'Updates to hardware, firmware and algorithms happen continuously, and we must understand how this affects accuracy.' 'While technology, both hardware and software, continually advances, it is critical to evaluate the accuracy of these devices in an ongoing fashion,' Hagen said. Still, these findings revealed that there is a remarkably high degree of variability in the accuracy of commercial sleep technologies, the researchers stated. The commercial sleep technologies displayed lower error and bias values when quantifying sleep/wake states as compared to sleep staging durations. Researchers observed five healthy adults - two males, ages 26 and 41, and three females, ages 22, 23 and 27 - who participated by wearing the sleep trackers for a combined total of 98 nights. However, when thinking about what you generally have control over with your sleep - time to bed, time in bed, choices before bed that impact sleep efficiency - these can be accurately measured in some devices.' This is not surprising, since typically brain waves are needed to properly measure this. 'Some devices are currently performing well for total sleep time and sleep efficiency, but the community at large seems to still struggle with sleep staging (deep, REM, light). 'The biggest takeaway is that not all consumer devices are created equal, and for the end user to take care in selecting the technology to suit their application based on the data,' Hagen said. The study is published in the Nature and Science of Sleep.

All other devices, however, either overestimated or underestimated at least one of those sleep metrics, and none of the eight could quantify sleep stages (REM, non-REM) with effective accuracy to be useful when compared to an electroencephalogram, or EEG, which records electrical activity in the brain. Prompted by a lack of independent, third-party evaluations of these devices, a research team led by Joshua Hagen, director of the Human Performance Innovation Center at the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, tested the efficacy of eight commercial sleep trackers.įitbit and Oura came out on top in measuring total sleep time, total wake time and sleep efficiency, the results indicate.

And like any consumer products, not all sleep trackers are created equal, according to West Virginia University neuroscientists.

You snooze you lose reality king