Are wearables really helping you sleep better?

You wear them to bed, wake up to glowing reports on your REM cycles, and proudly compare sleep scores with your friends like it's a new fitness metric. But while sleep wearables have exploded in popularity—think Oura rings, Fitbit, Apple Watch, and even sleep-tracking headbands—the real question is: Are they actually improving your sleep, or just giving you more data to stress about? Spoiler: It’s a little bit of both.

Can your wearable really fix your sleep?

With sleep being tied to everything from mood and metabolism to immunity and mental sharpness, it’s no surprise that tracking it feels like a logical step toward self-improvement. Wearables promise insights into your deep sleep, light sleep, heart rate variability, and even your breathing patterns—helping you optimise your nightly rest.

For some, it’s empowering. Others, however, are spiralling into what experts now call orthosomnia—a form of anxiety about not sleeping right because your tracker said so.

Studies show that wearables can accurately detect sleep duration, but not always the quality of your sleep. Most commercial sleep tech still can’t measure brain activity—unlike clinical sleep studies (polysomnography). That means their guesses on how much deep or REM sleep you’re getting are just that—guesses based on movement and heart rate patterns. They're great for spotting patterns, not diagnosing problems.

Use them as a tool, not gospel. If your wearable helps you identify habits that mess with your sleep (like eating late or inconsistent bedtimes), great. But if you’re waking up more anxious because your “score” was bad—that might be doing more harm than good. The best sleep aid? Still the basics: a cool, dark room, no screens before bed, consistent wake times, and cutting caffeine after 2 pm. Wearables can help you understand your sleep, but they won’t solve it. So wear the ring, track the stats, but trust your body more than your app. After all, sleep isn’t just a metric—it’s a feeling. And no device knows that better than you.

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