ONE RING TO RULE US ALL
SLIP YOUR FINGER INTO THIS NEAT BIT OF TECH AND IT PROMISES TO INSTANTLY WORK TO MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER
I’LL BE honest – I’ve long-since thought the whole idea of sleep tracking to be a little bit ridiculous.
I mean, how can I improve my sleep by knowing what goes on while
I’m asleep? I can’t do anything about it – I’m asleep.
Turns out I’ve got it all wrong. Knowledge is power, after all – and the more you know about the way your body reacts to the things you put it though, the more you can do to make things better.
And that’s what it’s all about – tracking your health, your activity, and your sleep can give you information about how the other things you do in your day can affect them.
Most people would use a smart watch to track these things – a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, say. But these are not right for everybody.
What if you like to wear a nice non-smart watch, maybe even one you have inherited? And what if you don’t like to wear your watch in bed?
There is an answer, and it’s called Oura. It’s a smart ring. It boasts several advantages over a smart watch – firstly it’s much more discreet, obviously, and can be worn comfortably at all times of the day, and secondly it has a batterylife most smart watches can only dream of.
Up to seven days without a
charge is about the average – no screen to power makes all the difference. And you should be able to charge it up fully in 80 minutes.
So far, so good, but what does it actually do?
It’s quite simple, really – it’s just crammed full of sensors. There’s an infrared optical pulse sensor, a 3D accelerometer, a gyroscope and a temperature sensor.
It’s not a bad-looking device, either - it looks pretty much like any other ring (even so, Prince Harry caused a bit of a stir when he was seen wearing one last year).
Once it has gathered all the information it can about how and when you move, when you sleep, and what your heart gets up to while all this is going on, it gathers it all together for analysis in a smartphone app.
And a great smartphone app it is, too. It features full access to all activity and sleep data – it can show you trends and offer insights into the details, and even offers the chance to add tags and notes to the data, so you can remember what you did to make a change on any given day, and see how it worked.
It’ll even measure advanced stats, like your heart-rate variability and average night-time respiratory rate while you’re asleep... and once it has gathered enough data, it’ll start to recommend the best bedtime window for you personally, so you can get the best possible night’s sleep.
A new feature in the iOS version of the app has recently been introduced to help you track how meditating can help your general health – the Moment mode times your meditation and offers relaxing soundtracks to help you stay in the, erm, moment. All the while it tracks all the metrics and analyses them to help you see the benefits and improve. Moment is coming to the Android version of the app later this year.
All this info empowers you to see how what you do while you are awake affects how you sleep, and what effect that has on what the makers of Oura refer to as Readiness.
Yes, you get a score to see just how ready you are to tackle your day... and the goal is to maximise that score every day for better days.
The Oura Ring starts at £280, and comes in silver and black in eight different sizes. See ouraring.com for more details and to buy.