Oura Ring 3 Review
I am obsessed with fitness tracking. I remember being in middle school wearing those cheap plastic pedometers that I think we got from McDonalds (let me know if anyone else remembers this). As I got older I switched to an apple watch: partially for the notifications, but mostly for the step tracking. Recently, my Apple Watch has been dying before the day was over and I was once again in the market for a new fitness tracker. I bought myself an Oura ring and thought that I would share my thoughts with you since I've been using it daily for around a month.
First, the Oura is expensive! I wanted the gold color, so it was $100 more than the other colors for a total cost of $399 (edit: price has now increased to $449). When you order they send you a sizing kit, which is super important. I am usually a size 7, but I ordered my Oura ring in a size 8 and it is perfect. Fingers do swell, so the best bet is to get a size that can fit on different fingers at different times of day and year. For example, I wear mine on my pointer finger of either hand most days, but if I am a little swollen the ring finger works better and if I'm less swollen the middle finger can work.
The battery life of the Oura is much better than the Apple Watch, but if you use the blood oxygen sensing capabilities, it won't last you much longer than 3 days. I like to keep my charger in the bathroom and charge the ring while I shower. Doing this, I've never had my ring die on me or even get close to dying.
The Oura app is really nice. It gives you three scores: a readiness, sleep, and activity score. The readiness score is based on body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, and the previous days sleep and activity. The sleep part of the app is my favorite. It breaks down your sleep into deep, light, and REM sleep and gives you both the percentage and total time you were in each state. It also gives insights about latency, restfulness, and efficiency. The activity part is the last section. You can monitor your heart rate during workout and it also shows you graphs of your daily movement over the entire day and the number of steps you take throughout the day. The step tracker is not the most accurate, if you move your hand, it can sometimes register as a step. But I've worn both my apple watch and the ring on the same day and they are usually very similar with only a couple hundred step difference.
The one downside of the Oura is that most of your data is behind a paywall and you need to pay a monthly fee to access the best parts of the apps. The first six months are free, but then its $6 a month. Not enough to bankrupt me, but it is annoying that I spent so much on a ring for it to come with a recurring fee. The app does also come with guided meditations. I've tried a couple and like them, so if you pay for something like Headspace, you might justify the cost of the Oura subscription by getting your meditations through them.
Let me know if you have any question about the Oura ring in the comments below and I'll get back to you! If you have an Oura, let me know if you find it worth it or not. I'm a little undecided, but like how sleek it looks compared to a chunky fitness tracker watch.
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