SiA Wearables Database: Search & Compare consumer and research-grade wearables

Earlier this year, Myrte Schoenmakers, Melisa Saygin (both PhD students, VU Amsterdam) and Magdalena Sikora (PhD student, University of Twente) published their paper on the development of the Stress in Action Wearables Database (SiA-WD). See the paper here

SiA-WD is a new, open-access resource designed to help researchers select the optimal wearable devices for ambulatory physiological monitoring, especially in the context of stress research. The paper details the database’s structure, inclusion criteria, and illustrates its use with two research scenarios.

The database

The database systematically compiles technical specifications, available signals, data access, and—crucially—evidence on reliability, validity, and usability for over 50 consumer and research-grade wearables. The SiA-WD aims to support informed and efficient device selection for diverse research needs.

Online release of the SiA-WD

Now, in September 2025, the researchers are excited to share the open-access link to a Shiny app to search the wearables database. This app enables researchers to easily search via filterable criteria, and compare wearables in the database in a user friendly manner. The intention is to update the database every six months at least until 2032. The Shiny app is developed by postdoctoral researcher Hugo Klarenberg (VU Amsterdam).

Access the SiA-WD here

Or read more

“There’s no such thing as the perfect wearable. You always have to weigh what’s most important for your research, because some requirements can be mutually exclusive.” – Myrte Schoenmakers

How does it work?

The wearables in the SiA-WD can be filtered in two ways. The simple product filter can be used to quickly compare up to three different devices. If a researcher is already trying to make a final decision between two specific wearables, for instance, this filter can be used to facilitate a side-by-side comparison between them. For the more bottom up approach, there is an extensive feature filter. With this filter, devices can be filtered based on a multitude of aspects such as costs, battery life, available signals, access to raw data, the number of existing validity studies, and the SiA expert scores.

Melisa Saygin explains: “The Stress in Action Wearables Database aims to guide researchers select an optimal wearable given their physiological, technical, and practical (e.g., financial) considerations. It is a step towards carrying out better informed ambulatory research.” Magdalena Sikora adds: “The SiA-WD is also very useful for researchers of other ambulatory assessment fields, for example for physical activity or sleep.”

Research Theme 2

As part of the Research Theme 2 of Stress in Action, we aim to contribute to the development of an ambulatory stress assessment toolkit. SiA-WD forms an essential part of the toolkit by standardising and facilitating the selection of wearable devices to be used in both short and longitudinal daily life stress studies.

SiA Expert scores

Different criteria were rank-ordered in importance by the curators to score a device for short-term (2-day) and long-term (2+ week) research use. Based on these criteria (click SiA gauge), each device was independently scored from 0 to 10 by the three first co-authors, who were blinded to each other's scores; these scores were then averaged to generate the short- and long-term "SiA expert scores." High interrater reliability was achieved for both short-term (r = .87, 95% CI = [.78, .92], F(50, 100) = 8.0, p < .001) and long-term use (r = .85, 95% CI = [.76, .91], F(50, 100) = 6.6, p < .001).