Smartwatches have long been dominating the fitness industry, allowing users to track steps, sleep, heart rate, and more. While they are ingenious for the data they can collect, there is one striking limitation that still prevents a pocket of potential users from taking the plunge: what if you’re just not a “watch person”?

To commit to a fitness watch and reap the rewards of the data, you need to wear your watch 24/7. That might not be a problem for many, but for some, it will be enough to put them off entirely, especially when it comes to sleeping. Enter the Oura ring.

Oura is the fitness ring that blends in with your everyday jewelry and has quietly been disrupting the wearables industry since 2015. We decided to try it out ourselves to see how the product stacks up.

Overall appearance

The Oura ring comes in a few different finishes depending on which model you choose. The Heritage model (more of a signet ring style with one flat edge) comes in four finishes, and the Horizon model (completely round in shape) comes in six.

Horizon: Black, Stealth, Brushed Titanium, Silver, Rose gold and gold

Heritage: Black, Gold, Stealth, Silver

The ring itself looks like everyday jewelry. Perhaps very slightly bulkier than a standard ring, but it blends in nicely and is generally comfortable to wear. We were trialing the Heritage model.

Initial set up

Oura is a monthly subscription service that requires you to pay a fee once a month to access your data from the ring. The first month is free, so you can trial it ahead of committing, but without the subscription, you won't be able to access your data. This is worth taking into consideration if you're thinking about taking the plunge.

Subscription details aside, once you download the Oura app, set up an account, and charge your ring, you’re pretty much ready to go! The whole app setup took no more than 15 minutes. For full transparency, we set up ours using an Apple iPhone.

Once that’s done, it’s just a matter of time before the data starts rolling in.

Some data will be logged immediately, such as heart rate and step count, but for some other areas, the ring will need to collect data for a period of days before you can see your overall score. For example, the stress data takes 5 full days of monitoring before you can begin to see the measure.

The Oura App

As a total newbie to the wearables realm, I was apprehensive about what I might be faced with when using the Oura app. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised, and there was very little to decode. The app is very novice-friendly. It's clean on the eye, allowing you to easily digest your stats at a glance. The layout is easy to navigate, and there’s not a huge amount of jargon or detailed graphs to trip you up.

The initial page of the app has a Home screen that gives you a brief overview of all your stats for that day.

Alongside the home page, the app breaks down your stats into four other key areas that you can access in individual menus.


Readiness: Combines multiple stats to give you a score out of 100 based on how physically prepared you feel for that day.


Sleep: Tracks your sleep levels over time and gives tips for improvement.

Activity: Tracks your step count, calorie burn, and workouts.

Resilience: Tracks your resilience against stress and activity based on your recovery times for movement and activities.

Notifications

Oura isn’t a passive app that just sits and waits for you to interact with it. It will also (if you want it to) send you notifications throughout the day reminding you to move or letting you know how close you are to achieving a goal.

Some people might find this overwhelming or simply annoying, but I actually enjoyed the gentle nudge now and again to remind me to stay active or stay focused.

The option to turn the notifications off may be more applicable to someone who perhaps just wants to access their data on demand, but if you’re a bit of a beginner like me, the notifications are actually really helpful and somewhat motivating.

Insights and data

The data that Oura collects is great, and after two weeks of use, I found it to be pretty accurate.

The sleep data is probably the most intriguing set of data that Oura collects, as it shows the different slumber levels that you will enter in throughout the night.

The data is broken down between REM (Rapid Eye Movement), Deep Sleep, Light Sleep, and Awake. Each segment is color-coded, so the graph you see each morning is really easy to review.

Oura gives you a score out of 100 for the day based on the quality and levels of your sleep the night before, and then shares insight on how you may feel for the day, and what you can do to improve your sleep if necessary.

Goal setting

Oura will set you a daily activity and calorie burn goal based on your previous night’s sleep and heart rate levels. For just a standard fitness app, it might be easy to assume that these goals are set at the same standard every day. However, the app is actually quite intelligent and adjusts the goal to be more achievable (somewhat lower) when you’re having a slower day due to a poor night’s sleep and vice versa. During my time with the ring, this score varied daily and seemed to be accurate against my previous night’s sleep, which is quite impressive.

Heart rate

The heart rate reading on the Oura ring is not consistently taking a measurement, and perhaps for good reason, as this would likely have an impact on battery life. The ring actually only takes a measurement every 5 minutes for a minute at a time, which gives you a good even set of readings throughout the day.

The heart rate stats combine a few different areas within this panel, allowing you to also see times when you may have encountered stress, a restful restorative time, workouts, sleep, and daytime activities.

It’s nice to have it all broken down for you in one location, and it’s really interesting to see your different heart rate patterns during different activities.

Menstrual cycle monitoring

I was intrigued by the menstrual cycle monitoring, and it actually took me a while to figure out exactly where in the app this was, as it’s something that needs to be set up and switched on manually.

After eventually finding it, the elements of this feature are pretty good. As someone that uses the Flo app for cycle tracking, it seemed to house nearly all the same features. So it was great to have everything in one place.

- Cycle phase tracking

- Period logging

- Calendar overview of predictions

- Daily flow tracking

- History

- Ovulation tracking with temperature insights

- Pregnancy trimester tracking

Overall, I was pretty impressed. However, the one thing that Oura does not cater to is mood tracking, which is one thing that Flo does really well. But if that’s important to you, you’ll be pleased to know that Oura syncs up with the Flo app and can import your temperature for a more accurate prediction of your cycle! So you don’t necessarily have to use the tracking directly in Oura.

Life integration and battery

Overall, the ring is relatively unintrusive, blending in seamlessly with other jewelry. The size is no bulkier than a standard ring, and on first inspection, you really wouldn’t know it was a fitness ring. The only time you might know it was a bit different from a standard ring is if you’re in the dark. The inner band of the ring has some sensors that can be visible at times when in a very dark environment.

In my opinion, it’s a much tidier and less intrusive option in comparison to a smartwatch. However, as someone that doesn’t work out regularly, perhaps I don’t necessarily feel a need to have my stats readily available at the flick of my wrist. But in contrast, logging into my phone whenever I wanted to access my data wasn’t really an inconvenience.

The battery seemed to last anywhere up to 5 days, which is reasonable, as if you’re serious about collecting your data, you want the ring to be on your finger more than it is off. The charge cycle takes around an hour for a fully drained battery, so it’s speedy too.


Overall, I was sold. As someone that hadn’t previously used any type of activity tracker, I came away from the Oura trial borderline addicted to looking at my stats. I’ve never really been a great sleeper, and when I do have a poor night’s sleep, I simply try to make up for it the following night without paying much attention to any other factors that could make my day and night easier. But Oura has really opened my eyes to a world of self-care.

Even the activity goals made me want to pay more attention to what I was and wasn’t doing. A novelty for me? Perhaps. But I am now a complete convert.