What’s Good About the Oura Ring?
I was more satisfied with the Oura Ring’s sleep tracking tech than any other tracking category it offers. One of the troubles with sleep quality tracking is that the numbers are often difficult to interpret. OK, so I got 2.5 hours of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep last night, what of it?
Oura tracks awake time, REM sleep, light sleep, deep sleep, total sleep, resting heart rate, sleep efficiency, oxygen saturation, breathing regularity, HRV, and god knows what else. Mercifully, I don’t have to look at every single data point (you can if you want, it’s all in the app), because all those numbers are crunched into a sleep score, which takes every data point into account and spits out a simple 0-100 number—under 70 is bad, 70 to 84 is good, 85 and up is optimal.
This is where Oura Ring is at its best—collecting complex health data and simplifying it. Yes, the little graphs tracking when and for how long you sunk into REM sleep are interesting initially, but it’s the quick reference that you return to time and again. That’s how you build a habit, which is exactly what health-tracking wearables are meant to do.
As an aside, the sleep tracking abilities of the Oura Ring feel especially good after reading our review of the Ultrahuman Air, Oura’s biggest competitor at the moment, which struggles mightily in this department (and others). Here’s a complete head-to-head review between the Ultrahuman and Oura ring if you’re interested in learning more.
There are a few more nuanced differences between the Oura Ring and other health trackers, but the biggest is also the most obvious: it’s a freaking ring.
I don’t judge those who like their smartwatches, but I’ve grown too attached to my humble Seiko 5 Sport to wear one. Thus, the Oura Ring is perfect for me, because it does most of what the Apple Watch and its competitor do, but only takes up a spot on my finger. And the ring looks good. Well, it looks like a rather nondescript ring, which works. It can smudge a little easily, but it’s hardly noticeable unless you shove it in someone’s face.
It’s also good for folks who don’t like watches at all, which is a fair number of folks.
I had zero issues with app connectivity, updates, or navigation. I can’t tell you how rare that is with any apps, much less an app not designed by a major tech company.
The home screen highlights notable figures like a particularly high-calorie burn and offers plenty of real estate to explain new features associated with firmware updates. Then there’s a screen for each of the three primary categories the ring tracks—Readiness score (stress, activity, and rest), Sleep score (exactly what it sounds like), and Activity score (exercise and movement). There’s also a screen called Explore that’s a well of guided breathing exercises, meditations, learning programs, and so on.
Moving through it all is very simple, which is exactly what it should be.
There really isn’t much to say here. The battery is wicked powerful. Over the course of three months, mine averaged exactly 6 days of use before needing to grab the charger. The website says it should last between 5.5 and 7 days, so 6 seems average on the whole.
I hesitate to compare it to its smartwatch competition because the Oura Ring has a lot less going on (and subsequently far fewer features), but for the record, I’ll say that most smartwatches run for about 12 to 20 hours per charge. Make of that what you will.
If you haven’t heard of the Oura Ring yet, you’ve probably seen it on someone’s finger. The tiny health- and sleep-tracking device has been a favorite of fitness enthusiasts and celebrities since it debuted in 2015.
Now in its third iteration, the Oura Ring tracks and analyzes a host of metrics, including your heart-rate variability (HRV), blood oxygen rate, body temperature, and sleep duration. It uses this data to give you three daily scores, tallying the quality of your sleep, activity, and “readiness.” It can also determine your chronotype (your body’s natural preferences for sleep or wakefulness), give insight into hormonal factors that can affect your sleep, and (theoretically) alert you when you’re getting sick.
I wore the Oura Ring for six months; it gave me tons of data about myself and helped me pinpoint areas in my sleep and health that I could improve. It’s also more comfortable and discreet to wear than most wristband wearable trackers.
However, the ring costs about $300 or more, depending on the style and finish, and Oura’s app now requires a roughly $72 yearly subscription to access most of the data and reports.
(Oura recently announced that the cost of the ring is eligible for reimbursement through a flexible spending account [FSA] or health spending account [HSA]. The subscription is not.)
If you just want to track your sleep cycles and get tips, a free (or modestly priced) sleep-tracking app may do the trick. And despite some improvements, the Oura Ring struggles to track workouts, so if that’s important to you, a dedicated fitness tracker might be a better choice.