Oura is ringing in the changes
WHEN it comes to health tracking and fitness everyone’s talking about smartwatches… but there is another way.
Oura is a company that’s quietly been building a following for its smart ring – a device worn on the finger that can track all kinds of health related metrics.
And now it’s just about ready to unleash the third version of the ring on the world.
Essentially, it looks like an ordinary ring, yet it’s packed with sensors to quietly monitor your health as you go about your day and night.
There is 24-hour heart-rate tracking, as well as several temperature sensors. This allows for the gathering of accurate fitness and wellbeing data, as well as other features, like the prediction of menstrual cycles for women.
The ring is, of course, tied to a smartphone to help you make sense of the information, and offers a unique score system to help you understand what’s going on.
Via the app you are presented with a sleep score, an activity score, and a readiness score. All three use data analysed by AI and machine learning to give the most accurate insights into how well you score in each area. Are you getting enough sleep, do you have the right balance between activity and rest, and just how far can you push yourself today? These are the questions the simple score system aims to answer.
You can, of course, go deeper in the app and analyse all kinds of information.
The ring is also imbued with some ‘magical’ qualities that allow it to track exercise activity automatically – it can recognise 20 different workout types and will begin tracking as soon as you begin.
When it comes to sleep tracking, Oura says it’s the most accurate on the market, and is even able to tell when you are taking a nap to add to your score.
When it comes to tracking your heart activity, Oura claims 98% accuracy for analysing heart rate variability while sleeping, and 99.6% accuracy when recording your actual heart rate.
The ring also features a blood oxygen sensor, but the software to make use of this is not quite ready and will be introduced next year.
All this good stuff would be useless without good battery life – Oura is claiming four to six days on a single charge, depending on what you do.
Info is synced with the Apple Health or Google Fit services, if you use them.
Like any other good health platform, Oura offers a series of guided sessions to cover meditation and mindfulness, as well as sleep advice, via its excellent iOS and Android apps.
The tracking and sessions options come with an Oura membership, which costs $6.99-a-month (just over a fiver), but new rings come with a six month free trial of the service before you have to start paying.
The ring itself, which comes in four shades, is available to order for $299 (£219) now with a shipping date of November 15.
THIS BAND OF GOLD MAY NOT MAKE YOU HAPPY, BUT IT CAN KEEP YOU HEALTHY