Performance of wearable sleep trackers during nocturnal sleep and periods of simulated real-world smartphone use

Apr 3, 2024Sleep health

How well wearable sleep trackers work during sleep and simulated smartphone use at night

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Circadian Biology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

Detection accuracy for sleep/wake transitions was higher for Oura and Fitbit compared to other consumer devices and research-grade actigraphy.

Oura and Fitbit exhibited superior accuracy in identifying sleep onset and wake times compared to the ActiGraph and lower-priced trackers.
Participants with lower sleep efficiency experienced reduced detection accuracy across all devices.
Including peri-sleep activities significantly improved the specificity and Kappa statistics for Oura and Fitbit, while ActiGraph showed no improvement.
All devices misclassified periods of motionless wake as sleep, but this issue was less common with Oura and Fitbit.
The performance of Oura and Fitbit remained reliable even with minor disturbances during sleep.

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GOAL AND AIMS: To test sleep/wake transition detection of consumer sleep trackers and research-grade actigraphy during nocturnal sleep and simulated peri-sleep behavior involving minimal movement.

FOCUS TECHNOLOGY: Oura Ring Gen 3, Fitbit Sense, AXTRO Fit 3, Xiaomi Mi Band 7, and ActiGraph GT9X.

REFERENCE TECHNOLOGY: Polysomnography.

SAMPLE: Sixty-three participants (36 female) aged 20-68.

DESIGN: Participants engaged in common peri-sleep behavior (reading news articles, watching videos, and exchanging texts) on a smartphone before and after the sleep period. They were woken up during the night to complete a short questionnaire to simulate responding to an incoming message.

CORE ANALYTICS: Detection and timing accuracy for the sleep onset times and wake times.

ADDITIONAL ANALYTICS AND EXPLORATORY ANALYSES: Discrepancy analysis both including and excluding the peri-sleep activity periods. Epoch-by-epoch analysis of rate and extent of wake misclassification during peri-sleep activity periods.

CORE OUTCOMES: Oura and Fitbit were more accurate at detecting sleep/wake transitions than the actigraph and the lower-priced consumer sleep tracker devices. Detection accuracy was less reliable in participants with lower sleep efficiency.

IMPORTANT ADDITIONAL OUTCOMES: With inclusion of peri-sleep periods, specificity and Kappa improved significantly for Oura and Fitbit, but not ActiGraph. All devices misclassified motionless wake as sleep to some extent, but this was less prevalent for Oura and Fitbit.

CORE CONCLUSIONS: Performance of Oura and Fitbit is robust on nights with suboptimal bedtime routines or minor sleep disturbances. Reduced performance on nights with low sleep efficiency bolsters concerns that these devices are less accurate for fragmented or disturbed sleep.

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Performance of wearable sleep trackers during nocturnal sleep and periods of simulated real-world smartphone use

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