Are Smart Rings Accurate? Lawsuit Says Oura Sleep Tracking Isn't Good Enough
Oura is facing accusations of deceiving customers about the accuracy of its sleep-tracking features on its popular smart rings.
The claim comes from a proposed class action lawsuit filed on Aug. 20 by San Francisco's Clarkson Law Firm . It accuses Oura of falsely advertising its sleep-tracking tech, saying it offers nothing more than "a coin flip's chance of being correct."
The lawsuit cites social media posts in which users say they had a bad night's rest, but Oura's results showed otherwise. It also quotes peer-reviewed scientific studies into the real-world performance of Oura products.
It references a 2025 study published in the scientific journal Nature, in which researchers analyzed 45 nights of rest from 45 patients who own Oura rings and found that the devices overestimated REM sleep by 31 minutes. It also found that the devices underestimated light sleep by almost 14 minutes and deep sleep by almost six minutes.
The lawsuit says, "Because the Products cannot provide accurate data on sleep stages, Defendants have overstated the ability of their Products and thereby mislead consumers into purchasing them and believing that the information derived from the Products is more useful and valuable to their health than it actually is."
The complaint asks Oura to stop what it calls "unlawful and fraudulent advertising, marketing, and sale" of its smart rings. It also says it wants restitution for existing customers. It's unclear what the next step in the lawsuit may be, and whether other Oura ring owners will one day be able to join the process.
A spokesperson for Oura told PCMag, "We stand behind our science, research, and accuracy claims. While Oura Ring is not a medical device or a substitute for a clinical sleep study, Oura's sleep staging has been validated and compared favorably in multiple studies against polysomnography, the gold standard."
"The data collection that informs the creation of Oura's sleep staging algorithm (NSSA) is unparalleled in sleep research with over 1,200 nights of data collected, and we published a peer-reviewed paper that describes how the sleep-staging algorithm was developed and how it uses the signals collected by the ring. Multiple third-party, independent studies support our claims of accuracy and we have transparently reported on the mechanisms and measures that inform Oura's sleep staging."
In PCMag's review of the latest Oura Ring 5 , our reviewer found its sleep data consistent with rival products like the Fitbit Air and Apple Watch Ultra 3. PCMag's Andrew Gebhart found in his testing that "Oura's charts and values consistently matched those of the control devices to a reasonable degree."
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