Garmin watches now work with Pokemon Sleep and get themed watch faces

Garmin has just dropped a couple of Pokémon Sleep watch faces for World Sleep Day. The characters on them even react to your Body Battery during the day, becoming more sleepy as your energy drops.

There is also something bigger going on here. Pokémon Sleep is now compatible with select Garmin smartwatches.

Garmin sleep data can now sync with Pokémon Sleep

Pokémon Sleep is a mobile game built entirely around sleep tracking. You go to sleep, the app records your sleep session and the next morning you discover which Pokémon appeared during the night based on your sleep style.

Up to now the game mostly relied on tracking sleep through a smartphone placed next to the bed or through the Pokémon GO Plus+ accessory. The Pokémon Company has now said the game is compatible with select Garmin smartwatches.

It is a slightly unusual crossover. On one side you have Garmin’s fairly serious sleep tracking tools. On the other side you have a game where sleepy Pokémon show up depending on how well you slept. But if it gets more people paying attention to their sleep habits it probably does the job.

Two Pokémon watch faces now available

Alongside the integration announcement, Garmin has released two themed watch faces in the Connect IQ store.

The first one is called Pokémon Sleep Snorlax and Friends. It shows Snorlax together with several familiar characters including Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle.

The second design is Pokémon Sleep I Choose You. That one lets you pick a single Pokémon from a selection of forty eight different characters.

Both watch faces react to Garmin’s Body Battery metric. When your Body Battery is high they look energetic and happy. As your energy drops they start looking sleepy. It is basically a visual version of the Body Battery number.

There is also a bedtime cue built into the design. Around ninety minutes before the sleep schedule set in Garmin Connect the watch face switches into a darker night mode to signal that it might be time to start winding down.

A small but interesting crossover

At first glance this might look like Garmin just having a bit of fun with a themed watch face release. But the Pokémon Sleep compatibility makes the announcement a bit more interesting.

Pokémon Sleep has built a decent following since its launch and millions of players use it as a motivation tool for improving sleep habits. With the game now compatible with select Garmin smartwatches a large group of wearable users can now take part in that ecosystem as well.

For Garmin it is also another example of its health data connecting with outside platforms.

Wearables used to operate in fairly closed systems. You tracked your workouts and sleep inside one app and that was about it. Now those same metrics are starting to flow into other services and experiences.

In this case the destination just happens to be a game about sleepy Pokémon. And judging by the reaction online plenty of Garmin users are more than happy to see their watch turn into a tiny Pokémon companion for the day.

Source: Garmin

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