Unbiased Oura Ring Review

Hey Wellness gang! I've been sharing about my Oura ring on Instagram and had loads of questions about whether I think it's worth the money or not, so I thought I'd write a quick unbiased Oura ring review blog to answer that.

My husband bought me the ring for Christmas so I've not been paid or compensated for this review in any way, it's totally unbiased!

Why I wanted one

I think it's important to set context about why I wanted an Oura in the first place. I've been thinking about getting one for a few years now and the subscription always put me off. I hate paying money for something then having to pay more money to use it fully. However, there were a few reasons I gave in:

I've used a Fitbit for close to 10 years now, I'm big into tracking health metrics so it's important to have something that does it well. My Fitbit was on its way out, the battery would last two days max. so I needed something new anyway.
Speaking of the Fitbit, I was absolutely sick of having something on my wrist. There's been recent reports about the PFA's found in the straps of fitness watches but that wasn't a concern for me as I'd swapped my standard strap for a metal bracelet. I was just so fed up with wearing it, I have a nice watch that I wear daily so that would be on my left wrist and the Fitbit on my right. I'd forget to take it off for nights out and see it in photos and cringe. The metal bracelet also kept catching on all my tops and ruining the sleeves. Basically I wanted something more discreet.
Finally, and most importantly, I use the fertility awareness method via Natural Cycles and I was sick of taking my temperature with a thermometer every time I woke up. Going away would throw my routine off and I'd forget to do it which meant I wasn't tracking as accurately. The only wearable fitness trackers that integrate Natural Cycles currently are the Apple Watch and the Oura Ring. Ultra Human have just released a cycle tracking feature with their ring but I personally wouldn't trust something that new.

What are the feature of Oura?

On the Today page, at the top it gives you scores for six measures:

Readiness
Sleep
Activity
Cycle day
Heart rate
Stress

It then spotlights certain scores and this changes daily. It gives you some more detail e.g. how long you slept for, what your optimal sleep range is and your lowest resting heart rate through the night.

You can add tags and activities and it will give you insights about them e.g. if you add work it'll could say something like 'Your REM sleep decreases after you tag Work' so it's always learning more about you.

There's then the Vitals page which has the main measurements where you can click into them and get more detail. It tells you what contributed to your score and gives you ratings for each of the contributors - so interesting!

Finally there's the My Health page which tells you your resilience to stress, your cardiovascular age, sleep health including your chronotype and weekly/monthly reports.

Finally it contains a symptom radar and will tell you when you're getting sick, I've not experienced this yet as I've not been sick since I got it. It has guided breathwork and meditations which was great and it has a blog with fitness and nutrition insights.

You can see screenshots at the bottom of this blog!

How much is it?

I have the Oura Ring Gen 4 which is the latest model. We got it from John Lewis as they have a 2 year warranty and it was £349. You get the first month of the subscription free then it's £69.99 for the year. I have to admit, I'm not that happy about the subscription, as mentioned I think it's ridiculous to charge someone so much for something then charge them again to fully access it. But, the value the ring brings has been worth it for me.

Pros

I love how it looks, scroll down for a pic, excuse my nails. It's easy to wear, it's not too large on my hand and it doesn't get in the way when I'm exercising. I do wear weightlifting gloves to prevent it getting scratched but I do that anyway for my wedding rings.
I've found it to be very accurate. The Readiness score does reflect how I feel, the only days it's been low were the first two days of my cycle. It recognises workouts much better than the Fitbit, it can tell when I'm strength training, doing yoga, Pilates or walking.
It covers more metrics than my Fitbit and I get a lot of value from them.
The integration with Natural Cycles is a game changer for me, it's literally worth it just for this.
It reminds me to move around throughout the day and that's effective especially when I'm working at a desk all day and can forget to move.

Cons

The subscription payment.
They say the battery life is 8 days, they are LIARS. It's probably 6 days maximum.
When my Readiness score is high, it ups my step goal. I get why, I'm more set up to move but honestly this is happening at least 6/7 days a week. I have a really busy job, I run Wellness Effect on the side and I'm also studying, so getting out for 12,500+ steps a day really isn't always possible - that's why I've set it at 10,000. I wish I could turn this off or set it so that it only happens at the weekends, or I could set a weekly average goal instead of a daily one.

Summary

If you're new to tracking health metrics I would recommend that you start with something more affordable until you know that it's useful to you. It can be tempting to go for the best, trendiest thing to start with but my Fitbit did a great job for me for years, at the fraction of the price.

If you're a more seasoned tracker and you use the insights to help you on your wellness journey, I think the Oura ring is a great buy. It's definitely not form over function in this case, it's sleek, looks great, is comfortable and also gives useful, accurate insights to help me take action to improve my health.