorithms are becoming better so I'm seeing more and more people adapt it again I mostly work with sleep scientists this is not my field but I've been coming becoming acquainted with it do you there's any value to tracking sleep stages like what's the win there in on individual maybe on a mass scale so for scientists it's a different thing like if you have a scientific question it's just interesting because you want to correlate certain things on an individual level I think I mean the number one reason I do sleep stages for myself is just because I think it's cool to know and see what trends there are and see what things affect things but as long as you have a relatively healthy sleep pattern um I would mostly look at just that number of Awakenings um time spent awake how long does it take you to

14:43 fall asleep does that cannot be too long but Matthew Walker a recent podcast also really emphasized it shouldn't be too short because it could be an indication of a sleep de um for me it's I just find it cool so this is one factor I think in terms of health it's really difficult to optimize all these things and to put too much trust in a single night I would also just look I if something is totally off one night that's just can be a sign that something is wrong but small deviations I don't focus on too much but I do focus more on time spent awake and number of Awakenings and these kind of things those are my first things to look at um and and I think the very first step is just checking how much time am I giving myself to be in bed but that can be relatively done well done by most

15:30 devices and then the stages I just think are interesting sometimes you you do see oh my Ram sleep is really poor now and then I try to figure out for myself is that because somehow the second half of my night was just poor Sleep Quality for some reason because you tend to have more R sleep in the in the later parts of your night or was something else going on um but yeah I I mostly look for deviations and the first thing is Wake moments and otherwise what are other things that are off from my normal good sleep mhm so if like I guess the most important most important quote unquote variables are like awake duration or awake moments and maybe sleep duration and then time to fall asleep are there wearables or health trackers that are not able to get that data or are really bad they people should watch out for or

16:16 are most of the ones in the market today like good enough where if you buy anything you're going to get good data for those kind of like most important variables in a way I think there's a few so there's a few really good ones that also do stages well they do everything well um but most brands are good enough to track at least your total time spent in bed awake moments varies a bit but these are also I also don't know what they Define as awake moments right it's I don't know if they follow some kind of general standard from the Sleep Society basically or if they think of their own metrics what they're what they're basically their users want to see um but I would avoid most cheap Chinese Brands because these are just bad generally I think to get decent sleep stage tracking

17:03 you need a big data set to train your model and they just didn't invest the money I think they just didn't prioritize it so if you have a xiaomi um device and even Huawei though they are generally better in quality they still don't have good sleep tracking at least on me and also not what I found from others MH okay and I know the sleep tracking is compared to the gold standard or silver standard what what are some examples of gold and silver standards in the Sleep space yeah so I don't know if silver standard is an official term I use it but so gold standard is polography um this is you have all these electrodes on your head with a multitude of channels so they measure EOG so the movement of your eyes EMG so movement of some of the muscles for instance in your face and they

17:49 measure your brain waves that's EEG so all of these are like electrical signals which is what the E stands for um and then often you also measure oxygen saturation heart rate things like this and classically then somebody would manually go through the whole night look at each 30 seconds of your sleep and and judge if this is yeah N1 N2 N3 N4 if you depending on what what so that's so there's specific standards and we in simple terms translate this to light sleep deep sleep R sleep and awake there's different stages um that's used in science that are a bit more complicated but for instance M1 is a really rare stage that's only in the beginning of your night that basically might not be the most important and it

18:36 just turned N1 light sleep and N2 light sleep uh together makes up light sleep and some people I think split N3 and N4 into kinds of deep sleep I think nowadays most people just call it N3 for deep sleep and this n is non-r and then you have REM which is R interesting and um why is polography PSG the quote unquote quote standard today I think because we so originally how sleep stages were defined was with this kind of EEG type measurements and then this developed into a more elaborate thing and this is just the way we've defined things and which has which gives you a really high level of detail in terms of signal so you can score it rather well but still if I give three

19:23 scientists the exact same data and they've been trained to score it they will also only agree well let's say we just stick to light sleep deep sleep Ram sleep and awake they will agree maybe 90% And this is like giving them the same actual recording so there's also just a lot of yeah calls you have to make um I'm not a trained scorer but I've scored some things um just for myself or I've tried it when somebody else did it and sometimes it's really difficult to judge because you're judging each 30 seconds of sleep and you know the previous 30 seconds was R sleep and you see like a little bit of a specific eye movement and you're like I know that a little bit later there will be Ram sleep began do I then also score this as like you have to make these decisions and there are rules but they're not always easy to implement if you have so many channels to to

20:08 interesting H so even researchers are 90% close to themselves to themselves well then what's the next best thing so researchers what's the next best algorithm I guess so now there so now it's I think recently the first algorithm was accepted as an official accepted scoring algorithm by by the American sleep Society or some big overarching body so now it's becoming more more automated where we have just AI doing it for us which will be more robust um and what they often do when do when people score it it is they have three people score it and then they base it on the three scoring so you can either take the majority vote or or something where then you get at least a little bit more reliable but also it

20:54 might be more of a Continuum than we think right like maybe it's not as discret as you go directly from light sleep to deep sleep but there might be something in between which is like for a little bit not as clear but yeah that's yeah that's the bit the question I'm not the like Matthew Walker would be better to discuss this with you that's cool um I guess another question around that would also be a lot of these products say we're independently validated or we're validated by this research like and I think a lot of people see that and like oh it must be good then what are people not seeing in those kinds of statements sometimes I mean it's always tricky because usually that means they did fund the research and in principle anything that is published should be peer reviewed which means that other

21:40 scientists looked at it and said what they say is more is judged to be we cannot judge it not to be true we think the the the method was solid um and what they produced is is fine or is good but you don't really know what happened before then or how if there was any data excluded from for whatever reason like people even if things are not sponsored researchers sometimes bias themselves or bias the data without consciously realizing it but they're like they have a certain hypothesis they're testing it and they see for instance oh this experiment doesn't work so well but these two did yeah and I think that day I was actually a bit sick so I did May might have done so I'm going to exclude that one and they you can come up in your mind with valid reasons to do it and I can imagine if you're sponsored by

22:26 Aura and they're pressuring you and they're like yeah we need the results and we think we're really good I'm not saying this happens but I could it could happen right like if there's money on the line and they're paying for it maybe they want certain results I don't know um I in principle you would hope it would still be fully independent but if there's that conflict of intereststatement paid for by AA there is a slight like there is something in my mind which makes maybe a little bit more skeptical but I still hope they just did the job correctly but they might have set up the experiment maybe in a way that's a bit more favorable to Aura where they know they will perform well so they took I don't know if this is true but I can I'm taking Aura as an example here but it can be any company so company X would think oh we know we actually perform best in white meals so we're only going to include white meals

23:12 in this study or or whatever yeah interesting I guess going off that a little bit in terms of like getting paid I know one way as a creator that we get paid is like affiliate links right and we make commission based on you know each click and you know AA whoop whatever Apple watch madebe from Amazon um you get paid so as a scientist do you I know you like what's your opinion on affiliate links and how do you use them in your videos and how does that impact your kind of like none research that you're publishing on YouTube that's a good question so I mean I made some rules for myself which are kind of random in a way but I put any Amazon link there just because you make not so much on it and even if a product is bad I can just put the Amazon link there there's no effort even if I

23:59 say a product sucks if you still want to buy it that's fine um and I entered three affiliate programs over time but only after the product improved enough that I would use it and recommend it but that does give me a hypothetically Financial incentive so I think I'm still being unbiased but who knows if subconsciously I'm not so for me the rule is I need to use the product myself or one would would use it if I had the space on my arm so um so I use Aura I have an aura whoop and a sleep affiliate link and they all did well in my testing um but I only entered their programs after a new generation did better so for uh eight sleep they at some point improved their sleep stage tracking from

24:44 their normal I think in the PO two it was still an older version then in the po three at some point they upgraded to this I don't know it's called Hercules when you export a data I don't know the official name and that's when I joined their affiliate but I already had the device for a year and a half and but I didn't like it enough at the time with that old algorithm and the way it was performing on me to to recommend it enough to become an affiliate uh with aura this is one of my first videos I really didn't like the oring to in terms of sleep stage tracking so for the longest time I made relatively negative videos and I didn't want to be an affiliate then when they upgraded I I became part of it um but I still recommend people not to use my link but to just get the discount link from a friend because you don't get a discount with any link from oras far at least they don't give me one um and whoop I

25:33 joined at some point after the 3 this was one of the first ones I joined because it did well overall on me and this was one that I would actually recommend to some of my friends um but it's a tricky business right like in principle I would love to not have to do it but there's I need to somehow Finance all this stuff and this is a way of doing it and but my rules I will never be sponsored by any they can never get to see any video before I publish it um I can never be sponsored by them in any way and they they will get a negative review if their product sucks um but yeah I don't know how you feel about it uh I think uh your philosophy is is very interesting I I believe in just putting the links there if if even if I don't like the product for some reason people

26:19 still click it yeah um and I think I just try not to look at the numbers because if I know if I'm making X I guess it doesn't change how how I talk about the product but it does change if I make more or less content about the product yeah like i' like for example I made some beginner guides about Aura and whoop and like that was the intention there was like all right I just want to be you know have more Authority around these products um but and it provides value but and it was also driven by the fact that I was like okay if I make these videos maybe I can make more money yeah um but I wasn't trying to tie an opinion to it and I still try to stay true and honest to like what I would tell my friends all the videos yeah try I do exactly it's so hard like I felt so the first time I remember when I had the

27:05 whoop affiliate links and a few people bought it I felt so weird about it that I just didn't make whoop contact for a half content for a half year or so just because it seemed weird I don't know but maybe I'm just coming from a background of not earning any money from anything outside of my normal work so I just I needed to get used to it but I think it's a decent way it's a fine way to do it as long as it's not sponsored ly and you're not you're not having to show them before yeah I think I think you're providing a lot of value to the viewers right and like you need to be compensated somehow but no one's paying you directly so it's like how do you and this is just another Avenue to like cover the cost of all your camera equipment you know buying products for testing and everything in a way it's also good to be part of everything then

27:50 you never so if every product would pay the same percentage commission and you could just join everything so that's my my Amazon phos ophy like I have to put zero effort into this the compan is not directly involved and I just put the link there that would be the ideal world where you still get a decent commission but the company is somehow disconnected from it what if you just didn't know how much commission you got and someone else did it for you yeah that would be great like if I just didn't you like hired an affiliate manager and they would just put the links in the description for you you didn't know how much money was coming from Brand if I didn't even know which brand had affiliate program this would be the best for me like I don't I just want to have enough money to finance all this stuff and then I would be happy that's yeah there should be a platform that just does all that yeah makes all the tracker links that' be

28:35 cool um okay we talked a lot about sleep I want to talk about heart rate yeah heart rate accuracy that's another testing that you do whether it's chest heart rate straps wrists maybe the first question would be like how do the different heart rate monitors work yeah so I got a high level at a high level so I would say there's two main types you have the chest straps which use each CG similar to the EEG for your head it also listens to electrical signals but not electrical signals of your heart and these are really nicely welldefined signals so you see this in TV series all the time right on the screen this nice Peak and dip and you have these really clearcut heart rate signals and they're really nice and sharp and they just listen to the electrical frequencies of your heart in in a really simple terms

29:21 um and then you have all these other trackers that go on the on the finger on the wrist on the um upper arm is that an English word yeah um and these all use ppgs so poly ple sonography I I was butcher that but PPG um basically the shine light on your skin and then measure the reflector light and depending on the phase of your heartbeat basically that reflectance will be different so then they can also get a signal of your of your heart rate but this is more like a wave like a a sign type wave which is not as nicely defined so defining that Peak is also a bit more noisy so finding the exact peak of that heart rate um but of course it's much more convenient like it wearing a chest

30:07 strap all day wouldn't be very comfortable but wearing a watch all day or a ring is fine for most people uh so I think it's sort of a trade-off just be because generally a chest STP is just more reliable there's some exceptions rain DC rain maker would know even more about it but in my experience I found no scenario for me that it would not perform well um so this is also gener this is also my reference I just know it works well they've actually gone they've done some some studies where they actually looked at the raw signals and they went through them and they checked how often was it noisy enough that the algorithm couldn't find the peak so they just had an algorithm that that normally measures your heart rate pick each peak of the heart rate and they would manually go through it and see oh here

30:54 it was noisy but there should have been one or and they it was like 99 whatever 9% accurate like the crazy high number and you will generally not get that with the more noisy signal here because uh because it's a light signal that you're measuring also movement there can be like light leakage coming in from the outside and movement will affect it so it's just not as clean MH so chest strap is electricity it's very accurate wrist is light and it could it's a little more complicated there's good devices you have one good device the I mean again based on testing on me but the Apple watch is really great and battery life of the Apple watch maybe not so great um but performance of the hard rate monitor

31:39 is very good also when I tested it on on Teresa so my partner or some friends so far the Apple watch just just does best and Garmin I mean maybe I'm the exception but on me it's like mediocre uh in performance it also depends I tend to be when I cycle that's where it struggles most and I tend to be quite tight with my with How firm I hold the handlebars and this also makes it harder there's a lot of movement yeah considering the RIS is a little more complex what are the scenarios that work well and scenarios that don't work well so the more stable uh and the less tension on the wrist the easier it is so if you're doing indoor cycling like I have my bike behind the camera here uh this works fine most devices do rather well here though again

32:25 really quick changes in heart rate there they s uh and with running they they actually it's not so much movement or tension but it's also the frequency of your running that can have an impact so this is called Cadence lock you probably maybe maybe you know about it maybe not but basically if you run that frequency of running comes close to most people's heart rate so then that movement also creates a signal and then it has two competing signals that it has to figure out which is heart rate and which is Cadence and often that Cadence is even a stronger signal and then it often locks onto your running frequency as your heart rate instead of your heart rate interesting I didn't know that yeah ohuh cuz like I know like my running cadence is maybe 160 to 170 steps per minute and what's your heart rate I guess what I

33:12 don't know if I hit a heart rate that high but sometimes it'll be at 160 but but but it's both like normal range and then it both gets like a periodic signal and then it needs to figure out okay which is heart rate and which is Cadence and I don't know how they do it internally I can imagine if you have just a gyroscope in there you should be able to com like this is easy I think computationally like with an algorithm you should be able to solve this um but some companies are not able to do it so well Garin is actually rather good at solving that part I don't get C it's called Cadence lock so you lock onto your Cadence instead of your um instead of your heart rate and for Garin I haven't experienced it as much but for some devices it happens a lot more for some a lot less what about like apple and choros apple is doing quite well

33:58 also choros is not actually that bad um they also I mean they're also really coros is also generally targeted toward these kinds of sports so I think the pce 3 did decent on me but I'm I haven't tested as many Coral devices yet so hopefully the verdict 2 as soon well was it 3s verx 2x 2s 2ss yeah yeah course we got to send you more send you more watches huh um yeah which one's the best heart rate uh Tracker out of all the these RIS devices so again on the limited testing I've done on me and my partner and some other people it's the Apple watch is there a certain Apple watch model software size so far generally more or less similar but weight might the weight of the ultramite

34:44 sometimes have give it a bit of a downside but then again if you get a a CH a strap that makes it like I prefer these kind of velcro ones these I can generally get pretty nicely fitting uh then you don't have this stepped tightness basically where it's either maybe a bit too tight or a little bit too loose but generally it doesn't make a huge huge difference I wouldn't I wouldn't worry about it too much and what what are certain things like I need to make sure it's tight is is there if it's too tight will the numbers be off more like is there how do I make sure my wrist heart rate strap is accurate enough this I also so according to manufacturer spec specifications often it needs to be quite tight but also not extremely tight but what is this and I think in my testing I haven't really been able to I just tried to get a certain tightness

35:31 the same on every watch as I read it in the manufacturer specifications I haven't done specific testing to see can I make it too too tight I also think it's very hard to make it very tight just become so uncomfortable that nobody would wear it the only thing many people have requested that I want to test sometime soon is to wear a couple of watches on the inside of the wrist where potentially there's a bit more fleshy area so that might be a better signal um but I don't know we would have to test it so mom only wears her watch on the inside yeah yeah but she doesn't have a smart watch or does she she has an Apple Watch really yeah but I know in the thing it says you're not supposed to do that yeah but I want like I would want to test it but I think they're the why do why do you say it in English the proof in the cake is in the eating or the proof of the pudding is in the pudding so like proof in the cake is in the pudding or something I think in the

36:17 eating I don't pudding the pudding is in the eating I don't know I don't know don't quis me on that but yeah so in terms of range of watches apple is test Garmin depending on what you do indoor cycling on me fine outdoor cycling mixed and especially if they get heavier I think they they struggle as Garmin watches like your Epic 2 Pro get pretty big and heavy [Music] um Huawei is doing well on me but I mean it's a Chinese company with not so much access to the American market so maybe your viewership will have trouble finding them and I mean it also depends a bit I don't know know how much how much you want your data to be sent to certain regions but I guess corus is

37:02 also an Asian based company so I also don't know how that goes uh I have no strong opinion I don't I'm fine with my data going different places but I totally get if people don't want to get it have it go outside of the EU or US based companies yeah interesting what um heart rate okay okay I've heard a lot of people say like I feel like this watch is more accurate I feel like that watch is more accurate but but they're not basing it on anything like what do you have to say to those people yeah just buy a chest stap and test it out it's like for €70 or watch some videos but if you really think something is off with your watch if you buy a chest strap and wear it well and then you generally get a pretty reliable measurement unless I don't know

37:48 maybe super dry areas that are super cold or so maybe the conductance is not very good but I think almost in most used cases will be fine H and other I just watch some of my videos to get a rough impression but again I think their skin tone is something I can I should account for at some point but I cannot I think a lot of these watches are made for basically white or light-skinned people um and there have been frequencies of light that just struggle more on very dark skins so that's why also watch manufacturers now include different kinds of light sometimes is even a bit more yellow I think but um I think polar has mentioned that they really try to also adjust to different skin tones and this must be true for more

38:33 manufacturers yeah but again most testing is done on Rel like not the darkest skin at least on YouTube and stuff I I guess you have maybe a medium I don't know how you would describe your skin tone but not extremely dark at least but maybe it definitely darker than me already but I would be interested if somebody from with a dark uh skin tone maybe from African ancestry could test it that would be very interesting to see how the brands do that yeah that'd be really interesting I mean electronics are how do you say historically not created for people with dark skin tones also cameras and stuff were in the 70s and 80s notoriously bad I think almost everything yeah it's just everything was made for the white male yeah now now we have to take into account women as well and then also other skin tones yeah which is good but

39:20 yeah I think still the how do you say the developers tend to be males also and the testers tend to be males I think it's a very male dominated industry yeah well we need to get more women testers now um what yeah okay so with the Apple watch do I even need to buy a heart rate strap then is it pretty good where it's pretty good only for weightlifting it will I noticed that it it's pretty good at detecting when it's failing but then it will just not give a heart rate so you will miss the Peaks because do I care too much to have heart rate in a weightlifting workout I generally I think it's just in a lot of these things are just interesting to me the is what do you do with them that's really if you're really a high performance athlete there might be scenarios or you want to run at a certain heart rate or I just

40:06 think it's cool like a lot of this stuff I just find cool uh and I just want to track and then I want to track Trends over time like what was my max heart rate over time because I know I've noticed that it at some point really went down my max heart rate during my workouts and it was just because I wasn't pushing myself as much so it was also teaching me to start pushing pushing myself a bit more to actually reach that heart rate because it's just getting a bit lazy and taking too many breaks and then you just don't reach that so yeah so it's like having an accurate wearable going to change my life in any way or is it more targeted for the audience that thinks it's cool or interesting and then the elite athletes who need specific data for specific type of workouts that's a tricky question I

40:53 think in terms of sleep tracking I think there lot of the advice given by whoop Ora whatever that has decent quality data and decent algorithm behind it can change your change your life for the better where they will recognize something was off that night they will maybe even suggest hey did you do one of these three things before bed thereby informing you hey this could be you ate a late meal you I don't know had a high stress moment before bed and then try to avoid those and actually improve your sleep and then hopefully improve at least your health span or lifespan a little bit um so I think they can definitely help or if you're trying to um get healthier you track your resting heart rate over time and this is also

41:39 good for for normal nonathletes um so no I think there's something there but I think we also shouldn't over over rely on these kind of metrics and also we still feel right we still have some some sense of self and and how how our body feels that day so yeah if you don't find it cool at all then uh then you need to have a specific goal in mind which can be better sleep or um maybe running with a certain performance or running a certain distance or you need a good GPS tracker or whatever yeah speaking of GPS how what what are the GPS accuracy learnings that you've had and like how do you go about testing that because that's that's the tricky one a little tricky right with the weather location all those things yeah

42:26 so what I do and this is just by convenience as well is I have a certain route I cycle to work and I cycle that five times a week basically and I just track that same one every time for with the same wearable and if it's if it's good then those tracks should be super consistent they should follow the same because I just cycle the exact same route um so that's a bit of a indirect way of measuring it that is to say if the thing is good it should be super consistent like they should overlap super well if it's bad they could still overlap perfectly but then it should be then it can always be off like a lot for instance but then there's some systematic reason it would always be off

43:12 by the same amount I think it's relatively unlikely that that particular thing happens so it's a bit of an indirect way because I have no reference but what I can do is make sure that each time I do the exact same thing doesn't measure the exact same thing and that's basically my best guess um yeah you could then try to incorporate areas with higher buildings where it's harder and then see does it deviate a lot more when the buildings get higher so the signal quality is worse um but yeah indeed there could be weather effects that I cannot take into account so it's just when I have the device I test it for those two weeks or so and then the whatever 10 rids or eight rids that I have that's what I can include so there's definitely limitations

43:57 um I saw that that Ray from DC rain maker was doing it more also on a running track and stuff but then the question is how representative is that of urban running or Urban cycling or yeah this is the best I can do now and yeah you do see big differences like the big differences you see super clearly um the subtle differences are are sometimes a bit more tricky but again that's where Garmin is the best one of the best at GPS and this is also what they invested in uh some other watches just suck at it there's really bad ones like for instance the FIB charge 6 is a quite relatively affordable device it's definitely decent at sleep it's decent at heart rate but then the GPS is just like not worth it then use use your phone instead like it can even connect to your phone and use that one instead

44:44 but the G internal GPS is just I don't know I I wanted to say a bad word but it's it's not good what's what are what are the best ones like Are there specific Garmin watches or pretty much all the gar are good pretty much all are pretty decent um but I always set them to the best setting so that's so they you can choose different GPS combinations basically or GPS is like using it as an overarching term even though not all satellite systems are GPS um but I haven't seen huge huge differences between Garmin models um they're generally all pretty good I guess there would be edge cases where where some of the newer ones with the better signals do better but even initially when they introduced some new

45:29 um better models it's still felt like the software needed to be sort of catch up with the hardware that was improved and but that usually happens quite quickly yeah and GPS is there's like four or five systems right do you know the details not there glos there galile there so there's all these there's the European agency has some America's GPS and then yeah they're all so GPS originally was I think developed for the American Military and at some point they made it available to the public to use as well and basically just I mean I'm also not the expert in this but what it boils down to is the more triangulation points you have so the more satellites you connect to um the better your triang the better you can actually triangulate

46:14 your location and also your your elevation but these watches could connect to any of these Satellite Systems essentially yeah yeah someone once said that Apple owns their own satellites and maybe they own some satellites but I don't think they own their own positioning selin I would imagine not but maybe I'm totally out of here I'm also again I'm more focused on the testing and the technical details I also don't have all of them so yeah um and then one other scores that people always get is like the Readiness and Recovery scores have you ever tested the accuracy of these is there any insightful information that you can take away from them what are your what's your opinion on them overall I mean it's really tricky to say what to do with them I was this paper out and I don't remember all the details but they looked at the Readiness score again this I

47:02 think there were so there were two papers from that lab um I don't know if you recently saw Ora had like a statement like we were shown to be the most reliable sleep stage tracker by this and this paper and I think so I was in contact with the author of the lab and I think they from what I could understand they did do an independent job but they were at least sponsored somewhat by Aura I don't know if it was just that they got the devices or whatever and they also looked at the Readiness core and there they could correlate it with certain subjective metrics of people I don't I honestly don't remember what it was but you can imagine might be something like how they felt during the day or so um so there was there is something to be set of it also on my own data there is a correlation between my Readiness score and how energetic I felt

47:48 that day or Earth metrics like this but then maybe my total time of sleep is also strongly correlated with this so the question is is is my total time sleep a lot better or worse than my Readiness score I'm still a bit skeptical that the Readiness score is that sophisticated that it really that it really gives me that much more detail it it tries to but I don't know how validated this this is and I again without being able to back it up with any data but my my experience is just that it's a good indicator but that there's also other good indicators and that um it's the it might be the best we can do at the moment but um more research could definitely improve it like they could just be saying all right Total Sleep time is 50% of the score

48:35 that's what basically is it is something like that so I once it was a long time ago I don't know if they still use the same algorithm but basically I could just deduce from the metric what it was made up from it was just a linear combination of some of these things like weighted like 50% this plus 30% this for 20 and then you yeah it's just an estimation I don't know how they developed it I don't know what the basis maybe there is valid theory behind it but I don't know it but this yeah it is a linear combination yeah it used to be at least yeah I want to also I want to take a step back now I know you make all these videos and this is not your full-time job like why do you make all these videos like what's the reasoning for going through all the testing and trying to find the best and most accurate product like why are you doing this yeah

49:24 so why I'm still doing it is because I think it's cool but I think it originally started because I felt this content wasn't out there in the way I would want to see it I would want people to test it in a systematic way and actually tell me I I want this and this what is best for for that and then actually compare it against all the others in in some kind of reasonably reliable metric and it just wasn't there and there were definitely people doing good testing but there were some things missing there like sleep but also direct comparison against other watches like many other watches at the same time with the reproducible system and I just thought it was missing I there was Corona it was Co time when I started doing this kind of thing um so I had a lot of time on my hands I was just

50:09 recently single so a lot of things in my favor yeah and and what's like a um like doing all this testing what's like a future goal that you have of like what's what's a big Vision something exciting that you want to do in the future with with all type of testing in my so in Ideal World in whatever five or 10 years I would have a big sort of testing center where different people would get the same watch that that that just came out they would have a testing protocol they would have to follow this I would use all these different people's data um plus people all over the world could share their data with me where they have a chest strap or some kind of reliable sleep monitor and their their wearables and there would be a really good resource out there that just tells

50:56 you these these devices are good at this these are good at this and you could just research for for what you you think is important and even you could see okay for women this actually works a bit better than this and for people with a dark skin tone maybe this works a bit better than this and so ideally I would be the the I have the biggest reliable data collection for for health that'd be very that'd be really cool um have you Apple has like a research app have you seen that at all no I think some like institutions can use it to run research and they'll pull data from like apple Health but it's specific to that um that's I guess like one way of of doing the best studies yeah and so at the moment I'm some

51:42 there's a startup called Tera and they basically they're um it's called a universal API what it boils down to is they have a system where uh people can connect their varable to and then you can either build an app or some website where you can unpol that data um so this is so they gave me free access for for at least a limited number of users and I'm now building a website where people or I hired some guys to build a website um where people would be able to connect their weables and share their data with me so at least that initial thing is starting and this also includes Apple um but also other variables um though some some companies don't have the best data sharing options out there whoop is notoriously bad at these kind of things so just I cannot even get to my own raw

52:28 data so I also cannot get to other people's raw data this is I think this is also a bit quite bad you should always have access to your own data yeah that's right good Europe has a good system I guess for that or at least rules that make it a little bit easier yeah but then yeah so we we have gdpr as called here basically means you have the right to own your own data and tell companies to delete your data um but it has some some stipulations in there which I think whoop officially is still abiding by the rules in terms of data sharing but they're just really taking the least sort of the the most lenient form for them in terms of sharing it like I think it says derive data they do not need to share so if they derive your sleep stages from your heart rate and

53:14 movement and whatever they don't need to give you your sleep stage data because this is derived from other things wow just at least this was my interpret because I thought I can just ask them like I can tell them gdpr you need to but then I read the fine print and I'm not a lawyer but this is how I understand the gdpr regulations wow I didn't know that I have to learn more about that um that's cool in terms of your if you were to recommend someone a health tracker a wearable what should people buy or what would be the best one out there it really depends on your goals or what you want to know or what you find interesting cool um and also what what kind of requirements you have for battery life and stuff so so um I think if you just want a cheapish watch

54:02 or device with reasonable sleep tracking reasonable heart rate tracking than something like a fibid charge 6 is not too expensive probably you can get it for like 1220 $30 if it's on sale um and you get really you get decent heart rate uh decent sleep stage tracking decent hard rate tracking and the device is I mean looks okay I think then you're set for not too much money you can you ignore the Fitbit premium subscription you still get most of the data and so I think that's the cheapest option I would recommend to like I don't know if my mom wanted to track some of her heart rate on her sleep that's what I would tell her like it's cheap it's easy there's not too much complexity going on there um then if you wanted more to be in a smartwatch form you could even get uh a pixel watch if you

54:49 were on uh on Android um but it has I don't I think the look is for a man for instance is not the nicest that's my personal opinion it's just a bit small I don't know uh but I imagine some people do like it and the battery life just gets worse the charge 6 has a much better battery life than the than the the pixel watch but they basically use the same system so Fitbit it was bought by Google so the Google pixel watch basically uses fbit on the back end I think to to to do most things like sleep stage tracking um so for for Apple users I think the Apple watch is one of the the best things just because it integrates so well with the with your phone and with what other other device you have plus it has really good heart rate tracking really good sleep stage

55:35 tracking but the health app itself I don't like too I don't think the data presentation of Apple is very informative and I tested this out by also giving a friend of mine an Apple Watch or or letting him use it for some weeks and he's a whoop guy like he has been using for for a year or two and he really loves it because he really looks at the app and what it recommends him and he says he he likes that the Apple watch has a screen that can do all these things but there's just no recommendations coming out there's no context to the data there's no explanation to to what you see so he just missed that so he even though he liked the Apple watch as a product to use with his phone he just misses all that and that's where I think if you're more into General Health you want to get decent sleep stage tracking decent heart

56:21 rate tracking and you want sort of General Health advice or or or some feedback their whoop is really good they're sort of not amazing at anything but they're just solid throughout that's my my impression of whoop they're not the best heart rate tracker they're not the best sleep stage tracker but they're good they're they're decent or good and they have a nice app with feedback but it's then again not super cheap or at least to me a subscription model is always like a uh it it makes it sound cheaper at first but if you calculate it over four years it's not a cheap device per se um also not like crazy crazy expensive but yeah you pay what is it if you do it like uh yearly maybe what is

57:06 it 15 20 a month I don't know the exact rate at the moment but depends yeah on which plan you buy 15 188 I think $30 if you do it monthly yeah so it's not crazy crazy expensive but yeah it adds up over time so but then you do get the new device when that comes out so I guess there's the benefit there and they easily replace it if it breaks at least my broke and they just sent me a new one that's good um and then Aura is the same I would say but it has a bit better sleeve stage tracking but pretty poor heart rate tracking during exercise so if you're really into exercise then the aura range just isn't enough I think the heart rate tracking just doesn't work I think I don't know what it is because they when they released it they were like on the on the finger we have a much

57:51 cleaner signal and I just don't think it works I I don't know what it is but it just doesn't yeah I don't know what your did you try a lot of heart rate tracking with the AA ring a little bit mine's also a little bit I don't it depends on what size you get there's no half sizes and I don't like to have rings on my finger so I got the one that's like slightly too big instead of the one that's too small and then I think it spins pretty easily so it's not that yeah mine is pretty well fitted but it just I so I I think Aura has like the the best app like the best feedback they're they're slightly better than woop in in that regard for me like the the whole overview is just I don't know I I think it's a bit more uh it's a bit easier to look at um but it's not a huge difference but if I were to choose

58:37 between the two apps it would be Aura in terms of app uh also sleep stage tracking is a bit better but then I just cannot use it for sport so I would need a second device for sports which would as a consumer annoy me a little bit maybe uh to a degree at least if I was just have if I would have to buy two things now um but yeah and but in and also GPS of course you don't get it with with either and then if you're just looking for long battery life with decent heart rate tracking uh good GPS tracking then I would get rather a Garmin I think um just because it has a nice ecosystem to connect a lot of sensors to so if you're really into sports um that's quite nice the Sleep stage tracking just isn't doesn't tell me much um so if that's important to you then Garin probably isn't the way to go

59:24 um polar somehow seems to need to improve a little bit before I can recommend it the devices they make sometimes look really good but then the reliability just or like the accuracy just isn't there at least on me um and also some others now um again this is my experience um I wouldn't wouldn't be my first choice at the moment but then again if you connect the chest strap with your polar then doesn't matter again then that's fine um yeah and if you want a cheaper Garin than Coral is still like I like the pce three forence it was pretty reliable um then just

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