Researchers test the efficacy of commercial sleep trackers
Wearable sleep tracking devices - from Fitbit to Apple Watch to never-heard-of brands stashed away in the electronics clearance bin - have infiltrated the market at a rapid pace in recent years.
And like any consumer products, not all sleep trackers are created equal, according to West Virginia University neuroscientists.
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.
Fitbit and Oura came out on top in measuring total sleep time, total wake time and sleep efficiency, the results indicate. 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.