Now that I have had my Oura Ring for 3 months, I feel a little more qualified to share my thoughts! I chose the
Gen 4 ring in Gold. If I went with the Gen 3, I could have saved some money, but I feel strongly I chose correctly. The 4th generation ring is so much thinner and more comfortable than the 3, so I love the feel.
Sizing was intimidating to me at first. You can order a sizing kit so that you can be sure to get the right fit. I went with a size 8, and I'm really glad I did. (The sizing is just like a real ring from a jewelry store, for reference my wedding ring is a 6. ) What I didn't think about is how your fingers naturally swell and shrink day to day and hour to hour. I find that I actually move the ring to different fingers often! Typically, I will wear it on my middle finger on the left side. I find it very comfortable to sleep in as well.
I do have a
silicone cover for it for working out and cleaning. My ring has gotten a little bit scuffed already, but I want to emphasize I'm very hard on my hands.
As a person who loves information, this ring has been amazing. I'd say it took a few weeks for it to really learn my baselines, but it provided helpful information from the first wear. Here are some of my favorite metrics:
Sleep
The sleep data is incredible. Each day you are given a score based on how long you slept and what quality of sleep you had. I strive to get as close to 100 as possible, but I'm usually in the 90s. I'm always shocked at the accuracy. For example, if you have alcohol usually your heart rate doesn't lower to your normal rate while you sleep - so my ring can always tell if I've had a drink. One thing that I typically score low on is latency, which is how long it takes you to fall asleep. I learned that if I lay in bed and watch tv it thinks that I'm just not falling to sleep. So, I've tried to adjust my nighttime routine and not watch tv in bed.
Readiness
You also get a readiness score based on how you slept and your previous day(s) activities. It's basically like, you had an awesome night of sleep and recovered well from your work out yesterday, so you should be able to kick butt today. Or, you slept terrible and you've been burning the candle at both ends - take a rest day. I love this because it adjusts your activity goal for the day. This is awesome because my Apple Watch would always make me feel guilty for taking it easy certain days. For example, I had an extremely active day yesterday and accidentally had caffeinated hot tea before bed so I slept poorly - and my activity goal is just 350 calories versus the last few days when my goal was between 400-500 calories.
Cycle Tracking
This is awesome, and I think some people can really use this information. Your ring takes your temperature and is able to track and make predictions for your cycle. It's pretty accurate for me anyway.
Other Data
The Oura ring also tracks stress levels and resilience. Both of these scores did not appear for me until wearing the ring for about a month. My resilience to stress actually increased this week to 'exceptional' which felt like a big win. The ring also gives you a Chronotype and a Cardiovascular age. No surprise I am a morning person! My cardio age is my actual age, so I'm challenging myself to improve that.
Activity Sensing
I'm still wearing my Apple Watch for activity tracking, like when I go for a run. The watch does a great job at keeping track of distance and your route, etc. One thing that frustrates me about my watch is that I would be working my butt off cleaning or doing yard work and unless I was actually recording a workout the watch would not detect it. My ring catches it all! It will suggest that I've been doing housework or other activities and actually give me credit for them. Huge for those of us who are active but not actually working out.
Other Features
You can 'tag' your day with all kinds of various tags. Things like anxiety, caffeine, getting a massage, getting a flu shot, staying in a hotel....basically you tag your day as much as possible which gives insight into why your scores ebb and flow.
The symptom radar blew me away. Two days before I actually had any symptoms, my ring said that I was showing Major Signs of strain. I came down with a terrible virus and spent most of June unwell. You can put your ring into Rest Mode where you just focus on getting better, and it will pause activity goals. So intelligent! Had I listened to it and rested when it first detected those symptoms I might not have gotten so sick.
There is also a little AI assistant that I find pretty helpful! You can ask it for suggestions or analysis of your numbers.
Cons
To be honest, I can only think of one con. The price. These rings are not cheap! But, I absolutely think the quality is there and you are paying for a flagship product. There is also a subscription fee to use the app which I think is a racket. I paid upfront for the year so I haven't really thought about it since.
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