A proposed class action filed in San Francisco alleges that Oura’s smart rings cannot actually measure sleep stages and that the company has overstated their accuracy for years. The complaint, filed on Thursday by Clarkson Law Firm, argues the rings lack the sensors needed to detect sleep quality or sleep stages at all, and instead produce AI-generated estimates.
The numbers at the heart of the Oura sleep tracking lawsuit
The case turns on a gap between two figures. On one side is what Oura has advertised: the complaint says the company previously claimed 79% agreement with clinical polysomnography, and more recently advertised 95% sleep-staging accuracy compared with a clinical sleep lab. On the other side is a 2025 study the complaint cites, which it says found Oura rings correctly identified sleep stages 53.18% of the time. That second number is where the lawyers’ repeated description of the results as having a coin flip’s chance of being correct comes from.
The complaint’s underlying argument is a hardware one rather than a software one. Clinical sleep staging is derived from brain activity and eye movement, measured with electrodes on the scalp and sensors near the eyes. A ring on your finger reads heart rate, movement, skin temperature and blood-oxygen trends. The suit contends that no amount of modelling turns the second set of signals into the first, and that the marketing said otherwise. It points to phrases including “built for accuracy” and “unparalleled accuracy” in Oura’s advertising.
Ryan Clarkson, co-founder and managing partner at Clarkson Law Firm, said in an emailed press release: “When people rely on a device to guide decisions about their health, misinformation cannot be tolerated.”
Which Oura rings are named, and what the suit asks for
The Oura Ring 5, Oura Ring 4 and Oura Ring 4 Ceramic are named in the complaint, which argues that none of them carry the sensors used in clinical sleep staging. The filing seeks an injunction stopping Oura from making the allegedly misleading accuracy claims, plus restitution for customers who bought the rings on the basis of those claims. Oura did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Nothing here has been tested in court. A proposed class action is an allegation and a request for certification, not a finding, and Oura has not yet filed a response.
What it means if you track your sleep on an Android phone
The specific allegations are about Oura, but the physics argument is not. Rings, watches and bands of the kind most people wear to bed — on Android or iOS — infer sleep stages from peripheral signals rather than measuring them, because a device on your finger or wrist cannot read brain activity. What separates products, as we noted when Samsung Health’s assistant went into US beta, is how honestly the resulting number is presented: an estimate with a confidence range reads very differently from a precise-looking percentage next to a claim of clinical-lab agreement.
That matters because these numbers change behaviour. People move bedtimes, take supplements, book doctor appointments and reorganise their days around a score. Treat a nightly sleep-stage breakdown as a trend line worth watching over weeks rather than a diagnostic reading of last night, and check what a manufacturer’s headline accuracy figure is actually being compared against before you pay a premium for it.
Sources: TechCrunch, Android Authority
