Oura is facing criticism form wearers about the accuracy of smart rings’ sleep tracking capabilities and now a class action lawsuit has been filed accusing the company of misleading customers about the quality of their shuteye.
The suit filed in San Francisco contests that Oura Ring products aren’t even capable of measuring things like sleep quality or sleep stages and accuses the company of AI-based guesswork. The suit filed by the Clarkson Law Firm (via TechCrunch) earlier this week accuses Oura of taking advantage of wearers’ desire for proper sleep tracking, but claims the tech inside the Ring models wouldn’t be enough to achieve that data.
The suit says: “To capitalize on consumers’ desire for a tracker that could actually track sleep and monitor their sleep cycles, Oura sold expensive tracking rings, priced at $300 and up, advertising exactly that: that Oura rings are capable of seeing what only a hospital sleep lab can see, including the four different stages of sleep.
“Oura did not just claim to measure a heartbeat or a temperature, but the exact stage of sleep the wearer is in—which in reality requires electrodes in the scalp and sensors on the eyes, as only a hospital or other clinical setting can do.”
Oura has made strong claims about the quality of its sleep tracking tech, claiming its readings stack up well against clinical tests. The company is yet to comment on the suit. In a Reddit threat from last year, one Oura users summed up the complaints about the Oura Ring’s sleep tracking capabilities.
“Oftentimes I sleep like crap, wake up multiple times and eventually get up and feel tired… when I check my sleep results I get an 85 or 89… sometimes better sometimes a little less. Point is, I know I had a terrible night’s sleep and I get a good sleep score.”
However, in our testing the Oura Ring 5’s data defied the lawsuit and user complaints.
Our reviewer wrote: “On the mornings I woke up groggy after a rough night, the readiness score reflected that. On the days I felt sharp and rested, the numbers also agreed. “I know that sounds like a low bar, but if you’ve used a wearable that confidently tells you you’ve had a great night’s sleep, when you feel like you got hit by a bus, you’ll know important a good correlation is.”
This may be an interesting suit to follow and could have key ramifications for the future of wearable tech.
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