Latest news with #OuraRingGen3
Tom's Guide
4 days ago
- Health
- Tom's Guide
I've used the Oura ring to track my sleep for 6 months — here's how I'm now getting a full 8 hours
I've had my Oura Ring Gen 3 for six months now, and in that time, my daily sleep and readiness scores have come to dictate what I get up to from day to day. Do I need to take it easy and rest up or can I go hell for leather and role play as Wonder Woman? Oura lets me know as soon as I wake up. The Oura Ring Gen 3 had helped me to regulate my irregular sleep patterns by giving daily feedback on metrics. the ring also tracks workouts and daily activity, all bundled into actionable insights to help you feel your best. I get far more out of Oura than any other fitness tracker I've tried, like the Apple Watch Series 10 and the AmazFit Bip 6. I find the feedback you get from Oura to be fully actionable, and I can build on the feedback. And that's exactly what I've done. The key to getting actionable feedback from Oura is adding tags in the app. It gives the app insights into my daily life, and tells me what I am doing that's impacting my sleep scores. Pretty cool, right? I don't add tags for absolutely everything because that would be a lot of work! But if I'm feeling slightly under the weather, go for a long run, drink alcohol or do anything out of the ordinary, I'll make sure to note it. The app also lets you know what sort of things have effected other users. So if you have a rough night, it will prompt you to add a tag that may have contributed to the tossing and turning. For me, this meant I can actively avoid activities I know are going to keep me up at night, but also keep doing things that have given me high sleep scores. So let's get into what I've found out. This is one I never would have thought about before using the Oura Ring. If I eat a meal or even a small, carby snack less than three hours before I head to sleep, I can be sure to have a disrupted night. Eating late can disrupt the sleep-wake cycle of the body, and Oura flags this in the app as a main cause for a restless night. I have always been one for an evening run rather than an early morning gym class, but that's all changed since using the Oura Ring. Exercising late at night can mean your body takes longer to wind down before drifting off to sleep, giving you fewer hours than you need. Oura says that even exercising one to two hours earlier can help you to see positive changes. So I took this advice on board and started doing my exercise in the morning and doing gentle yoga in the evening, so I was still getting some movement but at a lower intensity. Alcohol at social gatherings is the norm for many people so it will come as no surprise that Oura says it is the tag most used by its members. Alcohol increases your resting heart rate, putting stress on the body. So after a few beers you're probably going to be waking up every few hours, therefore massively disrupting your sleep stages. As part of the Community discoveries feature on the Oura app, I can see that a tag of 'No alcohol' decreases resting heart rate scores by an average of 3%. Adversely, tagging 'Party' increases heart rate by an average of 6%. This seemingly small increase is enough to disrupt sleep and offset you for the next day. Everyone knows that in the height of summer it is pretty much impossible to get to sleep. Especially between trying to kick off your sheets and finding the perfect balance of cozy and cool. But I had this confirmed to me by my ring as on nights where I had the air conditioning in my room set to around 67°F I had restful, deep sleep and woke up with high sleep scores. On the other end of that, as the weather has become warmer on the way to summer and I don't have the air conditioning on I wake up in the middle of the night and struggle to get back to sleep. The Oura Ring measures your temperature while you sleep to give cycle predictions. During different phases of your cycle HRV (heart rate variation) and core body temperature are affected. These can have a direct impact on your sleep and readiness. Through feedback from what many would call the best smart ring, I have been able to recognize when in my cycle I need to take it easy to ensure my HRV is impacted as little as possible, making for a restful sleep. This is also true for finding where I can put a little more effort into my workouts without it impacting my readiness scores. By looking at my own metrics, and the metrics from community discoveries, I have been able to get consistent sleep and readiness scores. Of course, there are days when lower scores can't be helped, but my feedback is far less erratic and the prompts from the ring have helped me to build a successful routine. By exercising and eating my evening meals earlier, staying cool at night, being mindful of alcohol consumption and of where I am in my cycle, I am getting my eight hours regularly… and I feel so much better for it.
NBC News
26-03-2025
- Health
- NBC News
Oura Ring Gen3 is at its lowest price ever right now
One of the best smart rings, the Oura Ring Gen3, is at its lowest price ever: $199 at the time of writing. If you are looking to track health and wellness metrics without having to wear a bulky fitness tracker, this could be the perfect solution. Oura Ring Gen3 Heritage deal Oura Ring Gen3 Heritage The Oura Ring is a smart ring that tracks metrics like heart rate, sleep stages, stress levels, body temperature, blood oxygen and more. It can automatically detect and log workouts like running and cycling. The app keeps a history of all your data, so you can see changes and trends over days, weeks and months. I tested this version for about four months, and loved the accurate sleep and health tracking features like bedtime trends and readiness levels. The ring essentially requires an Oura Ring subscription, if you want to get all of the rings health tracking benefits. The subscription costs $5.99 a month or $69.99 a year. You can learn more about the Gen3 in my Oura Ring review and the newest model in my Oura Ring 4 review. Want more from NBC Select? Sign up for our newsletter, The Selection, and shop smarter. Why trust NBC Select? I am a reporter at NBC Select who covers technology and fitness including recent stories on smartwatches, running shoes, cameras and more. For this piece, I checked Oura Ring Gen3 price history over time and current prices across multiple retailers to find the best deal. Catch up on NBC Select's in-depth coverage of tech and tools, wellness and more, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok to stay up to date.
NBC News
18-03-2025
- Health
- NBC News
I tested the latest Oura Ring 4 for months — is it worth the upgrade?
I know plenty of people who want some sort of wellness tracker or smartwatch, but don't want to be glued to a tiny screen on their wrist that constantly distracts you with notifications. I get it — most of us are already glued to our phones: why add another screen to the mix? That's where I think smart rings get their appeal. Imagine a small, subtle, stylish health tracker that doesn't grab or need your attention to function. No buzzing notifications, no bulky screen, but all the metrics you might associate with a traditional fitness tracker. Is that vision a reality with the Oura Ring 4? Sort of. I tested it daily for over two months: here's what you should know. What is the Oura Ring 4? Oura Ring 4 The Oura Ring 4 ($349) is a smart ring that tracks a plethora of health metrics: heart rate, sleep stages, stress levels, body temperature, blood oxygen and more. It automatically detects and logs some exercise like walking and running, and you can manually record the start and end of any workout using the Oura app. Since there is no screen, you spend a considerable amount of time viewing data and metrics on the Oura app. The app has been redesigned since the launch of the previous Oura Ring Gen 3 ($299), with a more intuitive home screen that shows your scores for readiness, sleep, activity and stress at a glance. Because the app keeps track of data over a stretch of time, you can also view trend reports to see things like your sleep score across weeks, months or years. Improvements over the Oura Ring Gen 3 include a longer eight day battery life (up from seven), a wider range of sizes and a fully titanium build (the Oura Ring Gen 3 was partially made of plastic). The Oura Ring 4 comes in six finishes and sizes ranging from four to 15. You can buy the ring without paying for a subscription, but you'll get an extremely limited amount of data: only your daily score for sleep, activity and readiness, according to the brand. An Oura Membership subscription costs $5.99 a month or $69.99 a year, and unlocks every tracking feature plus things like guided meditation and sleep stories in the Oura app. Display: N/A | Weight: 3.3-5.2 grams | Battery life: up to 8 days | Built-in GPS: no | Sleep tracking: yes (including naps) | Heart-rate monitor: yes, with EKG | Water resistance: yes, up to 100 meters (up to 12 hours) | Works best with: Oura app (iOS or Android) How I tried the Oura Ring 4 I tested the Oura Ring 4 for over two months after the brand sent me a sizing kit and ring sample for review. I wore the ring on my right ring finger and compared the fit and data collected to other smart rings like the Samsung Galaxy Ring ($399), which I wore on my left ring finger during a week of side-by-side testing. NBC Select updates editor Mili Godio coincidentally bought the Oura Ring 4 for herself, and has also been wearing hers for over two months. I spoke with her to get her perspective on the ring and her experience with features I could not test like cycle tracking. My experience with the Oura Ring 4 The Oura Ring Gen 3 was already my favorite smart ring on the market. The Oura Ring 4's hardware and software improvements help cement it as the best smart ring you can buy right now. Still, you should know that it cannot replace a fitness tracker or smartwatch for tracking exercise. And competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Ring and Ultrahuman Ring Air ($349) can track similar metrics, minus the subscription fee. What we like Improved design and comfort One of my least favorite parts of the Oura Ring Gen 3 is its sensor bumps — it has three round bumps on the inner side of the ring that house its infrared LED sensors. I am already not a ring person — a ring with bumps pushing against my skin? No thanks. The Oura Ring 4 has recessed sensors that are nearly flush with the ring — you don't notice them unless you are looking very carefully. This makes the ring much more comfortable than the previous version, in my experience. Robust health and sleep tracking The sleep and health tracking of the Oura Ring 4 is just as impressive (if not more so) as the previous version. During my testing, I compared a week of sleep data from the Oura Ring 4 to data from the Samsung Galaxy Ring (paired with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 ($299)) and the Apple Watch Series 10 ($399). The Oura Ring 4 had the most accurate sleep data. The competition wasn't wildly inaccurate, but couldn't match the accuracy of the Oura Ring. For example, I toss and turn a lot while I sleep, and the Samsung Galaxy Ring often logged those movements as tiny wake windows throughout the night. The Galaxy Ring would also log no data at all for the hour or so I was awake in the middle of the night to take care of my baby, throwing the whole evening's data out of whack. The Oura Ring 4 never had these issues. All of the wearables I tested were confused by the early morning hours I spent with my baby. We would sometimes wake up early and I would rock them in a gliding chair to buy an extra hour of sleep. All the wearables I tested thought this was a brief wake window followed by an hour of sleep. I was very much awake, just sedentary (listening to audiobooks on my Airpods) in a gliding chair. Improved app experience I hadn't used the Oura Ring app in about five months when I synced the Oura Ring 4 for the first time. The app has changed a lot since 2024. The layout is cleaner, with three primary tabs on the bottom (Today, Vitals and My Health) and all your most important scores in small circles on the top (Readiness, Sleep activity, Heart Rate and Stress). The app also loads data from the Ring 4 much faster than when I tested the Oura Ring 3 in 2024 — it only took five seconds or so to load a full day of activity, in my experience. Potential drawbacks to keep in mind You still need to record a lot of things yourself Ideally the Oura Ring could automatically track everything for me, without any input on my end. After all, if I wanted to micromanage my data and track my heart rate zones as I exercised, I would wear a smartwatch, not a smart ring. The Oura Ring accomplishes this for most health and sleep tracking, but falls short in other areas, namely exercise tracking. It automatically logs walks decently well, but other exercises like yoga and strength training it did not detect at all, in our experience. It automatically detected and logged outdoor runs, but GPS data was sometimes inaccurate. When we did pull out our phones and start and stop workouts manually, stats and GPS data were usually acceptable. But that's not really the point for Godio and I. Pulling out our phones and manually starting and stopping a workout feels like the opposite of why you would own an Oura Ring. Godio almost never logged her workout classes on her Oura Ring, either because she forgot to in the hustle and bustle of getting ready for class or because the classes themselves had a no phone policy. 'If I have to do anything manually on the Oura Ring, chances are I'm not doing it,' says Godio. Cycle tracking is a similar story — it is useful and accurate, but requires a lot of manual input. To get the most accurate info about the average number of days your period lasts, cycle variability and the range of days you can expect each month, you need to be diligent and consistent about manually inputting each day of your cycle, says Godio. We know the Oura Ring 4 can't magically track everything, we wouldn't expect it to, but making some of these manual inputs faster and easier to do would be a good start. Subscription price Oura Ring 4 may be one of the best smart rings on the market, but it is also one of the few that requires a subscription. I am actively trying to reduce the number of subscriptions in my life, and other smart rings that don't have a monthly subscription (Ultrahuman, Samsung, Ringconn) may be worth a look, depending on your priorities. Who is the Oura Ring 4 for? The Oura Ring 4 is the best smart ring you can get, in my experience. It automatically tracks most general health, wellness and sleep activity and presents it in insightful, easy to understand scores on the Oura Ring app. It's more comfortable than ever, has improved battery life and a more intuitive app experience. It's not for athletes like marathoners or long-distance cyclists — it cannot compete with the live stats and exercise accuracy of smartwatches from Apple and Garmin. It's also not for anyone looking to cull subscriptions (consider subscription-free alternatives like the Samsung Galaxy Ring and Ultrahuman Ring Air instead). But it is the best smart ring I've tested. And if you want the best of the best, it's the Oura Ring 4. For now, anyway. Why trust NBC Select? I am a reporter at NBC Select who covers technology and fitness including recent stories on smartwatches, running shoes, workout earbuds and more. For this piece, I wore the Oura Ring 4 daily for over two months after the brand sent me one to try. I tracked my daily stats, sleep and exercise and compared the fit and feel of the Oura Ring 4 to other smart rings on the market. I also discussed my experience with NBC Select updates editor Mili Godio, who owns and wears her Oura Ring 4 daily.
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
8 sleep trackers to help you get a better night's rest
Fox News and its syndication partners may earn a commission if you buy through our referral links. This content was created by a team that works independently from the Fox newsroom. A restful night's sleep is something many people wish they could achieve but never do. With the demands of work, family and everything in-between, many people find themselves tossing and turning in their beds all night. A poor night's sleep doesn't just leave you tired, it can also impact your general well-being. This is where sleep trackers come into play, offering a modern solution to an age-old problem. Sleep trackers provide valuable insights into your sleep patterns, helping you understand how well or how poorly you're sleeping. By monitoring various aspects of your sleep, these trackers empower you to change your bedtime habits. The right sleep tracker can be a game-changer in your quest for better sleep and health, so check out these eight options. Original price: $299 An Oura Ring Gen 3 provides you with the most accurate readings, since your finger has a strong pulse, making it easier to track your heart rate. Not only can you track your sleep, but you can track your activity and stress as well, if you have an Oura Membership. You get a free month when you initially purchase your ring, and then it's $5.00 per month. The Oura Ring is compatible with both iOS and Android devices, so you can sync it across all your apps. Most of these sleep trackers can be found on Amazon, and can be delivered to your door in 24 hours if you're an Amazon Prime member. You can join or start a 30-day free trial to start your shopping today. A WHOOP monitor tracks everything from your heart and respiratory rates to your sleep, skin temperature and blood oxygen levels, among other metrics. All these metrics are tracked by the waterproof band and battery. When you first purchase a WHOOP 4.0, you'll get a 12-month membership included that helps you keep track of all your data. Read On The Fox News App Get The Rest You Need With These 7 Sleep Products A Go2sleep 3 is just a sleep tracker, so you only have to wear it at night. Every second of your night will be tracked through your heart rate and blood oxygen levels. The AI-driven algorithm also has non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, so you can be sure you're staying healthy. Fitbits are popular health trackers because they're comfortable to wear and easy to use. The Fitbit Inspire 3 provides 24/7 heart rate monitoring, over 20 exercise modes and automatic exercise tracking. Each night, you'll also get a detailed sleep analysis and sleep score added to your personalized sleep profile. Original price: $249 A second generation Apple Watch SE tracks a variety of health metrics, including sleep. You can get sleep apnea notifications and high/low heart rate alerts. When you're up and about, the Apple Watch SE can also provide fall detection. Sustainable Sleep Items That Will Help You Sleep Through The Night Original price: $279 A RingConn Gen 1 ring tracks your body's metrics and delivers personalized advice. You get a list of easy-to-understand metrics and wellness support so you can work towards sleeping better and improving your overall health. Original price: $129.95 Don't want to wear a sleep tracker to get insight into your health? The Withings sleep tracking pad can be placed under your sheets or mattress and tracks all the same metrics as a wearable device. You can work to improve your sleep quality with the sleep cycle analysis that examines your light and REM sleep stages. Withings also tracks your heart rate and detects snoring, so you can understand how you're sleeping and what you need to do to sleep better. For more Deals, visit Original price: $49.99 For a no-frills tracker that still gets the job done, the Amazfit Band 7 is a strong choice. It's an all-around health tracker that will track your sleep quality across all your sleep stages and your waking hours as well. It tracks your swimming data (yes, it's waterproof), your step, your blood oxygen levels and your heart article source: 8 sleep trackers to help you get a better night's rest
Fox News
11-03-2025
- Health
- Fox News
8 sleep trackers to help you get a better night's rest
A restful night's sleep is something many people wish they could achieve but never do. With the demands of work, family and everything in-between, many people find themselves tossing and turning in their beds all night. A poor night's sleep doesn't just leave you tired, it can also impact your general well-being. This is where sleep trackers come into play, offering a modern solution to an age-old problem. Sleep trackers provide valuable insights into your sleep patterns, helping you understand how well or how poorly you're sleeping. By monitoring various aspects of your sleep, these trackers empower you to change your bedtime habits. The right sleep tracker can be a game-changer in your quest for better sleep and health, so check out these eight options. Original price: $299 An Oura Ring Gen 3 provides you with the most accurate readings, since your finger has a strong pulse, making it easier to track your heart rate. Not only can you track your sleep, but you can track your activity and stress as well, if you have an Oura Membership. You get a free month when you initially purchase your ring, and then it's $5.00 per month. The Oura Ring is compatible with both iOS and Android devices, so you can sync it across all your apps. Most of these sleep trackers can be found on Amazon, and can be delivered to your door in 24 hours if you're an Amazon Prime member. You can join or start a 30-day free trial to start your shopping today. A WHOOP monitor tracks everything from your heart and respiratory rates to your sleep, skin temperature and blood oxygen levels, among other metrics. All these metrics are tracked by the waterproof band and battery. When you first purchase a WHOOP 4.0, you'll get a 12-month membership included that helps you keep track of all your data. A Go2sleep 3 is just a sleep tracker, so you only have to wear it at night. Every second of your night will be tracked through your heart rate and blood oxygen levels. The AI-driven algorithm also has non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, so you can be sure you're staying healthy. Fitbits are popular health trackers because they're comfortable to wear and easy to use. The Fitbit Inspire 3 provides 24/7 heart rate monitoring, over 20 exercise modes and automatic exercise tracking. Each night, you'll also get a detailed sleep analysis and sleep score added to your personalized sleep profile. Original price: $249 A second generation Apple Watch SE tracks a variety of health metrics, including sleep. You can get sleep apnea notifications and high/low heart rate alerts. When you're up and about, the Apple Watch SE can also provide fall detection. Original price: $279 A RingConn Gen 1 ring tracks your body's metrics and delivers personalized advice. You get a list of easy-to-understand metrics and wellness support so you can work towards sleeping better and improving your overall health. Original price: $129.95 Don't want to wear a sleep tracker to get insight into your health? The Withings sleep tracking pad can be placed under your sheets or mattress and tracks all the same metrics as a wearable device. You can work to improve your sleep quality with the sleep cycle analysis that examines your light and REM sleep stages. Withings also tracks your heart rate and detects snoring, so you can understand how you're sleeping and what you need to do to sleep better. For more Deals, visit Original price: $49.99 For a no-frills tracker that still gets the job done, the Amazfit Band 7 is a strong choice. It's an all-around health tracker that will track your sleep quality across all your sleep stages and your waking hours as well. It tracks your swimming data (yes, it's waterproof), your step, your blood oxygen levels and your heart rate.
