Health & Wellness

June marked my two year anniversary with my Oura Ring! The Oura Ring is hands down my favorite wearable, and the only one I use daily. In my Oura Ring review, I walk through some of my favorite features that far outweigh the cost of an Oura Ring.

I love tracking my health data. But more data is only valuable if you’re collecting the right data, and if you know how to use it. The Oura Ring gives you the right data, along with insights and actions to take. 

Ranging from $299 to $499 in price, it’s not cheap but it’s on par with other wearables on the market. (It’s actually 20% off on Prime Day right now, for some models/colors). I wanted to write this Oura Ring review to give an overview of the Oura Ring, and share how I get the most out of mine: using it for better sleep, stress management and recovery, and even for birth control along with Natural Cycles.

TLDR: With the least expensive model at $299, (less than the cost of one specialist visit) you can have a veritable sleep lab at your fingertips. However, the Oura Ring can’t replace a running watch like a Garmin (it doesn’t have buttons or a screen).  

Read on for the features that might just make you “put a ring on it” with the Oura Ring. 😉

Oura Ring Aesthetics, Fit, & Wearability

A key philosophy of mine is that the “best,” (most accurate, most sustainable, whatever) product in the world is just about useless if you won’t actually use it. For a wearable like the Oura Ring, this means you actually have to want to wear it to get the most out of it! So I’m starting my Oura Ring review with aesthetics and comfort in mind.

Fitness Tracker & Statement Ring

I really like the aesthetics of the Oura Ring, and I frequently get compliments on it. It outshines other wearables by looking like jewelry, instead of a fitness tracker. It looks like a trendy, gold statement ring. 

But at 7.9mm wide and 2.88mm thick, it’s quite large, especially if you have slim fingers like mine. I wear my Oura Ring on the middle finger of my right hand, and if I wear rings on the two adjacent fingers, it rubs into them. So pick a finger that’s not directly adjacent to a ring you wear regularly, such as a wedding band. Unfortunately, the Oura Ring 4 that just debuted is the same overall form factor. Its main differences are a fully titanium construction, recessed sensors, a slightly longer battery life (about a day), advanced signal processing, and a wider size range. Unless these are important features to you, you could probably snag the older version of the Oura Ring for 20% off on Prime Day and be totally happy! I plan to keep mine! 

Ensuring a Comfortable Fit 

The Oura Ring needs a snug fit so its sensors can take accurate readings. Since my knuckles are larger than the base of each finger, this makes sizing difficult. The Oura Ring is too tight to take off without using soap and water to loosen it. It also fits on just one of my fingers, so I’m limited on where I wear it. Consider which finger you want to wear your ring on, and take advantage of Oura’s sizing kit before purchasing!

That said, I wear my Oura Ring 24/7. It’s comfortable enough to sleep, swim, shower, do yoga, and lift weights in. But a thinner, narrower ring design would go a long way towards improving this ring, in my opinion! 

Oura Ring App Layout & Feature Overview

The Oura Ring tracks a spectacular amount of data. Fortunately, the app layout makes this data easy to understand at a glance, and three daily scores give you an overview, without the overwhelm. Yes, there’s an app, and it does cost extra, but only $5.99 per month. At less than the price of one nonfat decaf pumpkin spice latte per month (hey, it’s October), it’s well worth it.

App Home Screen & Daily Scores

I recommend wearing the Oura Ring 24/7, at least at first, to get the most out of it. Check the app right when you wake up, and you’ll see three important scores on your Home Screen: Readiness, Sleep, and Activity. 

Readiness, Sleep, and Activity Scores give you an at-a-glance view of your Oura Ring data, and can be used to guide your day. This is my Oura Ring data from a random day in July. The high Readiness, Sleep, and Activity scores signaled that my body was well-recovered, and it could be a good day to challenge myself with a more intense workout. However, it’s important to trust how you feel, more than any app. If you don’t feel great, don’t push yourself just because the app says so. Sometimes my Oura Ring fails to detect minor illnesses and malaise. A triple crown day might not feel like it, so listen to your body above all else. 

Tracking Stress & Resilience

Also on the Home tab is a snapshot of your Daytime Stress and Resilience, both relatively newer features that I really love! I was surprised to learn that days I thought were low-stress were actually stressful based on my physiological response. I use the Daytime Stress feature to check myself, remind myself to relax and to take breaks!  

Closely related, the Resilience score assesses how well you recover from stress, both during the day and with restorative sleep at night. During the weeks before my wedding, I really made an effort to build up my Resilience. This gave me a great buffer when last minute plans and preparation inevitably got stressful. And it left me with enough energy to have fun on our destination wedding weekend, without getting sick! Shown below is the automatic workout detection from my wedding day. The late night dancing may have impacted my Readiness score, but I had a blast and didn’t get sick! 

Oura Ring will also show your Daytime Stress in realtime, throughout the day. Open your app and you’ll see a screen like this one, showing your recent stress level. Check this during the day and reflect upon what might have caused periods of stress, or relaxation.

Stress peaks and valleys are normal in life, and the Oura Ring can help you plan for stress, and recover from it.

Now choose your adventure: Scroll down for a deeper dive into the data behind these scores, or continue reading here for Cycle Insights and how to use your Oura Ring as birth control.

The Oura Ring: Fertility Tracker and Birth Control

My Oura Ring review wouldn’t be complete without my favorite feature: birth control.

Integration with Natural Cycles

The Oura Ring integration with Natural Cycles was a long-awaited feature that makes my life so much easier. The Oura Ring uses your temperature to predict your period, and Natural Cycles uses this same data to predict your ovulation day. Knowing this information allows the app to predict your fertile days, which you can use to plan or prevent a pregnancy. See my Natural Cycles blog post for more details! 

Cycle Insights

Even without the Natural Cycles app (which is a separate subscription),  you can take advantage of Oura’s “Cycle Insights.” Over time, Oura will evaluate your cycle length, period length, and cycle variability, and tell you whether it’s regular or irregular. Since variations between cycles are common and likely not a cause for concern, having this data over time can help identify trends that might need to be addressed with a healthcare provider. 

Tracking Cycle Variations

Cycle length, variability, and the lengths of the follicular and luteal phases all provide clues to your fertility and overall wellbeing. For example, a luteal phase (the time between ovulation and the start of your period) that’s shorter than 14 days can indicate a progesterone issue. This can lead to difficulty in getting pregnant. Alternately, a long follicular phase (the time between your period start and your ovulation day), can indicate that your body is having issues releasing an egg (also a barrier to pregnancy). A cycle longer than 35 days, or with spotting in between cycles could indicate other health issues.

It’s important to monitor your cycle and reach out to your health care provider with concerns, especially if you have mid-cycle bleeding, pelvic pain, or painful periods. Quantifying your cycle duration and variability can help you decode your fertility to understand what is happening inside your body. Having regular periods and ovulations confirmed by temperature spikes is good reassurance that your body is likely doing what it needs to each month. The Oura Ring will track all this for you.

 

 

 

 

A Deeper Dive into Oura Ring App Data

If you’ve read this far into my Oura Ring review, you must like health data, let’s be friends. 🙂 Earlier we discussed the 3 daily scores from Oura Ring: Readiness, Sleep, and Activity. Scores are out of 100, and scores over 85 earn “crowns” for the day. (Add the Oura widgets to your iPhone Lock Screen and see these at-a-glance during the day). 

These scores are derived from the many other data points that the ring collects, such as Heart Rate, HRV, SPO2, Body Temperature, Sleep Duration, Sleep Timing, Training Volume, and on and on. Venture off of the Home tab and onto the Readiness, Sleep, Activity, and Resilience tabs to learn more. 

Optimizing Sleep with the Oura Ring 

Improving our sleep is a goal for many of us. This was the main feature that drove me to buy an Oura Ring — it provides the accuracy of a sleep lab at your fingertips.

Navigate to the Sleep tab and you’ll see your Sleep score and other metrics at a glance: Total sleep, Time in bed, Sleep efficiency. You’ll also see a graph of your sleep for the night, depicting your time spent in each stage of sleep: REM, Light, and Deep. You’ll also see the metrics that comprise your Sleep Score. Metrics that are not optimized will be labeled as “Fair” or “Pay Attention,” and colored in light orange or red instead of blue, as seen below. Since the “Timing” metric is orange and labeled “Fair,” you can see that I went to bed too late this night, with respect to my Chronotype (another characteristic that Oura Ring uses to help you optimize sleep!). 

Lastly, HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and Heart Rate (HR) are shown, as these metrics indicate how well you have recovered from the previous day, and can indicate whether something is straining your body. HRV and HR are metrics that can be highly individual, and can vary depending upon your sex, age, and activity levels. They can even change during the course of the menstrual cycle. 

The Oura Ring as a Fitness Tracker

If you plan to use your Oura Ring as your primary fitness tracker, HR and HRV are likely two metrics you already expect to see. Oura takes these a step further by also evaluating Body temperature, Respiratory rate (SPO2), and HRV balance, a comparison of your recent HRV trend over the past 2 weeks to your 3-month average.

 

 

With the least expensive model at $299, you can have a veritable sleep lab at your fingertips. That’s less than 1 specialist visit, and with the wealth of data offered, it’s worth it if improving sleep is a goal of yours. Even after two years I’m wearing my Oura Ring 24/7, and Oura keeps releasing new features like Daytime Stress and Resilience that help me better manage my overall health. Has my Oura Ring review convinced you to “put a ring on it” yet?

Already own an Oura Ring? Let me know in the comments below what your favorite feature is, or what you’d like to see added!

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links on this page are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I earn a commission if you make a purchase. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I would never recommend anything I wouldn’t personally use, and the income goes to keeping this site updated and free for everyone!