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Sleep trackers probably won’t help you sleep any better

Everyone wants to get a better night’s rest. For typical adult humans, numerous studies show that eight hours is the amount of slumber needed for the human body to function optimally. Why? Sleep plays a key role in nearly every system in the body: helping things like our immune systems, brains, and guts recover and thrive. So it’s a no wonder that we would want to be able to track the amount of sleep we get in order to be our freshest selves the next day. But aside from keeping count of the number of hours we get each night, sleep researchers say sleep monitors are cool to look at, but don’t provide any valuable data to enable you to get a better night’s rest.

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 Do Sleep Trackers Really Work?

Sleep data like this is readily available on most fitness trackers and smartwatches, and companies like Oura and Whoop make devices dedicated to tracking rest and recovery. They claim to track sleep duration, sleep stages, and quality. But how accurate — or helpful — are these devices and the data they give? Can a small sensor on my wrist really tell me all about my REM cycles — and make qualitative claims about my sleep?

 See why everyone’s getting this instead of the Oura Ring

It’s designed for sleep, and it’s less than half the cost. Slip the Go2sleep over your finger, drift off into your mediocre-quality slumber, and the ring will monitor you all throughout the night. Other devices only randomly check in, so this continuous tracking gives you more accurate insights (while offering better protection from Freddy Krueger).

 Sleep perfectionists: the exhausting rise of orthosomnia

The UK sleep-tracker industry is estimated to be worth £270m a year – and forecast to double by 2030. Could all this data be making our insomnia worse?

 The Best Sleep Trackers: Rings, Watches, and Other Wearables

If you’re curious about what happens while you sleep—or if you often wake up wondering, “Why am I so tired?”—a wearable sleep tracker might be for you. No commercially available sleep tracker can perfectly analyze your sleep or diagnose a sleep disorder; you need to visit a sleep lab for that. But the better trackers can identify trends in your sleep, monitor your activity and heart rate, and give advice on improving your rest and fitness. After testing five wearable sleep trackers, we’ve found that the Oura Ring Gen3 and the Whoop 4.0 offer the best combination of accuracy, user experience, and comfort.

 The Truth About Sleep Trackers

Their technology is impressive, but imperfect. We asked experts whether they can really help you get a better night’s rest.

Articles of Interest

'Sleep trackers made me far more interested in my sleep'

Motion-sensing sleep monitors vary in comfort and accuracy, with a few annoying habits for bed fellows, our writer finds.

Are sleep trackers accurate? Here’s what researchers currently know

An estimated one in three people report regular sleep complaints. So it’s hardly surprising people are more concerned than ever about getting enough sleep. This blossoming interest has seen an explosion of sleep trackers which measure how many hours of sleep you get each night.

How to Know if Your Sleep Tracker Is Helping or Hurting Your Sleep

They're not necessarily a magic fix.

Is tracking your sleep a good idea?

If you have trouble falling asleep or getting a good night’s sleep, it seems intuitive to work harder to solve the problem by using some of the sleep apps, bracelets and other devices that have become increasingly popular. But could this common practice of self-monitoring your sleep result in a sleep paradox, where instead of fixing the problem we create patterns of stress and arousal that exacerbate it?

Oura Ring 4 review: best smart ring gets comfort and battery upgrade

Sleek, celeb-favoured gadget tracks sleep, activity and heart health without a smartwatch, but comes at high cost.

Should You Buy a Sleep Tracker?

An influx of new gadgets aim to help you sleep better by collecting data about your heart rate, time in bed, and sleep cycles. But are they worth it?

Sleep Trackers Promise to Improve Our Sleep. They Only Made Me Feel More Helpless.

I never thought in terms of “sleep debts” until I found SleepBot, one of two apps—the other is called Sleep Cycle—that I used to record my sleep for most of November. Each night for a month, I set my phone face down on my mattress, not far from where I lay my head. Each morning I was awoken by one of the app’s klaxons—a sound supposedly keyed to my biorhythms, but as irritating as any other alarm. And each day my “current debt” accumulated, unslept hours stacking atop one another, pulling me down with them.

That Sleep Tracker Could Make Your Insomnia Worse

Find a week when you don’t have to get up at a certain time — on vacation, perhaps — and turn off your alarm. You’ll sleep a lot at first, but within a few days, she said, your body will adjust and let you know when to go to bed and wake, and how much nightly sleep you truly need. “Trust that,” she said, “instead of the device.”

The Best Sleep Trackers

If you want to log or analyze your shut-eye, these WIRED-tested sleep trackers are the way to go.

The Best Sleep Tracking Apps for Business Travelers: Improving Your Sleep and Productivity with These Top Tools

Thanks to modern technology, you’re just a few clicks away from rectifying the situation entirely. Today's app market includes a host of sleep tracking apps and sleep helpers that are designed to assist people in sleeping better, getting more sleep, and thereby increasing their productivity during their waking hours as a result.

The Quiet Betrayal of Sleep Tracking

I thought I’d found a way to hack my sleep. Then, it hacked me.

The Sad Truth About Sleep-Tracking Devices and Apps

Our personal tech columnist tracked his sleep for two weeks with an Apple Watch and some software. Here’s why he concluded it was a pointless exercise.

TikTok, Tech And Trackers - Has Our Sleep Anxiety Reached Its Peak?

Between endless TikTok videos and the techiest of trackers, our fixation with getting enough shuteye has reached an all-time high. But with so much at our disposal, are we helping or hindering those zs in the long run? One sleep sufferer investigates.

Tracking My Sleep Kept Me Awake at Night

It became almost impossible for me to fall asleep peacefully because the Fitbit was making me so apprehensive. I would lie awake in bed worrying that the night before’s sleep wasn’t good enough (just one hour and 56 minutes of solid, undisturbed sleep, according to my app) and that tonight’s could be even worse. Sometimes, I would try to lie perfectly still in order to fool the Fitbit into thinking I was asleep.

What Happens to the Data Collected On Us While We Sleep

It’s only a matter of time until sleep data from an fitness tracker is used to catch someone cheating on their spouse. Or to cause health insurance rates to climb because you’re not getting a healthy amount of rest. Or reveal to your boss that you were up until 3 AM and are probably hungover at work.

While You Were Sleeping: Apps That Track Your Slumber

If you wake up feeling like a zombie, SleepBot and Sleep Cycle might be able to help.

Why is everyone wearing the Oura Ring?

The wearable device looks great but, unfortunately, it won’t solve all of your health problems. Why is everyone wearing the Oura Ring?

Resources

10 best sleep trackers 2024 for a full night's worth of ZZZs

For starters, they arm you with practically every stat and data that you need to track the exact amount of sleep that you're getting, and therefore giving you expert-level insight into the quality of your sleep phases in the process. Plus, some sleep trackers also come equipped with other handy features, including menstrual tracking, heart-rate variability, basal body temperature and even blood oxygen rate. Wins all around.

6 of the best sleep trackers, from rings to smart watches

About 1 in 3 American adults aren't getting enough high-quality sleep. These devices, from wearables to mats, may help offer some insight into why.

Sleep Cycle

Sleep Cycle tracks and analyzes your sleep, waking you up at the most perfect time, feeling rested!

SleepScore

If you have an iPhone or a compatible Android phone, we think SleepScore (iOS, Android) will do the best job of helping you improve your sleep. It allows you to set sleep goals and gives actionable advice for reaching them. It also provides more detailed sleep-stage data than most other apps, and in our tests, its smart alarm did a pretty good job of waking us up slowly, so we felt less groggy - Wirecutter