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Smartwatch Stress Metrics Don’t Align With Users’ Feelings, Study Finds

The study casts doubt on consumer wearables’ stress readouts by demonstrating that heart-rate-based algorithms rarely match users’ self-reported feelings.

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Smartwatches can label excitement as stress. Sleep hours are more reliable, but how rested remains hard to read from a wrist.
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Overview

  • Researchers tracked 800 young adults for three months using Garmin Vivosmart 4 devices and collected self-reported stress, fatigue and sleepiness scores four times a day to compare with sensor data.
  • Not a single participant’s smartwatch stress reading matched their self-reported feelings, and about one in four received opposite stress indications from their device.
  • The team attributed poor stress validity to heart-rate-based algorithms’ inability to distinguish emotional states from physical exertion or excitement.
  • Garmin’s “body battery” metric showed a modest link to physical tiredness but its weak correlation was deemed insufficient for practical monitoring.
  • Wearables measured sleep duration accurately yet failed to mirror users’ perceived restfulness, leaving only passive sleep data as a viable avenue for depression-alert tools.