I just got the Oura 4 ring specifically for sleep tracking and monitoring. Mostly interested in the sleep architecture. It has been worthless. It is saying that I’m awake for over an hour and a half every night which is not true. I also wear it on the same hand that I am using my Apple Watch to track my sleep. The Apple Watch is much more accurate than the ring! It thinks all my light sleep is awake time, and that screws up all the percentages. It shows of REm and deep sleep. I’m going to return it if there isn’t a way to correct this. With my Apple Watch I can do better and I can track my steps and fitness and also I like the way it tracks my activities better. Has anyone else found this to be a problem? Is there a way to fix it?
Thanks for posting here, there has been a lot of discussion of sleep architecture validity in the different wearables, and many people have similar complaints. There are also complaints about the Apple Watch!
These devices have been calibrated, but you cannot calibrate under all conditions. You will find if you go down the rabbit hole of investigating sleep architecture validity in wearables that the awake/light sleep border is one of the most difficult sleep features to detect. Some people deal with this by deciding not to care very much about light sleep because detecting REM sleep and deep sleep are both easier and perhaps more interesting in some ways.
One bit of general advice is that if you are noticing a very specific problem, then you may be able to troubleshoot it. It’s very good that you can compare the light sleep records from the Oura with your own knowledge of how you are falling asleep. Your experiential knowledge is obviously the gold standard here. If the Apple Watch is detecting light sleep, and the Oura is detecting awake, and you know you are actually sleeping, then you may be able to determine at least something about how they are different. I believe that Oura uses respiration rate and Apple Watch does not. (Although I may be wrong about this since it’s been a while since I looked into it.) If so, you may have a different breathing pattern than is typical while you are sleeping, and Oura is misclassifying this wakefulness. That would be an interesting twist if Oura’s error revealed something that you didn’t know about yourself! But of course I’m just speculating. I do encourage you to look at the patterns of errors, though, and brainstorm with yourself about what could be going on. There might be some signal there.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
It’s definitely reading most of my light sleep as awake because it’s saying I’m awake a hour and 45 mins more or less most nights.
I’m just trying to figure out a way to correct it so it will learn the difference. I trust my apply watch more for the overall sleep quality and architecture since having both and comparing them. I wear the watch and ring on the same hand, and tried switching, but pretty much the same.
I do t it’s the breathing thing though. I wear Cpap and breathing is pretty consistent all night.
I read you can send the recordings to Oura support and they can maybe help retrain it to read awake as light sleep.
I do know I’m not awake for over an house every night!
Any suggestion on how to edit it or whatever might be helpful.