Oura Ring Reviews
Oura Ring Review: A Detailed Look
The Oura Ring is a wearable technology product originally developed via Kickstarter, where the company's highly successful online campaign wildly exceeded its funding goal.
Oura Ring creator OURA Health Ltd. is a company that is based in Finland and was founded in 2013.
The company’s stated aim is to provide accurate and actionable health data through an unobtrusive and stylish device.
How Does Oura Ring Work?
In short, the Oura Ring is a wearable piece of technology that helps users track their sleeping patterns and how they are affected by activities and lifestyle choices throughout the day.
The latest version (Oura Ring Gen3) comes in two different style choices and up to 5 finish options. It also boasts an upgraded memory capacity of 16mb and more sensors.
The Oura Ring is made from Titanium and is water resistant up to 100m. It is scratch resistant, though the company cautions that after prolonged everyday use it may develop some scratches.
The sensors on the ring sit on the artery in your finger, which the company argues gives more accurate readings when compared to wrist-based trackers.
What Does The Oura Ring Track?
Sleep
Sleep tracking was one of the core features when the company launched and it continues to be the cornerstone of the product.
When you wake the app lets you analyze your sleep and gives you a sleep score based on last night’s data.
This score is based on:
- How long you spent in each sleep stage
- Body Temperature
- Heart Rate
- Blood Oxygen Sensing (SpO2) - to determine if there were any breathing disturbances during sleep.
- Heart Rate Variability
- Respiratory Rate
- Nighttime Movement
While you’re asleep, the ring takes note of the length of your sleep, determining the state of your brain and the stages of sleep.
It also tracks other parts of your physiology, such as sleep efficiency, timing, latency, lowest resting heart rate and any disturbances to you during sleep.
This all helps to analyze the quality of your rest, given by a total Sleep Score each night.
Along with the information obtained from the morning hours, it gives you a Readiness Score that helps you with decision-making for your daily lifestyle choices.
Readiness Score
This metric is meant to help users get a feel for their body and know when rest is recommended versus pushing your activity level. It uses data from 20 different measures to determine its score.
This type of data can be used several different ways, like staving off illness by not exerting yourself when you’re displaying less than healthy vitals.
It can also help you make long term adjustments based on monthly reports, this data can help you understand what activities are having negative/positive effects on your overall health.
Activity Score
These features can provide a wide range of data to help you optimize workouts and daily general fitness goals.
This includes a 24/7 heart rate monitor, route, distance, pace, calories burned, and HR recovery.
Conveniently, the Oura Ring has automatic Activity Detection so you don’t have to manually initiate exercise tracking.
The Oura Ring comes with an integrated app that acts as a platform to analyze the data from the ring.
It shows you the information the ring gathers and presents it in charts and diagrams for you to better visualize everything.
It is also capable of giving you personally tailored suggestions for ways to improve your overall health.
Oura Ring Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Attractive Design
- Unobtrusive Tracker - can be worn all night
- Long Battery Life (up to 7 days)
- Quality Materials
Cons:
- Can be difficult to find perfect fit
- High cost
- Doesn’t feature an alarm
- Requires paid subscription for full potential
Customer Reviews & Complaints
Overall the Oura Ring has received great feedback, its sleek design and hardiness has been highlighted by many online reviews.
The majority of write ups that you find on google are from tech and health companies who, for the most part, have favorably reviewed the Oura Ring.
However, those promotional reviews don’t always reflect the realities of using a product long term in the real world.
When you look at a broad number of reviews from actual customers you can find some of the drawbacks of the Oura Ring.
Some user complaints mentioned:
- Issues with charging
- Reliability issues after extended period of time
- Connectivity issues
- Poor customer service experiences
Overall though, the positive reviews far outweighed the negative ones.
The only real pervasive complaint was from customers who felt the paid subscription model was priced excessively high and wished the company stuck to their original one time payment fee.
Customer Service
For assistance with your purchase, setup information, or troubleshooting guides you can visit the Oura Ring help center at https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us.
If for any reason you would like to return your Oura Ring, you are able to do so within 30 days after receiving the product. It must be fully functioning and undamaged. You can initiate a return via their website.
The Oura Ring Gen3 is covered under a limited warranty period of one year, the Oura Ring Gen2, has a limited warranty period of two years.
Cost & Price Plans
The Oura Ring Generation 3, starts at $299 for the heritage model and $349 for the horizon model.
Certain finish options like stealth, gold, and rose gold will raise the price.
If you want full access to Oura Ring data features you will also have to subscribe to a $6 a month membership plan.
Competitors and Alternatives
The Fitbit is arguably the most popular brand of wearable technology available on the market. It has a variety of clips, wristbands and watches that can keep track of your heart rate, sleep and more.
When it comes to Oura Ring vs FitBit, Oura Ring easily wins out when it comes to size. This is because being in the form of a ring can make the Oura Ring more compact but still stylish.
Next, there is the Motiv, which also comes in the form of a ring. It tracks your fitness, heart rate, as well as sleep. Since they’re both rings, comparing the Oura Ring with Motiv is a bit more balanced.
For Oura Ring vs Motiv, the Oura Ring has a brighter shine, as the Motiv has a subtler matte design. However, the Motiv ring also boasts a longer battery life.
Lastly, there is Ringly. Ringly produces smart bracelets and rings that look glamorous and high fashion.
Ringly smartings can help you track your fitness, give you alerts on the go, and provide a guided meditation.
The Bottom Line
The Oura ring presents some unique advantages when compared to the competition.
It has been highly regarded for its sleep tracking accuracy, while not perfect, providing enough actionable data to warrant the cost.
The company has commissioned their own research testing the Oura Ring’s photoplethysmography (PPG) technology against the standard sleep laboratory tests.
That study concluded that Oura Ring is:
“A valid tool for measuring average nighttime resting heart rate (RHR) & variability (HRV)" and “A highly accurate means of assessing body signals and long-term health behavior” [1]
The Oura Ring offers additional benefits to female users by providing an accurate period tracking function based on body temperature data.
It does fall short for some athletic tracking purposes, particularly real time data as it has no display.
Overall, if it’s within your budget, factoring in the extra $72 per year subscription fee, the Oura Ring can be a great asset in building data based healthy habits.
If you have any experience with the Oura Ring, please leave your reviews below.
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Oura Ring Customer Reviews
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BAD BUSINESS
Cannot get a return merchandise label. I highly discourage a purchase. Not getting any response to get a return label.
No phone number contact at all.
The gold rubs off! And the tracking is not great.
Bait and Switch unless you pay the monthly ransom
I purchased the 1st generation of the Oura Ring and was mildly impressed. The data that it provided was useful. Along came the Generation 3 ring and it had more advanced and better bells and whistles. However, the ring came with a lifetime commitment of paying money to the company. After the trial period all of those bells and whistles became useless unless you paid the monthly ransom to see the data. If you don't pay the fee then the ring doesn't provide any useful information. This is Bait and Switch. Do not waste your money.
Scam beware of monthly subscription to view heart rate
I love this Ring, what a great 1st year!
Spring 2022 with the surge in interest in virtual tools, Apps, and devices in healthcare and wellbeing I also became interested to explore these.
Oura Ring Gen 3, similar to other higher-end products required the purchase of a device/ring $300 and a monthly fee of $6 for the App after a 30-day trial with an option for a refund.
I was stunned by the number of sensors and metrics available all in a tiny ring! Temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen % saturation, I suspect skin-related conductivity...probably more, and the integration of these to produce a breadth of metrics.
I was also amazed that such a complex instrument could contain a battery to power it for up to 6 days! (My watch every 2 days, still great). The battery and charging system has worked well for me, possibly upgraded firmware since some reviewers noted difficulty. This small battery has to have limited life, especially as I doubt there's room in the ring for a life-prolonging system as in a smartwatch or phone. Oura makes great recommendations to prolong its life: aim to charge the ring on its stand for about 15-20 minutes each day or two when possible, in line with lithium battery care around rather than full charges or deep discharges. At 11 months, my ring went for 5 days (rather than 6, I'm really happy) I hadn't noticed until I forgot to charge it those days.
The App (Android and IOS) is elegant in both its simplicity and available complexity of information presented can be as simple or detailed as your heart desires, along with updated information about exercise, sleep, indicators of health and wellbeing, and a breadth of areas of related interest written and audio-visual. And as methods of collecting information (from the same sensors) is updated, including reliability, so is the App and the ring's firmware.
This is a very potent tool along with the App. I am sympathetic to owners of previous models who are understandably unhappy about the change from 1-time lifetime App membership fee to monthly from Gen 2 to Gen 3. Even knowing upfront about this fee, I was initially irked. $300 equipment purchase also requires $6/month, and more detail than I was initially interested to know. My 1 year newbie experience has been though, that the ongoing update of information and functionality of the App and ring more than pays for itself. I know much more than I did last year.
What sets Oura Ring apart from my smartwatch which I love and use (data including about exercise and sleep seems fairly consistent between in two despite some differences in tech) is the inclusion of activity and recovery balance, integration of sleep quality, and other measures of wellness and fatigue. It provides useful feedback and simple suggestions regardless of goals set, and I can head or ignore these without being sidelined :) I cannot say with confidence that my watch does not include this as well. It's more that without looking for this advice, my Ring & App called it to my attention. After several months of ignoring it, I'm finding that it is indeed useful.
I was surprised with how the App adapted further to me with each passing week and began to make suggestions such as, "Yesterday's activities pushed your [energy], but looks like you're recovering nicely. Listen to your body and do what feels good today," along with a reduction in activity goals that day- which I was free to follow or ignore and initially ignored much of the time. I began to notice that I missed my own activity goals during periods I'd ignored App advice to temporarily reduce activity. I also noticed that my overall activity during my day was greater during times that I adjusted exercise sessions down based on App recommendation to do this.
As I follow App suggestions more closely, I also see recommendations when I am well rested that I might wish to push myself with increased activity for the day than the prior.
100% chance you were paid to write this review.
Customer service is terrible!!! I was a loyal customer for 3 years
I agree > i owned the generation 2 ring for 3 years, it was great, it would give me values of all my activities, I loved my ring.
Then it broke, I went online to buy a new one and surprise, they changed to generation 3 and I have to pay subscription of $6USD a month? on top of the hefty up-front cost, I do not think is worth it, for the information I used to get, which was great, but paying $72 USD a year seems like a lot to me for wat you get.
Online I read that generation 2 owners at the time of change were given opportunity to buy a generation 3 and they were given a lifetime subscription, really?? no one told me anything, I didn't get any emails, no mail, etc.
I was not advised on the change, I sent numerous emails to customer services, they are a JOKE, didnt do anything for me... other than to say I am sorry, the period is up for that offer... BS ! If that is the way Oura treats their customers, I do not want to be associated with them......
The ring is not accurate regarding sleep.
Must pay ransom for data
absolute truth ! that is ransom... pay up front, that is what they use to be, that is why the price was so much.
There is no customer service. No way to address defective product.
I agree!! customer service is practically non-existent....... why pay someone a salary to respond (if they do!) to say something you already know... that is BS. Oura: there is a lot to learn in customer service from successful companies like Amazon...
No phone #. Oura support can't or won't offer resolution.
in total agreement. I sent numerous emails and messages thru my app and they responded once and told me something I already knew. they did nothing to help me, totally useless, for that I prefer not to have a response, so you do not waste my time anymore.
Oura - my opinion...
Save your money, it's an over priced gadget that gets pretty boring quite quickly. If you have a smart watch you're getting probably better info.
Not Worth It
Rip Off subscription
Ring is pretty much useless if you don't pay monthly. Pay a pretty high price up front, after free period is up and you realize the ring is worthless without paying monthly its too late to return. Customer service gives zero F's pretty sure its automated responses.
Insight on sleep patterns
Failed within 90 days!
After less than 3 months it stopped working despite following the troubleshooting guide. It began losing power several weeks ago requiring more frequent charging before it quit entirely and stopped being recognized on Bluetooth.
There is no customer service to call. Having emailed, I received a request for my name- 6 days later no contact. Sorry to say a company that operates in this manner is bogus. Stay away!
Disappointing! Months Later & Still No Ring!
Disappointed on all levels! I Ordered this as a gift for my father back in late August early September of 2021 and have yet to still even receive the ring. Who knows if it will even come before the end of the year at this point!
This is so frustrating and all I keep hearing back on the ticket I opened over a month ago was we are shipping it and then I never received any shipping information. At this point I may be better off just asking for my money back and going somewhere else.
Happy to provide my confirmation details and the open ticket if that helps me get a legitimate response! Otherwise if I continue to not get proper follow up I will be contacting my lawyer.
Nice product; greedy company abandons customers
The product is good and useful, but the company is shoddy and greedy. I bought the ring just six months ago for $400 plus taxes and shipping etc. They offered continued lifelong support the use of their product.
Now they want me to invest another $400 to get a 3rd gen ring. Else they are slapping a $6/month charge for using it. That is a bait-and-switch racket. This is patently unfair. Shame on the company for doing such a thing to its customers.
Yeah Im annoyed with the subscription. This is a new policy. Original 2 versions did not require. I tried to swap mine out fro 2nd gen they would not do so.
that is awful Close to what happen to me, they didn't let me swap or send me any information about the 3rd generation swap and customer service (usefulness) would not allow me to change as the period was over. No one told me anything? Paying monthly subscription now on top of buying the ring is ransom
Oura ring user
Pretty sure Yvonne R works for Oura.
Agreed Jon seems like a plant to me. Yvonne is a mole.
Wait until Yvonne's battery loses it's ability to hold a charge and then see her rating...
There is zero customer service.
I would love to exchange my defective ring.
There is no way to do so.