It might seem low on the list, but style is very important for wearables, especially for something like smart jewelry. I like the Heritage Black color of the Oura Ring that I chose because it can be worn with either silver or gold jewelry. Unlike smartwatches and fitness trackers, once you’ve chosen the ring band you can’t customize it, so choosing the color is a big decision.
Syncing
The Oura ring syncs well with its app, but it does take some time to update in the morning. Once it notes you’re awake, you can see a thin blue bar loading at the top to analyze your readiness score and sleep score. It makes sense that it takes a while to load but it is something to note if you’re someone that likes to have immediate data shown to you.
Also, at the start of setting up my Oura Ring, I connected my Oura ring app to my Apple Health app, which shares things like my sleep, weight, height, heart rate, menstrual cycle, and active energy.
Water Resistance
I showered and washed dishes with the Oura ring and found it comfortable. Note that I did not test the Oura Ring against swimming activities.
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Features:
Tag Feature: You can add a tag using the plus sign (+) at the bottom right corner of the app and choose from a wide range of options on how you felt or what you did differently that day. You can use it to track small changes, like new cooling sheets, hot/cold shower before bed, or things like alcohol consumption, new diet, supplements, and more. I have been using it to tag my emotions and symptoms right before my period. There are options for things like bloating, cramps, and even medication. I also appreciate that when I happen to take a nap, the nap tag automatically pops up to be added to my day. The idea is that all of these factors can influence how you sleep and, therefore, your health scores. Essentially, it’s been a great feature that doubles as my personal virtual health journal, since it’s difficult to always keep track of everything you do day to day.
I do feel that while there are a lot of options already available, there should be an option to manually add tags. For example, there’s a sad tag but I would rather there be a crying tag because sometimes I cry right before my period but it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m sad. Other examples of these discrepancies include having a menstrual headache tag versus just a headache tag. I think these little things might make a big difference for people with vaginas.
Explore Feature: The explore section of the app gives you full access to meditation sessions, breathing techniques, and sleep exercises. While I haven’t used a ton of the sessions, the few that I did I found useful and easy to follow.
Log Period Feature: This is a new feature in the Gen 3. The Apple Health app syncs your menstrual cycle, and the Oura app uses this to notify you when your period is approaching. You can log your period with the tag feature and check to see your previous period start dates and upcoming cycle start dates. The drawback is that you can’t see the complete days of your cycle (you can only use tags), so you have to go by the start dates. As someone who uses period apps, both the Apple Health app and the Oura app falls flat because a good period tracking app should allow users to easily log symptoms and check past and future cycles efficiently.
Source: SELF
