О̄URA: One Ring to Rule Them All

The Oura ring and app take the mystery out of your sleep quality, activity level, and mental readiness and guides you to better overall wellness.

By Andrea Pisani Babich

Aug 26th, 2022

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[By clicking on the product links in this article, Mattress Advisor may receive a commission fee at no cost to you, the reader. Read full disclosure statement.]

Move over wrist trackers. The next generation of wearable wellness trackers has arrived. The О̄ura ring is a total wellness tracker and guidance system that you can wear comfortably 24/7. So much more than a sleep tracker, О̄ura tracks, records, and interprets

  • Your sleep performance (Sleep Score)
  • Your readiness to tackle your daily activity (Readiness Score)
  • The quality and duration of your gym jams (Activity Score)

With О̄ura, you don’t have to rely on how rested you feel in the morning or how fit you feel after your workout to know how well you’re doing. The app gives you precise and objective data, insights to each of your scores, and makes recommendations to help you gain quality sleep and peak performance. Its Moment feature even guides you to moments of mindfulness and clearly illustrates the link between your mind and your body. О̄ura helps you find the optimal rhythm for a balanced life.

Why a Ring?

The simple answer is a ring is easy to wear all the time. Even professional athletes can’t have their personal trainer working with them 24/7—but you can with the О̄ura ring.

There’s more to the О̄ura ring than comfort and convenience. The ring is super lightweight and packed with advanced sensors to gather the most accurate data possible outside of a sleep lab. Wearing the ring makes it possible to gather information directly from the palmar arteries in your finger, giving you precise information about your resting heart rate (RHR) and heart rate variability (HRV): two important factors in your Readiness Score.

The ring is water resistant and lighter than most jewelry rings. Made of titanium and a durable carbon coating, it is hypoallergenic and nonmetallic, with a seamless inner molding for comfort. With a battery life of up to one week, you can slip the О̄ura ring on and forget about it.

Then, you just do what you do and let the app guide you to better workouts, better sleep, and better mental fitness.

More Is Better

Calling all data junkies! If you think more is better when it comes to your own performance data, О̄ura ring’s got you covered. Your Sleep, Readiness, and Activity Scores are calculated using a host of metrics you can’t measure without the precision sensors and round the clock monitoring of the О̄ura ring.

Features:

  • Lightweight and waterproof
  • Battery life up to 7 days
  • Tracks heart rate, HRV, body temperature
  • Wireless charging
  • Prices start at $299

Let’s take a look at the metrics О̄ura tracks for you.

Your Sleep Score

Your sleep performance is calculated using the following factors.

Total Sleep

As the name suggests, this tracks the total amount of sleep you got the previous night.

Efficiency

Your sleep efficiency score reflects how much time you were actually sleeping once you fell asleep. An efficiency score of 85% or above indicates that you fell asleep quickly enough and did not wake up too often during the night.

Disturbances

Interruptions in your sleep will pull down your sleep efficiency. О̄ura tracks how many times you were restless, got up to use the bathroom, or woke up to shift positions. You may not remember any or all of your sleep disturbances, but they can have a profound impact on your sleep quality.

REM Sleep

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) Sleep makes up about 20–25% of your total sleep time and is important for memory consolidation, learning, and creativity. It’s also the time when most of your dreams occur. But, REM Sleep is not distributed evenly through the night. Your REM Sleep stages should get progressively longer as you cycle through your 5 or 6 sleep cycles. О̄ura shows you not only the total amount of time you spend in REM Sleep, but also the times you were in the REM Sleep stage.

Deep Sleep

Deep Sleep, also known as Slow Wave Sleep, is the stage of Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) Sleep when most of your recovery occurs. Muscles repair, growth occurs, blood pressure is lower, and heart rate drops during deep sleep. The О̄ura ring will track the amount of time you spend in Deep Sleep and send that information to your app, giving you a good indication of how ready you are to tackle today’s activities.

Sleep Latency

О̄ura tells you how long it took you to fall asleep the previous night. Why is that important? Sleep latency is directly related to sleep efficiency and your overall sleep performance; the more time you spend in bed trying to sleep, the less time you are spending in bed actually sleeping.

Sleep Timing

Because having a consistent sleep pattern is important to the overall quality of your sleep, О̄ura tracks when you go to bed and when you wake up each morning.

Your Readiness Score

Your readiness to tackle daily activities is determined by these factors.

Previous Night

This metric reflects the quality of your sleep from the night before. How well you slept determines how well you physically and mentally recover and, therefore, how ready you are for high performance the next day.

Sleep Balance

Sleep balance takes a long-term look at your sleep patterns. It compares your sleep duration of the previous two weeks to your long-term sleep history and the amount of sleep recommended for people your age.

Previous Day

О̄ura tracks your previous day’s performance and guides your activity and rest for the current day.

Activity Balance

О̄ura reviews your 5-day activity levels looking for balance and how closely you’ve achieved your activity goals.

Body Temperature

Variations in body temperature can help you anticipate impending illnesses, the need to rest, and, for women, stages of your menstrual cycle. These variations can also demonstrate how ready you are for the day.

Resting Heart Rate (RHR)

Your resting heart rate reflects a few different wellness criteria, including overall sleep quality, recovery, and health. Generally, lower RHR indicates good fitness, but marked deviations from your own personal average may indicate the need for more recovery time. О̄ura displays your lowest RHR and your average RHR as well as a minute-by-minute resting heart rate graph.

Recovery Index

This score is the amount of time it takes you to reach your lowest resting heart rate. The earlier in the night you achieve this, the better. It shows that you can recover quickly from the exertions of the day. Delays in reaching your lowest RHR delay your recovery and will increase your need for sleep. How would you know all that without an О̄ura ring?

Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

Another readiness influencer that О̄ura tracks throughout the night, HRV variations refer to the short time lapses between heart beats that shorten and lengthen depending on our fitness and recovery level.

Your Activity Score

The quality and duration of your gym session is calculated by tracking and recording these metrics.

Stay Active

In an effort to keep you moving, this score tracks how much time you spend inactive—sitting, standing, or sleeping—over the course of 24 hours.

Move Every Hour

Moving at least every 50 minutes can help you reduce the harmful effects of inactivity. This contributor to your Activity Score will stay positive if you break up long stretches of inactivity with a short walk, stretch, or any other quick movement. О̄ura can remind you when you need to take a break and stretch your legs.

Meet Daily Targets

This metric shows you how often you reached your daily activity targets over the previous seven days.

Training Frequency

This number reflects how often you engaged in medium or high-intensity activity during the previous week. О̄ura rewards you for mixing lower and higher intensity workouts with a higher Activity Score.

Training Volume

This number equals the total amount of time you spent doing medium or high-intensity activity within a 7-day period.

Recovery Time

Since recovery is just as important as your activity, О̄ura measures how much rest your body gets, not just while sleeping, but also during daytime inactivity and other forms of rest beside sleep.


Knowledge Is Power

The more you know about your sleep, activity levels, and mental and physical readiness, the better you can keep your life balanced. But the data you gather with О̄ura does you no good if you don’t know how to use it. Not sure what to do with all that data? О̄ura provides you with О̄ura Cloud to help you store data and make sense of your Sleep, Activity, and Readiness scores.

You can also make notes of irregularities in your activity, like eating a large meal late at night or a super strenuous workout early in the morning, to help you correlate your behavior to your sleep quality.

О̄ura is not for everybody. But, people who are not intimidated by a wealth of information and are willing to learn how to use it will love О̄ura. It can be the best trainer you’ve ever had!