When thinking about wearable health and fitness trackers, you probably picture a watch or a wrist bracelet. However, this one is different. It’s a ring.
The Oura Ring Generation 3 may have changed the typical approach to health and fitness wearables, but when it comes to its function, is it effective and convenient? Does it have any major differences to all the other tech health fitness trackers out there? Let’s find out.
Oura Ring Generation 3 in a glance
| GO LONG | GO SHORT |
| Stylish and elegant | No display |
| Waterproof | Hassle fitting process |
| Easy to wear and impressive sensors | Requires a membership for most features |
| Long battery life |
Basically, the Oura Ring Generation 3 is a daily health and fitness tracker that can monitor several aspects of your overall wellness. It offers a range of different sizes and four colours, including black, gold, silver and ‘stealth’.
Pros of Oura Ring Generation 3
Here, we’ve picked out the strengths of this health and fitness tracker, taking into consideration its functions, features, usability and convenience to its users.
Click here to get your Oura Ring Gen 3 and upgrade your health and fitness journey.
Stylish and elegant
The ring design is a sensible and elegant solution for those who don’t feel comfortable wearing watches or wristbands.
With Oura Ring Generation 3, you are wearing a piece of jewellery that is both stylish and jam-packed with innovative features. As the brand claims, the Oura Ring may be small, but it is mighty [1].
Waterproof
The Oura Ring Gen 3 is made of durable titanium and has a PVD coating and low profile design to make it look like any other ring. It is non-allergenic and has a seamless inner moulding.
This design ensures it is water resistant up to 100m (300 ft), which also means that it is not sensitive to sweat, soaps, oils and even washing your hands. The only time you have to remove the ring is when you need to charge it – every four to seven days.
Easy to wear and impressive sensors
You can wear the Oura Ring on any of your fingers, but it is recommended to wear it on your index, middle or ring finger for optimal results. Weighing around six grams (0.2 oz) and only 2.55 mm (0.1 inches) thick, there are no buttons or physical controls that you usually find on health tracker watches or bracelets. So, how does it get your health data?
Oura Ring has many sensors to track your heart rate, body temperature and respiratory rate. This ring can gather accurate data on your heart and respiratory rate and movements across all skin tones via its research-grade sensors. These include a green LED as the optical heart rate sensor, a red LED to sensor blood oxygen, an infrared photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor, skin temperature sensors (negative temperature coefficient sensors), photodiodes and a 3D accelerometer to monitor your movements.
Compared to watches and bracelet health trackers, the Oura Ring may be more comfortable when worn during sleep.
Convenient syncing with other apps
The Oura Ring Generation 3 is customised to your goals and baseline goal numbers which you can access on the Oura App. Its Activity Goal is dynamic and changes day to day, it suggests increased activity goals during your high readiness days and decreased on your low readiness days.
As the Oura Ring has no display, all your health data is stored in the app where you can conveniently and automatically sync to your other apps, such as Apple Health, Google Fit, Strava and Natural Cycles.
You can also easily sync your data from another app to the Oura app. It can gather information about your tracked workout session, the period of your workouts and more. If you haven’t used a health and fitness app before using Oura, don’t worry, as it also allows you to manually log your exercises.
Advanced sleep metrics
As sleep is essential in longevity and wellness, Oura has upgraded the sleeping metrics of the Oura Ring Gen 3, with a strong focus on personalisation.
The app asks you to record whether an activity is something you just feel at the moment (feeling) or you already had planned to do (choice). With this added tag, you can see how it affects your sleep and readiness.
When you wake up, the Oura app asks how your sleep was and informs you of your total sleep duration. It gives you a Sleep Score afterward. On the other hand, there is also a Readiness Score, which is basically the holistic picture of your overall health (based on the data tracked and the responses you gave). Your recent activities, sleep patterns and key biometric signals are what the app analyses to provide you with a Readiness Score.
The Oura Ring further provides advanced features like bedtime guidance, where it suggests when to start winding down, an automatic nap detection feature that records your naps and guided audio sessions to analyse how your body signals respond to over 50 audio sessions. This supports meditation, sleep, focus and recovery. Some people who have used the Oura ring with its app even claimed that its sleeping metrics are more advanced than the Apple Watch’s sleep feature.
Accurate health metrics
Another strength of the Oura Ring Gen 3 is its accurate and high-tech health metrics. It has many essential features that can help you live a healthier lifestyle and make wise health decisions.
The Oura Ring app automatically monitors and records your calorie burn, steps, walking equivalency (your daily activity burn as a walking distance), hourly movement, training and inactive times. You don’t need to manually log your activities because the Oura ring can detect over 30 activities for you. Through the Oura ring, the app can record the intensity of your workout through your heart rate and minutes of elevated activity. The app can also include some of your useful workout data from Apple Health or Google Fit.
Your physical and mental recovery is also being analysed using the data on your relaxation, inactivity, activity level and recovery. It also studies your body’s responses to daily habits and choices through your heart rate. While you’re asleep, the Oura ring is still in action to detect your blood oxygen levels and tell if you’re experiencing any breathing disturbances.
But all this tracked data is useless without insight, and the Oura Ring can give you plenty of that too. It can provide you with daily, weekly and monthly calendar views of your key body metrics. You can also get lots of insight into how your workouts went, especially about your heart rate stats, distances, pace, recovery and routes.
Advanced rest mode
The Oura Ring can detect if you are tired, unwell and under stress, and all your activities will be adjusted to allow you to rest. How? Simply through your body temperature.
When the Oura Ring detects irregular body temperature, it automatically perceives it as you may be sick or have an illness; hence, you need to slow down. Also, if you are suffering mentally and need a break, you can manually choose Rest Mode in the app to turn off all your activity goals.
Long Battery Life
The Oura Ring Generation 3 can last up to 4 to 7 days and charges quickly in only 20 to 80 minutes. When the ring has to charge, it sits on a dedicated wireless charging base that is included in your purchase.
The charging wire is USB Type-C which you can easily replace if broken. You will get a notification on your phone from the Oura Ring app when the ring is fully charged [2].
Some other cool features
As achievements are best shared with your loved ones, Oura allows you to add your Oura scores and achievements to your photos and share them with friends. For women, there is an Oura Ring app feature that can predict your period by tracking the changes in your body and give you a heads up, up to 30 days ahead.
Buy Oura Ring Gen 3 HERE.
Cons of Oura Ring Generation 3
We’ve also identified some things to consider before using the Oura Ring Generation 3.
No display
As it is a ring, the Oura Ring Generation 3 has no display, and you still have to use a phone for the app. In short, the ring itself is merely a sensor device, and without the app, you can’t get health and fitness insights.
So, you still need other devices to fully use the Oura Ring. Additionally, when you want to run or work out, you need to have another device with you to be able to simultaneously check how you are doing.
Fitting process
Some people may find the fitting process a bit clunky. When you buy the Oura Ring, the company will send you a free sizing kit.
There are eight Oura Ring sizes. But take note – these sizes are not the same as regular ring sizes. Plus, you need to wear it for a few days before you’ll know if it really fits you.
Requires a membership fee for most features
Buying the Oura Ring Gen 3 does not provide automatic acces to all its features. You’ll also need to pay fees for the monthly membership fee to access some of its app-based features, including the daily health metrics, personalised recommendations and guided meditation tracks.
The bottom line:
Overall, the Oura Ring Generation 3 offers advanced features to guide its users towards a healthier lifestyle and making better health and longevity decisions by digging deeply into a wealth of health data. If the above-mentioned cons are not problems for you, then this health and fitness tracker is worth trying.
[1] https://ouraring.com/product/heritage-silver
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_vTIEoRRtI
