Until a month ago, when I still happened to meet colleagues and some friends every day, I talked a lot with them about my new ring: not because this ring is particularly precious, even if it is not exactly cheap, nor because it represents a future or imminent change in my marital status. I actually bought it myself, the ring; and the reason I'm talking about it is that it's particularly bad. In short, I do it to get my hands on: before anyone thinks «what a tamarro ring Francesco wore», I find a pretext to tell that what I wear on my finger is not a normal ring, and I don't wear it for aesthetic reasons. It's an Oura Ring.
You may have heard of the Oura Ring – or you may have seen it, not knowing it was an Oura Ring – if you are an NBA fan. When the most important basketball league in the world started playing again in the famous Orlando “bubble”, in fact, all the players were provided with an Oura Ring. If you follow Formula One like me, you may have recently seen it in the hands of driver Alex Albon or Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. In baseball, the Seattle Mariners adopted him.
At this point you may have understood that Oura Ring is a ring that collects and provides information about the wearer's body. But it is a little different from the many trackers of the genre that exist on the market: and in reality its main function has nothing to do with sport.
Let's start with how it's done. The Oura Ring is a titanium ring. It should be worn in the index or middle or ring finger of the hand of your choice. In the inner part of the ring – therefore in contact with the skin – there are an infrared sensor that monitors the heartbeat and two sensors that measure body temperature. The ring also contains an accelerometer, to detect movements. Thanks to these encounters, the ring collects a series of data: heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, steps taken, calories burned. But also the time spent in bed, the time spent sleeping and in which of the different sleep stages.
All data can be consulted in the app, both individually and summarized in three macro-scores that take into account the combination of all these data: Sleep, Activity, and Readiness. The ring connects to the app via Bluetooth.
The three indicators obviously affect each other: “Sleep” tells you briefly how you are sleeping (well, badly, too little, waking up a lot, etc), “Activity” tells you briefly how much you are moving (in these days of moving limited or non-existent, the situation is dramatic) while “Readiness” tells you in short how much energy you have, how tired you are, how ready you are to face your day.
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If activity tracking doesn't shine for precision – if you want to track your workouts above all, there are better gadgets – the sleep tracking function is very precise and advanced, on par with the best devices on the market for this use. The precision of the Oura Ring is close to that obtained through an electrocardiogram: and it does not require you to sleep by placing your mobile phone on the mattress, like certain apps; or sleeping while wearing something bulky and potentially uncomfortable, like a watch or a classic fitness tracker.
I worked a lot this year, between the pandemic and the US elections: the main reason I bought it was to keep track of how much I slept and how tired I was beyond my impressions. From this point of view, I am satisfied.
Careful reviewers of Wirecutter, the New York Times review site, wrote a flattering review of the Oura Ring emphasizing the ring's effectiveness for monitoring sleep. How many minutes in REM phase? How many minutes of deep sleep? How many minutes awake? How will the quality of my last night's sleep affect the day ahead?
In my experience, the ring seems to be able to understand quite well how I sleep, confirming my sensations of the morning. And it also happened that I went to sleep after eating heavy, and the next morning the ring's good morning message said to me: “You ate heavy last night, didn't you?”. After a few seconds of embarrassment in which I thought about the many recent alarms about the relationship between these devices and our privacy with renewed concern, the enthusiasm prevailed.
In the Wirecutter review you can also read a series of useful technical information, explain better than I could do it: for example on infrared technology, different and more effective than that of other trackers; or on the battery, which lasts up to a week and recharges in an hour; or on how much the Oura Ring is generally more comfortable and lighter than other devices with similar functions (even the judgment on comfort is subjective).
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The main reason Oura Ring made itself known, though, is the same reason that led the NBA to give one to every player during last season's finals, in an effort to help prevent the coronavirus from spreading to the ” bubble ”in Orlando. Monitoring body temperature, heart rate variability and respiratory rate can be useful to know a few things about our body and our state of health.
A West Virginia University study – not funded by Oura – found that measurements made from the ring can suggest an infection that is going on for up to three days before you know you have symptoms, with 90 percent accuracy. Of course, this study must be taken with great caution, and some have expressed skepticism about its conclusions. Equally of course, we do not necessarily talk about coronavirus infections, but we also talk about those.
I can bring my experience, because some time ago I contracted the coronavirus. I got away easily, luckily I took a mild form of it: two days of fever, with no other discomfort, and that's it. I realized that I was not well when I woke up one morning feeling I had a fever, and the ring confirmed it to me before the thermometer did: in the graph below, it is the first day with a much higher bar than the other. To review the graph, the ring had actually been signaling for a few days that my body temperature was slightly higher than usual: but I hadn't noticed it, for a few days I hadn't checked the graph with the temperature evolution. It is also true that in general these variations occur from time to time even without having contracted any disease.
The Oura Ring costs 314 or 419 euros, depending on the type of finish. Once ordered – you can only buy it on the company's website, which is Finnish – you will not receive the ring directly at home but a kit that includes eight plastic rings, of different sizes. Try them on, wear them a few days until you find your most comfortable size: then go back to your order, choose the size and the ring will arrive at your home. If you are interested in giving it to someone for Christmas, know that it took me about ten days to receive the kit and then another ten to receive the ring. It is available in multiple colors: silver, glossy black, matte black, gold.
In a nutshell, the Oura Ring did not change my life, it did not make me move anymore, it did not make me discover that I had the coronavirus before the symptoms (as far as perhaps it could have warned me), it did not make me sleep better than before: but it has provided me with a lot of data to measure my feelings on something concrete, it has made me discover that I sleep less than I thought and on some occasions it has prompted me to go to bed earlier than usual. The only interest I have for you to buy it too is to no longer be forced to explain what it is.
