First Review of the Smart Ring: Oura Ring Gen3

With its sensors for movement, pulse, and temperature, the ring can draw conclusions about your activity, health, and recovery. A smart ring has many similarities with a smartwatch, but at the same time, it differs in several ways. Let's start by going through the basics.

Different sizes

To buy an Oura ring, you first need to ensure you get the right size. The ring is manufactured in eight different sizes, and you can either try it out in a store; in Sweden, the ring is sold at Elgiganten (which also lent me my test sample), or you can order the special test package with rings in different sizes to find the right fit for you. Getting the right size is crucial for fit and accurate measurements. When I test, I find that size 11 fits best. The ring is sold in size specifications from 6 to 13.

A ring like this is more comfortable to use than a smartwatch, especially when you sleep, but it has a slightly different purpose. For someone who is not used to wearing a ring before, it might take some getting used to, but it's easy to forget that the ring is on your finger and it doesn't draw any attention. The instructions state that you get the best accuracy in measurements if the small marking on the ring is on the palm side of the finger, but it doesn't matter which of the four fingers besides the thumb you put the ring on.

The ring costs about the same as a smartwatch, and in addition to the one-time cost of purchasing it, I also have to pay a monthly fee to get full analyses of the collected data the ring provides me. The first month is free, but then 5.99 euros are deducted from my card every month.

Long-term data collection for trends

As I write this test, I have been using the ring for three weeks, and it is only after one, in some cases two weeks, that I get some more meaningful trends and conclusions in the accompanying app. I have activated blood oxygen measurement, get automatic activity detection when I exercise or generally move, and then the battery in the ring lasts about five days. After that, it needs to be charged, and I place it on the small charger that comes with it. In about an hour and a half, the ring charges fully, and the app on the phone reminds me both when it's time to charge and when the charging is complete.

Doesn't demand attention, doesn't disturb

The ring differs from a smartwatch in that it offers no interaction and cannot give you any information directly. No vibrations, of course no screen, and no lights to signal. The sensors on the inside of the ring sometimes glow red or green, noticeable especially in the dark, but they give no indication of your health values. All information you instead have to look up in the app.

When it comes to measurements, I don't need to do anything active for the ring to measure activity or sleep. Based on my movements, everything is recorded, and in the morning, I get a report when I start the app on how my sleep looked, when I went to bed, which sleep stages I went through, and simply how well I slept. The sleep reporting is among the best I've tested if we now compare the ring with all the smartwatches we've tested. If I wake up at night, I can often see exactly in the sleep diagram when it was. Occasionally, the app claims I've taken a nap when I was actually just sitting and watching TV, but that's rare, and as I use the ring longer, the accuracy improves; it seems to learn. Both workouts and sleep can be confirmed in the app, so if the ring guesses something I know isn't correct, I can accept, edit, or delete it.

In the app, I get detailed information about both activity and sleep and, for example, information about the importance of both deep sleep and lighter sleep, when you might even think you've been awake but actually slept.

The latest features added

Since the launch of Oura Ring Gen3, several features have been added, such as blood oxygen level measurement and the ability to also record route, distance, and speed during workouts. However, this extended function during workouts requires you to have your phone with you, as the ring itself has no GPS, and the measurement of workouts is a weakness where the smartwatch often outperforms the ring.

I test the ring during the test period first with an Android phone and then with an iPhone. Since the ring and its app sync with Apple Health and Google Fit, the ring can be a good complement to, for example, a smartwatch, but for workouts, the ring alone is a limited tracker. When I'm out running in an urban environment, the workout is registered as several different sessions, with an end and restart every time I need to stop for a red light at a crosswalk. If I have the phone with me, the ring is better at guessing which type of workout it is, but during the test period, it happens, for example, that a walk I take outdoors without a phone is registered in the app as a presumed ping pong match, but I can easily dismiss and correct that. When I walk with the ring and have the phone in my pocket, I don't need to do anything for the walk to be registered, and since I have the phone in my pocket, the phone's position is used to calculate speed, distance, and to map the walk. Without the phone, I only get an estimate of time spent and how many calories I've burned.

It is possible to connect the ring, or rather the service itself, to other apps, like Strava, and it makes sense, because then the ring can do what it is good at, measuring sleep and health overall, and your phone or smartwatch can report the workouts.

During the test, I experiment a bit. To get better accuracy in the workouts, you can actively start a workout in the phone app and thus avoid relying on the ring's automatic detection of exercise. The first time I do this, I leave the phone at home, and it results in the phone regularly reporting its static position and mixing it with the position from my smartwatch. Another time, the workout is interrupted after only 2-3 kilometers, and I get a registered session of one hour, but where the rest of the 8 kilometers are not visible. Especially when I also connect Strava, there is a risk of confusing and duplicated information.

Main advantages

The Oura ring is at its best for overall reporting and sleep tracking. The app reminds me with notifications on my phone to move at least once an hour, to go to bed on time, suggesting 9:00 PM, and it warns when the ring needs to be charged.

The Oura app has a comprehensive home screen with all current information and reports your activity, sleep, and “readiness” in different tabs, meaning how recovered and ready your body is after what you've done, such as a workout, stress, or poor night's sleep.

The first month with the ring includes a subscription to see all the information, but then you have to pay. To test, I avoid the payment and see that almost all information disappears. I can't even see how long or in which stages I slept. It is clear that a subscription is required to make any use of the data collected. Otherwise, they just disappear into a dark hole, and the ring becomes pointless.

Right now, smart rings are particularly relevant because Samsung has its Galaxy Ring on the way. We do not yet know exactly what features it will have. Just like Oura, it is confirmed that the Galaxy Ring will measure movement, steps, oxygenation, and pulse as well as breathing rate when you sleep. Whether it can do anything more, such as work with Samsung Pay to pay in stores, handle notifications or reminders in some way, is uncertain.