Activity Trackers in Comparison: Worst at Tracking Sleep
Your fitness tracker may claim to measure your sleep, but how accurate is it? To find out, sleep specialist Dr. Christopher Winter tested several popular trackers in a one-night sleep study in his laboratory.
He strapped a Fitbit Flex , Jawbone Up and Basis Chrome to his arm, as well as an iPhone with a 24/7 activity tracking app and a $ 600 research-grade activity tracker called the Philips Actiwatch Spectrum .
Of the consumer models, only Basis accurately tracked sleep and wake times and detected two out of three REM sleep cycles. Dr. Winter writes, “I am amazed that this device accurately regulates sleep based solely on the wrist input.” (It doesn’t even require the user to put it to sleep.)
The results from other devices were less impressive and did not match actual awakenings or sleep stages. Of course, this is just a one-day study by one person, but the results are quite curious. Check out the full article below to see a graph of results.
Personal sleep monitors: do they work? | Huffington post