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Oura’s getting sued.
A recently filed class-action complaint against the smart ring maker alleges that the company has duped customers by claiming it can accurately track different sleep stages. A smart ring can’t possibly do that, the suit says, because the Oura Ring doesn’t directly measure your brain waves. Instead, Oura uses AI models to take advantage of “desperate consumers who struggle with their sleep … by selling faulty AI-based inference as reliable science.” The suit frames Oura Ring as no more accurate than a “coin flip.”
When I first saw this lawsuit, I laughed it off. It assumes that Oura users aren’t smart enough to know the ring on their finger can’t measure what’s going on inside their skull.
All wearable devices collect data and then use algorithms — or machine learning AI — to make inferences about various health metrics. As a noninvasive tool, no wearable directly measures anything except motion. The benefit is that noninvasive wearables allow for passive, all-day monitoring. Responsible companies then validate those metrics against clinical, gold-standard methods to create consumer-oriented screening tools and monitoring metrics. It’s not always the most accurate, but even broadly accurate data has improved — and even saved — many lives.
I initially laughed off this Oura Ring lawsuit, assuming most people have enough sense to intuit the limitations of wearables.
Again, I laughed because, surely, no one would take this lawsuit seriously. Wearables might not measure brain waves, but other measurable physiological changes happen during various sleep stages too. Your heart rate slows, your body temperature rises and falls, and your body paralyzes your muscles during REM so you don’t act out your dreams. But then I logged on and saw the discourse. Several outlets had covered the lawsuit. It was popping up on social media and in Reddit forums. Some commenters used it as a way to say, “Aha! I knew these devices were off!” Others said this discrepancy was illustrative of everything wrong with this current era of optimized obsession. A few wearable nerds reacted the same way I did. Oura published its own rebuttal to the suit, linking to several validation studies in peer-reviewed journals for its sleep tracking algorithm, alongside a supportive op-ed from a sleep researcher.
As a wearables expert, I find the lawsuit’s logic to be lacking, but it did help me identify the real problem here. We still struggle to remember what the point of wearable tech is and how to use it properly. Case in point: Accuracy is a bit of a red herring in this conversation because that’s not always the point of a wearable.
All wearables vary when it comes to sleep tracking accuracy. In general, independent third-party reviews find they are pretty good at detecting when you fall asleep and wake up. Sleep stages are where things get murky, as each company uses a proprietary algorithm to estimate if you’re in REM, deep, or light sleep based on motion, temperature, and heart rate sensors. They can get things wrong for several reasons, ranging from sleep position to battery levels.
These devices are meant to help you reflect on your lifestyle choices, not diagnose what’s ailing you.
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