I've worn my Oura Ring for over a year — but I would only recommend it to this specific group of people
Save up to $130 on the Oura Ring Gen3 at Best Buy Canada right now.
Way back in January 2024, I started wearing the Oura Ring Gen3. Over the past year, the smart ring has had a front-row seat to my health. It knows my heart rate variability (HRV), blood oxygen rate, body temperature and sleep duration. As a fitness tracker, it follows my movement (or lack thereof) and provides me with a daily Readiness Score that, in all honesty, I have a habit of ignoring.
The Oura Ring has also turned out to be quite the conversation starter. With whom do you ask? Namely, people wanting to know whether or not the ring is worth its steep $600 price tag.
Below, I share my unfiltered review of the Oura Ring Gen3: what I like, what I love and where there's room for improvement.
Shop the Oura Ring Gen3 in rose gold (pictured), silver, brushed titanium, gold and stealth (matte black).
- Accurate sleep tracking
- Excellent for menstrual health tracking
- Easy to digest data
- Top-notch health metrics
- It charges quickly
- It's sleek
- Not a great fitness tracker
- The ring needs recharging every few days
Summary
Don't feel like reading? I'll summarize it here: if you're interested in tracking your sleep, menstrual cycle and overall health, the Oura Ring Gen3 is fantastic. However, if you want a fitness tracker that provides real-time data and accurate workout logs, you might find it lacking. If you keep scrolling, I'll explain why.
In this guide:
What is an Oura Ring?
The Oura Ring is a health and fitness-tracking ring, with many similar functions to the Apple Watch, Fitbit and Whoop band. Regardless of the finish, every Oura Ring is made of titanium. It's water resistant up to 100m/328 ft, non-allergenic and lighter than the average wedding band. The ring can withstand a variety of temperatures, ranging from saunas to cold Canadian winters.
While it's far smaller than many fitness trackers, the Oura Ring packs a gigantic, biometric-laden punch. It measures resting heart rate and heart rate variability with near-perfect accuracy and tracks temperature changes as slight as 0.13°C/ 0.234°F.
One of its most famous features — the Sleep Score — uses your total sleep, heart rate variability (HRV), nighttime movement, blood oxygen sensing and sleep regularity to deliver a data-driven answer to the question, "How did you sleep last night?" Once your ring gets to know you, it suggests an optimal bedtime to improve your sleep quality.
The Oura Ring Gen3 automatically detects over 40 activities, including housework, walking and strength training, and adds your movement to your daily activity score. It tells you how much you moved the previous day and, partnered with your nightly sleep score, delivers a Readiness Score that calculates your readiness for the day.
In terms of heart health, the ring has a few functions, including 24/7 heart rate monitoring and cardio capacity (your VO2 Max), that work together to give you your cardiovascular age. One of my favourite features of the ring, this feature shows you how your cardiovascular system is aging relative to your chronological age, and what that may mean for long-term health.
Oura Ring Gen3
Oura Ring Gen3
Oura Ring Gen3
Oura Ring Gen3
What the Oura Ring Gen3 does well
Accurate sleep tracking
Hands down, the biggest draw of the Oura Ring is its ability and accuracy to track your sleep. The ring tracks seven contributors — total sleep, efficiency, restfulness, REM sleep, deep sleep, latency and timing — to determine a daily sleep score. It also tells you your average and lowest heart rate and your average HRV. If you care about metrics like average oxygen saturation and sleep efficiency, it's a top-notch device.
The data is interesting and easy to digest
More than anything, the Oura Ring provides you with a lot of interesting data. Your daily Readiness Score, for example, is based on nine "readiness contributors," including your resting heart rate, HRV balance, body temperature, sleep balance and previous day's activity. The data they provide is laid out in a way that the average person can digest: no one needs a medical degree for interpretation. I particularly enjoy the "My Health" section, which provides you with your "cardiovascular age" and cardio capacity. My cardiovascular age, for example, was eight years younger than my actual age while I was walking the Camino de Santiago this summer. Today, it's seven years younger; still good, but obviously less so now that I'm not walking 35+ kilometres a day.
It's fantastic for menstrual tracking:
Whenever someone asks me who the Oura Ring is best for, 9/10 times, I recommend it for women wanting to track their cycles. The ring's sensors track your body temperature, a versatile metric that may indicate illness and tell you where you are in your menstrual cycle.
If you want to know what your temperature has to do with your fertility, Oura has partnered with Natural Cycles, a temperature-powered birth control, to tell you.
Natural Cycles
I bought a Natural Cycles subscription when I got my Oura Ring, and I can confidently say it is the most accurate period prediction app I have ever used. Using your temperature data provided by Oura, Natural Cycles can be used as an FDA-cleared, non-hormonal, non-invasive birth control. It uses your temperature to identify fertile and non-fertile days and predicts ovulation. If you want to get pregnant, the ring can provide accurate dates about your estimated peak fertility, chances of conception and detected ovulation. The Natural Cycles subscription costs $100 CAD annually but is well worth it, in my opinion.
Where there's room for improvement
The battery life isn't great
According to Oura, the ring should last up to one week on a single charge, but in my experience, it needs charging every few days. This isn't the biggest deal considering how much data it provides via such a small device, but it is something to note, regardless.
It's not the best fitness tracker
At the end of the day, the Oura Ring should be considered a wellness and sleep tracker instead of a fitness tracker. The ring does provide several fitness metrics, including total calorie burn, steps and walking equivalency, and it can alert you to move your body if you've been stagnant for too long. That said, I find it routinely struggles with a few important things.
The Oura ring will automatically detect activity and suggest a category for tagging in the app. However, the automatic detection is only accurate some of the time. If I am out for a casual stroll, it will often suggest a vigorous hike. If I'm sitting watching TV, it will ask if I'm napping. For more intense strength-based workouts, it doesn't register anything at all.
I also have a hard time believing the step count and walking equivalency. It will often show I've walked far greater distances than I have, especially compared to my iPhone. As I write this, my iPhone says I have walked 3 km today and my Oura Ring, 7.4 k.m.
Is an Oura Ring worth it?
Critiques aside, there's a reason why I have worn my Oura Ring for more than a year — I love it. The ring has given me so much insight into my overall health, especially regarding my menstrual cycle and fertility. The first thing I do every morning is check my Sleep Score, and the last thing I do before shut-eye is confirm all my day's activities. If you want the Oura Ring as your primary fitness tracker, I would suggest you look elsewhere. However, if you want a device that provides top-notch sleep and wellness metrics, it's worth the investment.
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