Wearable fitness trackers are popular these days. Everywhere you look, you see a plastic watch on someone’s wrist that is monitoring their health. Trackers come in a wide range of shapes and colors. Whatever the manufacturer, they all look like fitness trackers.
It would be nice to have a fitness tracker that doesn’t look like a piece of cheap plastic. A they all look like fitness trackers. An upscale watch, a bracelet, even a ring would make a nice change of pace.
Oura took that to heart and made a fitness tracker that looks good. Instead of a plastic wristwatch, the Oura ring is an attractive metal ring. In addition to looking good, the Oura ring is a first-rate fitness tracker with a focus on sleep. We reviewed the Oura ring to bring you the details on how it works.
What is Oura Ring?
The Oura ring is a tiny fitness tracker disguised as a metal ring. You can slip it on a finger and forget it’s there; it will track your activity silently as you go about your day (and night). The Oura ring packs a lot of monitoring into a tiny package.
It includes a body temperature sensor, infrared LEDs to track pulse, and an accelerometer and gyroscope to measure motion. The Oura ring is designed for you to slip it on and forget, just like a real ring. It is made in a range of sizes, so there is bound to be one that fits you.
Oura ring is the smallest wearable fitness tracker available these days. It’s probably the most natural tracker to slip on and forget about. It is designed that way on purpose. The less you feel and worry about your tracker, the more you will wear it and track your vital signs.
Advantages of Oura Fitness Tracker Ring
- The ring is more attractive than a plastic watch
- Promotes good sleep
- Helps you understand your sleep and activity patterns
- Tracks your activity history and tells you when you are ready for more – and when you should back off
- Oura ring and app can help with meditation
Disadvantages
- Requires smartphone interaction to use; you can’t just glance at your wrist
- Expensive for a fitness tracker
- Doesn’t give instant feedback the way a glance at a watch can
Who makes Oura Ring?
Oura is a startup that only makes the fitness tracker ring. It believes that quality sleep is the most critical factor in fitness and that tracking sleep is the best way to improve sleep. Oura is based in California.
What are the attributes of Oura Ring?
The Oura ring is designed to be worn around the clock. It continually monitors your heart rate and body temperature to capture your activity level and rest. These measurements are turned into numbers that let you know how much sleep you need, how much active recovery you need, and when you should ramp up your workouts.
The Oura ring does have all the traditional features of a fitness tracker. It watches your heart rate, counts steps, and keeps track of your workouts. Everything is transmitted to the Oura app for reporting and review. The app works on both Android and Apple phones.
The ring can also help you meditate. The app has a meditation mode that tracks your vital signs during meditation and gives you feedback. This can be helpful if you are trying to learn to meditate, or if you want to improve your meditation experience.
How does Oura ring work?
The Oura ring doesn’t just track when you are awake, and when you are asleep, it keeps up with the cycles within your sleep. It measures how long you spend in four phases: REM sleep, deep sleep, light sleep, and wakefulness. By tracking these cycles, the ring knows not just how long you were down, but also the quality of your rest. You can use this information to get better sleep.
The ring also monitors your activity while you are awake. Using your activity and sleep information, the Oura ring calculates a “readiness score” for you. This score indicates whether you are 100% ready for action, need to take a break today, or if you should just go back to bed. The readiness score is a good predictor of how well you can handle a hard workout or a high-stress meeting.
The ring monitors your heartbeat and motion throughout the day. It gives you an activity score for the day; this score predicts how much sleep you need for that night. The ring can help you adjust your sleep cycle to fully recover from tough days and get ready for the new morning.
The always-on temperature tracking is a helpful feature during cold season. The ring can detect even small fluctuations in your temperature, which can be a sign of illness coming on. Instead of facing a miserable day trying to work as usual while you get sick, the Oura ring can let you know when it’s time to just lay down and fight a cold with rest.
Where to buy Oura Ring
The ring is available directly from Oura. Plain silver and black rings start at $299; other colors and diamond decorations are more expensive.
Oura Ring: Is It Worth It?
This is probably a fitness tracker to skip. It is expensive and offers limited functionality compared to other three-hundred-dollar trackers. It does provide more data on the quantity and quality of your sleep than other trackers. However, the extra information is not actionable. Other than “try to sleep longer,” there isn’t a whole lot you can do with sleep tracker information. You don’t need to pay a premium for that advice.
The Oura is an attractive option if style is essential to you. The design is simple, albeit chunky. It’s not noticeable on a man’s hand, and only slightly so on a woman’s. If you want a tracker that you can wear all the time without looking like you are wearing a tracker, the Oura is a good choice.
