Worth It: Oura Ring Generation 3
Why I switched my Apple Watch for an Oura Ring and will never go back
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I’d been wearing an Apple Watch for years to track my activity. It worked well and had the added benefit of showing me all my phone notifications on the watch’s screen, but I never wore it to sleep because I found the band uncomfortable at night. And whenever I needed to attend a fancy event like a wedding, I’d take it off. It just doesn’t look great with a floor-length gown and sideswept updo.
In This Article
What Does Oura Ring Do? • What I Love • What I Don’t Love • The Bottom Line
A few months ago I decided to start looking for an alternative that I could wear even with my fanciest duds. The solution for me? The Oura Ring. After just over three months of continuous wear, I can confidently say I’d have a hard time ever going back to the bulky Apple Watch ever again. There’s lots to love with the device but some limitations to its abilities. Even with those limitations, I’d still choose it over any other fitness tracker.
See our review of the Samsung Galaxy Ring.
What Does the Oura Ring Do?
The Oura Ring uses three small sensors in the interior of the ring equipped with infrared light photoplethysmography to track users’ heart rate, blood oxygen, breathing regularity, heart rate variability, temperature, activity, and sleep.
Photo: Oura Photo: Oura
Things I Love About the Oura Ring
There’s a long list of things I love about the Oura Ring, but I’ll start just with the look and feel of the device because that is why I most looked to switch from my Apple Watch. As a petite woman, (I’m under 5 feet tall), I struggle to find jewelry that fits me well. Bracelets slide off my hands, and rings need to be resized so much that they begin to resemble pretend play items.
The smallest size the Oura Ring comes in is a 6—troubling for me at first—but after going to a Best Buy to try on the ring before I purchased it, I found that it fit both my right and left index fingers snugly enough that I didn’t fear it would slip off during regular wear. Once on my finger, I often forgot I was even wearing the ring.
The exterior material is smooth, the three sensors on the interior of the ring don’t dig into my skin, and it doesn’t snag on my clothes or curls when I’m getting ready while wearing it. A beautifully simple gold band (though also available in titanium, silver, rose gold, shiny black, and matte black), it caught the attention of people I interacted with often. I wore it with a black floor-length gown to a benefit gala and on many evenings out with friends.
Photo: Oura Photo: Oura
With all the data the Oura Ring collects, I was worried that I would have a hard time deciphering the information in the app. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the charts were simple to understand and that there were explanations for each of the terms that I was unfamiliar with, like HRV balance (heart rate variability balance) and training volume. When I reviewed the data collected by my Apple Watch, the charts were simple, but provided me with a tiny fraction of the data I received from the Oura Ring and none of the information about how the previous day’s activity and movement affected my current day. At the end of each week, I reviewed an additional weekly report that showed me my average readiness, sleep, and activity scores, and allowed me to easily spot trends in my data.
In reviewing my daily stress summary, I found a pretty interesting trend. My Oura Ring marked my stress level as “stressed” every single time I was out with a particular new friend, which raised the question: a good sign or reason to run? (I chose to interpret it as sign that the friendship was exciting for me.)
After a few months, the Oura app suggested a 45-minute bedtime window—which, when I stuck to it, actually did lead to an easier, more refreshing wake-up. As for wake-up time, I gave up trying to get myself in the gym at 5 a.m. (which I had been trying and failing to do for months) and instead switched to midmorning workouts as suggested by the app. I won’t say it helped me stick to a consistent workout routine, but it at least made me feel less guilty for not being able to wake up at 5 a.m.
I’ve had the same Apple Watch for well over two years now, and toward the tail end of my time wearing the device, I was charging it every night at bedtime. If I didn’t, I would find myself with a dead watch by midday the following day. Oura’s battery time blew me away. After the first six days of wearing my smart ring, I received a notification on my phone that the battery on the ring was running low. It still had about 15 percent battery life left, but I set it on the charger and washed some dishes while I had the ring off. In less than 30 minutes, I heard a ping from my phone indicating that the ring was back to a full battery charge. The next time I had to set the ring to charge again was almost a week later.
Like many of us, I have a smartphone addiction. I pick it up even when I have no new messages, and when I wore my Apple Watch, I’d use any vibration from my watch as an excuse to pick up my phone, too, which would lead to the inevitable mindless scroll through social media. I’m embarrassed to share just how high my screen time hours were (toggle this feature off in your iPhone’s settings if you’d like to live without this knowledge) or how many pickups of my phone I had each day.
After switching to the Oura Ring, I cut my average weekly screen time by about 3 hours. Because I no longer am wearing a watch that alerts me to every single notification that pops up on my phone, I’ve been able to step away from my device for longer periods of time. I might not respond as quickly to messages anymore, but I think it’s a small price to pay to reclaim those lost hours of mindlessly scrolling.
The final thing that stood out to me with the Oura smart ring is its kind way of suggesting a change in my behavior or time for rest. To me, it sometimes felt like I was being reprimanded by my mom when I used other apps to try to stick to a consistent workout, sleep, or wake up schedule. Even the buzzing from my Apple Watch when it was time for a workout I know I scheduled the day before would often be too rough a reminder for me (I do not find working out fun), and bedtime reminders did not inspire me to actually start winding down.
Not the case with Oura. I receive a single notification when it’s time to start winding down for my ideal bedtime with suggestions for listening to guided breathing exercises in the app and a simple gratitude-filled line about compassion for oneself. When it notices I don’t get enough sleep, my body temperature is elevated, or my heart rate is higher than usual, I receive suggestions for taking it easy, and the app automatically adjusts my activity goal for the day. In a working world where we’re often always on duty and juggling dozens of things at once, it felt good to have this gentle reminder that rest is allowed and important for my health. I didn’t feel guilty for choosing a night out over an early bedtime.
After a minor medical procedure, I switched the app to rest mode for a few days. In this mode, there are no activity goals and though your movement is still tracked throughout the day, there is no score assigned to the activity you do, so there’s no pressure to reach a certain number of steps or calories burned.
Things I Don't Love About the Oura Ring
As great as I found the Oura smart ring to be, it is not perfect. I’m not an athlete, nor am I invested in tracking all the nitty-gritty details of my movement throughout the day, but I find the device’s workout tracking quite frustrating. Rides on the subway were often marked as “moderate intensity” walking, and when I went on runs around the neighborhood, the route recorded in the app often took me through buildings instead of around them. Runs that I started from the Nike Running Club app were identified by my ring, but when I compared the route maps of the two, Oura had me running through buildings while the Nike app did not. Other times, I’d open up the app to find that the ring had recorded half a dozen workouts that didn’t make any sense, like a four New York City blocks walk that indescribably took 30 minutes (this was actually a subway ride).
You have an opportunity to reclassify a workout or remove it from the list of the day’s workouts altogether, but once you confirm or delete it on the app, you cannot make any other changes to the workout entry. This has led me to record quite a few subway rides as walks because I click through the workouts of the day too quickly before I can take a look at them closely.
Unlike with the Apple Watch, there are no GPS tracking capabilities in the Oura ring. That means if you take your ring off and forget where you’ve placed it, you could be looking for it for a while, or worse, lose it for good. More than once I’ve scrambled around my home looking for the ring and missed the convenient Find My iPhone app I can use for any of my frequently used Apple devices.
The Oura ring is expensive. Prices start at $299 and are as high as $549. On top of the initial cost of the ring, to access all of the data and charts collected by the ring in the Oura app, a monthly subscription fee of $6 is required. If you choose to wear the ring without the subscription to the app, you’ll only have access to a daily readiness, sleep, and activity score, and the brand’s educational content—no in-depth analysis of your heart rate or sleep. By contrast, the newest Apple Watch Series 9 starts at $399, but does have plenty of additional functionalities that the Oura ring lacks.
The Bottom Line
The Oura generation 3 smart ring is a good-looking, insightful device that has helped me feel better about my daily habits. I no longer miss my step counts when I’m wearing something fancy or feel guilty about sleeping through a 6 a.m. yoga class because Oura tells me I’m not actually a morning person like I tried to force myself to be. Its activity tracking could use some work, and it isn’t a replacement for regular medical checkups, but for now, it’s the best tracker I’ve ever tried.
