Amazon’s Halo Rise wants to rate your sleep. (No thank you.)

Is there any technology more ironic than sleep tracking? Tech companies say their wearables and apps that study your body while you sleep could help you get a better night’s sleep. But many sleep experts, and the companies themselves, say technology itself is to blame if you’re not sleeping well.

Our brightly lit smartphones and social networking apps create distractions that may keep us awake and contribute to poor sleep. So one of the most common pieces of advice you’ll read about sleeping better, including in sleep tracking apps, is to stop using technology for a few hours before bed.

So why are we adding more technology to our sleep routine?

The latest attempt to solve the sleep problem comes from Amazon. Last week, the company began selling the $140 Halo Rise, a ring-shaped alarm clock with a built-in sleep tracker. It uses motion sensors to study your movement and breathing patterns to assess your sleep. To wake you up, the device includes a light that can be programmed to gradually brighten.

Hoping to solve my own sleep problems, I’ve been testing sleep tracking technology for several years, including products made by Fitbit and Oura and apps available for the Apple Watch. I’ve repeatedly felt let down because the data collected from the devices simply confirmed that I had slept poorly, and at times made me feel even more anxious about it.

Still, I was curious to sleep next to the Halo Rise for a few nights to see what it would offer. Once again I was disappointed: it provided data with questionable accuracy, and while I enjoyed being woken up by the yellow light, the same result could be achieved with a light bulb connected to a timer. Plus, the benefits weren’t strong enough to give Amazon any more of my data.

The most useful insight gleaned from all the hype about sleep technology isn’t the tracking itself. It’s the actionable guidance in sleep tracking apps for a better night’s sleep – advice I can share with you. (More on this later.)

To get started, plug the Halo Rise into a power outlet and the smartphone app will help you connect to the internet. From there, place the tracker on your bedside table and orient its face to your upper body as you sleep.

After you wake up in the morning, the app shows a graph illustrating your sleep stages, including light sleep, deep sleep, and REM (for rapid eye movement). It corresponds to a grade, such as “Poor” or “Excellent.”

This is where I became skeptical. During four sleep sessions, when I didn’t feel like I slept particularly well, the Halo app rated my sleep as “Good.” On each of these nights, my Labrador, a dog in her final years with special needs, woke me up at an odd hour to go outside.

Monday night was especially problematic. I went to bed at 10:30 pm and tossed and turned, occasionally checking the clock, for at least three hours before finally falling asleep. The alarm went off at 06:00. The Halo app reported that I slept six hours and 37 minutes and considered that good.

I shared my results with Amazon and asked how the company could guarantee the accuracy of the Halo Rise. Dr. Michael Miyamoto, an Amazon medical director, said the company had done internal studies comparing the results of its algorithms with data measured by polysomnography, the gold standard for sleep tracking that involves attaching sensors to a person’s face and neck to measure eye movements. and brain activity.

Dr. Miyamoto said Amazon felt the Halo Rise results were accurate, but the company has yet to work with a third party to validate the product’s accuracy, though it plans to do so.

Other consumer-grade sleep trackers are worn on the body or tucked under the mattress, and research on their accuracy is beginning to surface. In March, a study published in Nature and Science of Sleep compared the performance of four commercial sleep trackers, including a Fitbit bracelet and an Oura ring, with gold-standard scientific equipment. The study found that the commercial devices were more accurate at detecting when people were asleep than when they were awake, concluding that they weren’t ideal for monitoring different sleep stages.

Olivia Walch, a mathematician who has studied circadian rhythms, said that because research had shown that sleep-tracking wearables struggle to distinguish sleep from wakefulness, it would probably be even harder for motion sensors to do the job.

In addition, she called the idea of ​​Amazon rating your sleep based on sleep stages “crazy.”

“You can’t go to bed and say, ‘I’m going to REM so hard,'” says Dr. Walch, head of Arcascope, a technology company that creates an app to help shift workers adjust their body’s internal clock. “We shouldn’t make people feel bad about something they have no control over.”

Gimmicks and questionable accuracy aside, sleep technology isn’t all bad. It has increased awareness among ordinary people about the impact of sleep on their health. The products have also helped some people discover they have conditions, such as sleep apnea, so they can see a doctor.

For everyone else, I’ve found that the best thing about sleep tracking technology is the advice their apps provide to help you train your mind and body for a better night’s sleep. It’s an all-day regimen that looks something like this:

• Provide as much light as possible in the morning and throughout the day. Get out for lunch or exercise to get some sun.

• Have consistent meals. The main thing is to avoid caffeine in the afternoon and eat at least three hours before bedtime.

• When relaxing in the evening, minimize exposure to light. That includes dimming the lights in the house and avoiding screen time while getting ready for bed.

None of these steps require buying a piece of technology.