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In a world where you can get smart versions of almost everything, from speakers and watches to water bottles and running shoes, I find smart rings particularly fascinating. In some ways they are perfect to wear: unobtrusive, stylish and seamless to combine with the rest of your outfit. However, they’re far too small to pack a screen, so any data it collects is only available in the companion app.
Of all the smart ring offerings currently available, the Oura Ring is the best known and most used, topping our list of the best sleep trackers. The Oura Generation 3 is a solid wellness tracker focused on monitoring sleep and stress rather than pure fitness, with seven temperature sensors that monitor your “recovery time,” an updated heart rate sensor, and a readiness score, just like Garmin or Fitbit.
The Oura ring is a screenless wearable like most other smart rings, a thick but beautiful ring designed to be worn on the index finger. Of course, if you don’t have a physical screen, you’ll need to open the app to see your stats, unless you own one of the best Apple Watches.
You might ask what’s the point of owning two wellness-focused wearables, but Oura has done its best to integrate itself into Apple’s health economy. It has introduced several new features, including an Oura app for watchOS, which allows you to get all your details and health data right on your wrist, including sleep, readiness and activity data. You can also add Oura stats to your watch face.
On iOS 16 and above, Oura has also introduced widgets that let you view your Oura stats on your home screen. These widgets are customizable and can display your sleep score, readiness score, activity score, ring battery level, activity goal progress, daily exercise, body temperature graph, and heart rate graph.
So why should Apple Watch users consider spending more money on an Oura Ring, even if they already own a perfectly good wearable? For some users it will be a matter of constant monitoring, battery life and how you use your watch.
If you charge your watch overnight (which is likely if you’re a power user, unless you have something with a longer battery life, like the Apple Watch Ultra), you’re not using your Apple Watch’s sleep tracking capabilities, as you won’t always have the watch with you.
The Oura Ring can help close those gaps as it’s much easier to wear comfortably at night and it means you can keep giving Apple Health information without being tethered to your watch. The battery life of up to seven days is much better than the 18 hours Apple offers, or 36 hours if you’re an Apple Watch Ultra user.
Oura Rings also track data that the Apple Watch doesn’t. Apple Watches don’t offer recovery stats like Fitbit and Garmin do, so using an Oura Ring in conjunction with your Apple Watch can help you see how ready you are for your next long run. In addition to the “recovery time” mentioned earlier, which looks for the absence of stress signifiers, Oura can even compare the time you spend in bed with the time you actually sleep. It’s a very sophisticated piece of equipment, albeit a highly specialized one.
Apple Watches, on the other hand, are generalist technical gadgets. They’re great for staying connected, reading notifications, emails and other messages on the go, tracking specific workouts and much more: there’s a very good reason why this is arguably the most popular smartwatch brand on the market .
The poor battery life hampers its wellness monitoring capabilities, but if you can afford the expensive Oura subscription, the bezel effectively decouples the wellness aspect from the physical watch, so it still records your data even when it’s watch is charging.
For a certain segment of users, this new integration will make the Oura Ring a must-buy. Others may not like the idea of constant sleep tracking, like the sleep expert I interviewed about the usefulness of fitness watches.