I put on an Oura Ring smart ring for the first time in the summer of 2021 and have worn it every day since then. It’s still the piece of wearable tech I’ve used the most, and it’s unusual for a product to be this sticky.
But recently, I’ve started to question what the future holds for it. The answers I’m getting aren’t very good, which makes me wonder how much longer it will stay on my finger.
Why I love the Oura Ring?
I want to start with why I still wear the Oura Ring. First of all, I really like how it looks. I recently switched to a silver version of the third-generation ring instead of the glossy black one I had been wearing. I think I like it better. It doesn’t stand out as much on my finger, but it still sparkles in the sun. It’s very comfortable and doesn’t bother me at all, so I’m happy to wear it all the time. That’s a lot more than can be said for some smartwatches. It has gathered some scratches and scuffs, though, and they show up more here than they do on the gloss black version but less so than they did on the Stealth design I first tried.
Next, I love that the Oura Ring is always there for me. It syncs easily and has never missed a day’s activity or a night’s sleep. The data in the app is clear and easy to understand. It’s just what I want from a wearable health device. I’m also happy with how long the battery lasts. I’ve had the silver third-generation model for six months, and I can still use it for about five days. However, I’m not sure how long the battery will keep up this performance. Digital Trends’ Mobile Staff Writer Christine Chan also wears a third-generation Oura Ring, and after a year, the battery in hers only lasts for about two days.
I like that when I wear a traditional watch, I can still track my health and activity and that it doesn’t look out of place or too technical. It doesn’t stand out, but it still gets a lot of attention. People often ask if it’s the Oura Ring and if I like it. Until recently, I’ve always been very positive about it when I answer, stating how long I’ve worn it, how the sleep data is interesting and helpful, and how much I appreciate the good battery life. I used to say that the only problem was the subscription, which I still think is a big problem. But now, there are other negative things creeping into my mind when I think about recommending the Oura Ring.
Oura’s got new (and limited) tricks
We need to talk about the features of the Oura Ring to understand what’s making me change my mind. Since I last wrote about wearing the Oura Ring in May 2022, both the blood oxygen (Sp02) monitoring feature and the workout heart rate tracking features have arrived — but only after being missing in action since the end of 2021 when they were announced.
Your Sp02 levels are tracked while you sleep, and the app shows the standard blood oxygen percentage number as well as an overview of how changes in it may have affected the way you breathe. It’s helpful because the app tells you how important any disturbances you record are, but it’s hard to know what to do about them. It’s also too bad that you can’t run it all day, even at a lower capacity.
The workout heart rate tracking came out in May of this year. It works for walking, cycling, and running, and it shows the maximum, minimum, and average heart rate. It also gives insight into how hard you worked, along with a map of your route if you exercised outdoors. It’s a simple but useful fitness tracking system that, when combined with sleep data, gives you more information about how ready you are for the day.
Daily, the Oura Ring app gives you a clear picture of your overall health. You can drill down to see more information, such as the average heart rate for the day, the time it takes to recover, and even more information about it when you’re sleeping. You can also see your heart rate variability (HRV) data, but it’s harder to understand because, unlike heart rate, there are no simple baselines that work for most people. I can see that my HRV goes up and down, but I don’t know if this is good or bad or how to change it (or not) if it is. This is a problem with most health and fitness wearables, not just the Oura Ring.
Even though I’m glad Sp02 and workout heart rate tracking are finally here, it’s been a long time coming. Oura has a history of releasing features slowly, and that hasn’t changed, since other features that had been promised are still not ready. The more things like this happen, the less I like the product and the more worried I am about its future.
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More features still to come — at some point
When Oura announced that it could track your heart rate during workouts, it also said that it would be adding new workouts over the next few months. But no one else has come after six months. A general workout mode can’t be that hard to add, and since many people do activities other than walking, running, or cycling on a regular basis (I do), it’s annoying that they can’t be easily added to the Oura app.
These aren’t really solutions because it’s hard to justify buying two wearables when one could or should do the job.
To get around this, you can wear an Apple Watch or a smartwatch that works with Google Fit and syncs with the Oura app to track other workouts. The fact that the Oura Ring syncs with Strava fills in some gaps, but the platform is still focused on running, swimming, and riding, and it needs another wearable. These aren’t really solutions because it’s hard to justify buying two wearables when one could or should do the job.
Even though a blog post from November said that the new sleep stage algorithm was coming soon, it’s still not out for my Oura Ring. In an email to people who owned an Oura Ring, the company said that the new sleep stages algorithm would be added to the app as a beta feature. If you were invited to test it, you would be able to turn it on. At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a date set for when the improved sleep stage tracking will be available to the public. This is a shame, given all the buzz about it and the fact that it was used to promote the third-generation ring more than a year ago.
Oura’s slow updates continue to be frustrating. It’s an expensive product that comes with a subscription plan. I don’t expect to have to wait for new features, especially when I don’t know when they will arrive, and I’m less willing to do so as time goes on. It also brings up a bigger problem. I’m still waiting for features that were promised last year, but what’s more important is that I don’t know what Oura has planned next. And that is a different kind of problem.
Timelines — and the future
It’s almost a given that a new smartphone will have hardware changes that allow for new features and make it necessary to upgrade, but Oura can only go so far with the design of a ring, and it can only fit so many new sensors inside. The best thing about Oura is what it can do with these sensors and the software around it. Oura charges a monthly fee to keep your data in its app, so it needs a clear plan for adding new features and making software improvements to make sure people will keep paying for a long time.
But there isn’t one, and even if there were, would I trust any of the timelines? The answer is getting more and more “no,” and the longer I wait to get features that have already been promised on my Oura Ring, the less likely I am to believe any dates given for new features. Now that the third-generation product has been out for a year, the lack of features and lack of information about what the future holds make it less appealing to pay monthly for the Oura Ring.
Since the Oura Ring is missing features and doesn’t tell you what the future holds, it’s less appealing to pay for it every month.
When great health and fitness products like the Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra don’t come with a subscription package but still get regular updates with useful features, I’m frustrated by the Oura Ring. I really like the hardware, and I still find the app and its data useful. However, Oura’s slowness is making me less confident, and the company’s silence about what I can look forward to is worrying.
The more I use the Oura Ring, the more I’m sure that smart rings have a lot of potential for tracking health and fitness, but I’m starting to feel like I love smart rings more for what they can do than for what they are. The Oura Ring is on my finger, but if it doesn’t meet my everyday needs now and in the future, I might take it off. This is a big problem because if someone takes off a wearable device, it’s likely they won’t put it back on.
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