Garmin’s enhanced Body Battery feature explained
Garmin has recently introduced better Body Battery details to a number of its watches. Here’s what you need to know.
Body Battery was initially launched in 2020 by the then-autonomous Firstbeat Analytics, elevating the concept of 24/7 stress monitoring. The feature is designed to assist individuals in making more informed choices about training, rest, and sleep. Although Firstbeat Analytics is now a part of Garmin, the Body Battery metric continues to exist.
The primary objective of Body Battery is to offer a gauge of your current physiological energy levels. Devices equipped with this functionality employ a synthesis of stress metrics, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep quality, and physical activity data to generate these assessments. While the hardware components involved aren’t novel, the innovative aspect lies in the method of data interpretation and utilization.
The Body Battery metric is scaled from 0 to 100, with higher values indicating a more rested state. This information is dynamically updated in real-time, fluctuating as your physiological energy levels rise or decline.
For those curious about enhancing their Body Battery score, we have a separate article that delves into this subject. The core principles for improvement are straightforward yet challenging for some: adequate sleep and rest, nutritious eating habits, abstaining from alcohol, stress mitigation, and proper hydration are key.
The insights provided by Body Battery predominantly rely on the analysis of heart rate variability (HRV). This is essentially the same dataset that powers Garmin’s widely-used all-day stress monitoring feature.
Enhanced Body Battery feature
With the unveiling of the Venu 3 and Vivoactive 5 watches over the past month or so, Garmin has introduced a more sophisticated body battery feature. It works in exactly the same way as it did before, but now you get more details.
Watches that have the enhanced feature now show a bunch of components of your day and how they’ve impacted your Body Battery score. These are shown both colour coded on the watch widget itself and there’s a screen you can access that shows a list of all the contributing factors.
For example, you might get something like two hours of high stress has reduced your Body Battery by 25 points, that one hour hike you did this morning generated a 11 point reduction due to the effort involved. On the other hand, last night’s sleep session boosted your Body Battery by 52 points.
Final thoughts
As mentioned, nothing has really changed in the way the metric is calculated. It is just that now you get a detailed breakdown so that you can understand the impact of individual activities. For now, this is only available in the watch widget itself. Garmin has yet to update its smartphone software to show this type of breakdown.
Most Garmin watches have the Body Battery score. But only a few have the more advanced version. The Venu 3 and Vivoactive 5 are on this list. But it doesn’t end there.
More recently a Beta firmware update that goes under the number 15.68 brought this feature to a number of other watches. This includes the Fenix 7 range, Epix and Epix Pro 42mm/47mm/51mm, Enduro 2, Quatix 7, and MARQ Gen 2. The hope is the feature will roll out to some of the Forerunner watches as well.
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