Written by Prof. Rom Feria
I have been eyeing the Oura ring for quite some time now. I have been wearing a smart watch ever since I backed the Pebble Watch on Kickstarter. Now that I wear the Apple Watch (series 5) everyday, I thought that a sleep tracker that isn’t on the wrist is more comfortable.
The Oura ring is a health and activity tracker. It tracks the quality of your sleep (light, deep, REM), how fast you fall asleep, recordings of your movements during sleep, your resting heart rate as well as your heart rate variability (HRV), and your body temperature. During the day, it measures your activity levels (how active you are and for how long), steps, corresponding calories burned, and detects when you are idle or taking a nap. What is different with the Oura ring (compared to the Apple Watch) is that it analyzes all your readings over a span of several days/nights and establishes a baseline. Any subsequent reading will be compared with your baseline and the result determines your readiness score — a clue as to how mentally, physically and emotionally prepared you are for the day. Pretty slick, right?
I found out that a good friend of mine has an Oura ring and that got me checking Ouraring.com again. Purchasing the US$299 ring requires that you know your ring size, which I don’t, or you use their ring sizing kit for a snug and comfortable fit. Fortunately, my friend lent me the sizing kit she used before she ordered hers.
Oura recommends wearing the sizing ring at least overnight, so you can get a feel of the ring even when your finger contracts/expands when it is warm or cold (who knew?). At first I wore it on my right ring finger — it was snug and comfortable. However, after two hours, I figured that it was not the right finger. On Oura’s website, it says that the ring can work on any finger on any hand — my left hand is out of the question as I usually use it to hold my iPhone. On the right hand, the two options are the thumb or the pinky finger. Wearing the ring on any other finger is simply not comfortable over time. Wearing it over the thumb was comfortable, but has a weird feeling, so the pinky finger was the final choice! My friend reminded me that the actual Oura ring is a bit thicker and heavier (the sizing ring is plastic), so I figured that the pinky is the perfect choice.
After wearing the sizing ring on my pinky finger for about four hours — with frequent hand washing (COVID-19 prevention), and spending time on the Mac and iPad typing tons of stuff — I finally admitted that the ring isn’t for me. It was simply not as comfortable as I expected. Maybe if I was used to wearing a ring, then it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I prefer my hands bare.
My Apple Watch will still be on my wrist during the day — to record my walking and jogging (to close a different kind of ring), process alerts (to minimize picking up the iPhone), unlock my Macbook Pro and iMac, control my home automations through Siri, and, of course, to tell time. Until I get my old Series 4 (out for battery replacement) installed with watchOS 7, sleep tracking will have to wait. Yeah, I won’t have the Readiness score the Oura ring provides, but at least I’d get precise heart rate monitoring during exercise, the hourly stand alerts, the breathe alerts, noise level monitoring and fall alert from the Apple Watch. I am hoping that Oura has a model in the works — a thinner (thinner than the sizing ring) and lighter version — unless Apple beats them to it, then that’s another story.