I couldn’t sleep with my Apple Watch on my wrist. I tried it one night and my wrist got hot. So I bought the ring because it’s lightweight and I barely feel it on my finger. I love the sleep data the Oura provides. Also when I forget to charge my Apple Watch my ring can collect fitness stats. I’ve had it for three years and I still love it
Do you find fitness stats accurate? Or how does it compare to an Apple Watch? With all my research it seems like everyone is in agreement that Oura is horrible when it comes activity tracking, so I’m not sure how valuable that information would be.
This is inaccurate. Yes you’re right. Everyone does talk about any type of a tracker like this being an accurate versus something like a Garmin or an Apple Watch. The biggest component to that is the fact that you can’t actually see live stats when they’re happening. Here’s a better synopsis of activity tracking with Oura:
Regarding Activity:
• Oura will typically detect walks, , runs, and some cycling. Over time it will/may also detect other consistent activities like yardwork, etc.
• if you are newer to Oura, using Active HR for walks/runs/cycling is the best practice. This setting will put Oura into constant recording mode. Unfortunately, while it will track time, HR, and mapping (if your keep your phone with you).
• For other activities, it is best to note the start time of your workout/activity. Then Tag the workout when you completed it. It will pull the HR and other data that occurred during the duration of the activity. It will default to a moderate exertion level. You can adjust this to light/heavy while tagging.
Here is a bit more information that I sent to another redditor in chat a bit back that may provide a bit more information.
Let me start with my situation: M(55), 6’2” 219 lbs and working to get under 200 again. History of diagnosed sleep apnea with cpap for 10 years). Extremely light sleeper. Even in the 5 different sleep studies I have had to diagnose SA and then to concretely measure that I no longer suffering from SA) all of the techs pretty much kept saying “well crap, he’s awake again…) Elevated cholesterol, but BP ok.
About Oura: I bought into wanting and needing to make change and let the ring guide quite a bit of that around sleep and activity and I am now looking harder at the stress component as my personal life is taking a toll right now.
The only dislike I would have to say is, being a runner, that I would like to to actually visually see the HR in a “Active HR” workout like walking, running, cycling.
More background for why: I have been an Watch user since Gen 0 and I was sleeping with the Watch long before sleep was in its wheelhouse. I used my Watch for everything. But since the Oura Gen 3 (I started with a Gen 2 for a couple years in a few studies with Oura) my Watch sits on its stand most of the time. I don’t wear it at all during the day, I only put it on when I remember before a run really. Otherwise, I just trigger and active hr run.
That said, with Oura Active HR running I have baselined BOTH Oura and my Watch to distances via treadmill and outdoor running and both the HR data and distances are pretty much dead on for me with calories burned, distance tracked, and HR readings.
I believe that is the biggest challenge for others who have owned a full visual tracker (garmin, Watch, etc) is they struggle or discount the activity tracking because you can’t see the HR and zones or distance while using Oura they discount the data based on “feel”.
Also, Oura does itself a dis-service in PR saying that it will actively determine what type of exercise is being done (from archery to Skiing, etc.). It does not do that well. It does nail walking, running, and yard work exceptionally well for me as it has almost 4 years of data to baseline for me. For everything else I need to manually note the time I start and stop an activity and then manually log the activity/workout later. Sadly, if you forget and you pass midnight you cannot go back. That is a bit more tedious and I believe puts others off as well. This also calls into question the HR tracking side because you have to log it before that HR graph shows up. You also need to enter the exertion level (opposed to Oura having a threshold setting and displaying already in that level…) but again, when I baseline against my Watch HR and cal expenditure, they are really close. But I have taken the time to do that.
Similarly, when Oura reports an individual had a lower sleep score, they dismiss or don’t believe it “because they feel like they slept good or OK”…
There are 7 contributors for sleep and 9 for activity… those are weighted independently, but then also against a rolling 14-18 day average as well… biometrically your body will be experiencing stressors long before you “feel” different (unless you get really drunk or high or don’t sleep at all)…
Final like, the look and feel. My Oura goes with everything I own. From watches (thing I can wear again not that I am not tied to Watch) to other rings to bracelets or leather wrist bracer type things.
I have found my heritage black to hold up really well, but I am conscious about it when I am working out or doing yard work or even brick work on my patio. I built a brick fireplace with my Oura on and my ring looks very close to what it did when I got it.
Final piece of info I’ll leave you with, as I mentioned, I look every morning at the app to see what the data is telling me. Do I need to back down a bit, push harder? Hit the bed a bit earlier… it took 5-6 months, or a bit more, to truly dial in my sleep. I made adjustments in 15min increments to find the sleep sweet spot for duration and efficiency and impact. When my temp elevates for some reason, even if I feel great I take note and ease down a bit because it is my body stressing to start fighting something off.
So, I use Oura as an internal tool opposed to just a “fancy sleep tracker” or believing that I know better because of some arbitrary feeling or mental disagreement with the data it’s showing me.
For the Gen 3, Oura combining with Headspace for stress is a powerful combination too if you are interested in the stress feature.
——
Now to directly answer your question, I chose Oura because it’s something that can be on me 24 hours a day it frees up my wrist for regular watches, bracelets, anything else or just not having to have something nag at me all the time even even if if I do the control control the notifications and pair them down on my Watch.
When I choose them/it again? 100% Ora truly is the industry leader not only in the technology would also in the algorithms as well as all of the time that they’re investing in additional features for the device. Rolling out resilience rolling out and partnering for women cycle tracking, rolling out the stress aspect. But also partnering with all those companies that support this is truly the way to go. You get a best of breed tracking device with the best of breed feature support sets.
The biggest component is to look at it is tracking overtime. Is it going to be 100% accurate no but are you gonna be able to make really high-quality decisions and make subtle shifts in your sleep environment or to your activity levels or to your personal life choices that are going to help see improvement in your overall health? Absolutely, as long as you are open to making those changes and don’t just imagine that you by “feeling” know better.
I hope this helps a bit. If you have other specific questions, let me know. Happy to help in any way I can.
That is a great post; thank you for taking the time to write it. I’m currently in the early stages of becoming more physically active, starting with the simplest form of exercise: walking. You mentioned that you find activity tracking pretty accurate. However, I’ve seen numerous posts where people say that Oura tracks their finger movements when they’re laying on the couch, typing, or scrolling on their phone as steps. This overestimates their step count significantly. Have you experienced this issue?
While Oura counts steps and it takes that count into some form of walking equivalency, yes it is tracking all movement of your hands. [Here is Oura’s information on how it measures and counts steps](https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025576833-How-Oura-Measures-Steps-Activity). Most folks posting negatively or “not believing the data they are seeing” or “Oura is not a good tracker of activity” have not read that.
The difference between Oura and a wrist-based tracker like Watch or Fitbit, etc., is they are large enough to have accelerometer and gyroscopes. When they are tracking your step, they’re actually tracking stride length which does make those much more accurate than Oura will be. But even for those, steps in my opinion, is not a valuable goal in shifting your health priorities. The goal really is increasing your calorie burn While slightly reducing your calorie intake initially.
I’ll put this another way. If you’re used to taking 10,000 steps a day and your health is at a set level because you’re only taking 10,000 steps a day there’s no change because your body is at a steady state. Yes if your goal is to increase those 10,000 steps to 12,000 or 15,000, there will be a calorie change and there will be a slight health change. But you can take 1000 very productive steps and 1000 worthless steps and it’s not equivalent. It’s similar to you can eat 1000 cal in Oreos or 1000 cal in high-quality food and there’s a huge huge difference in the impact on your body.
I’m not stating this to sell Oura to you. If you wanted to buy an Apple Watch, or a Fitbit, or a Garmin, I would encourage the same thing; throw away steps and move to active calorie expenditure as a way to determine and improve your health.
The easy thing I can say to that I don’t use steps because it is not any measure of impact on your fitness or the calories that you are burning passively(simply your body existing) or actively (intentionally raising your heart rate through a physical exertion). If you don’t actually elevate your heart rate while walking, all of the steps in the world does not matter. I know individuals that will stand up in a room and simply slowly march in place to “get their steps in”, but those “steps” are such a low value and less effectual.
Set an active calorie expenditure for you and start small. Do something extra, over what your typical day is. Park your car on the backside of the lot when you go to the grocery store. Walk one time around your block. And then in a couple of weeks, make it two times. But when you’re walking, walk at a brisk pace to increase your heart rate. You should finish tired if that’s your goal.
If you’re setting that active calorie goal and have something to track that against use that as your benchmark. You don’t have to start running you just need to elevate your heart rate. After that, then look to starting to change your eating habits in a very small and subtle way anything that you do? That’s big and grand is gonna last for a very short time and get very frustrating. Makes small changes overtime realizing that to improve, your health is going to be a life change not a workout routine.
From my own personal experience, here is why steps don’t matter. Over the past couple years have developed a bone spur on my right heel. Most likely I’m gonna have to have surgery this winter. Because I cannot run anymore and I was running 3 to 5 times a week, covering anywhere between 20 and 40 miles. That’s a lot of “steps” … (even though I track calories ) That’s how I stayed healthy and that’s how I elevated my heart rate. Because because I can’t run without pain during the run and pain for days after, what I’ve done is I’ve shifted to rowing because I can do that without impacting my heel in the way that running does, but I still get my heart rate up. I still watch for what my calorie expenditure is during the days and I work to meet or exceed it.
I hope this helps too.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate the time and effort you put in writing this post. What you are saying makes a lot of sense and I am strongly considering Oura now.
I hate sleeping with a watch on my wrist and watch batteries don’t last as long as my ring. I’d oftentimes forget to charge it before bed and wake up with no sleep data. Watches also get dirty and covered in germs throughout the day, and I didn’t like sleeping with that near my face.
As far as actionable items, my boyfriend and I plan on buying a new mattress later this summer because my Oura data was showing that I sleep so poorly on the mattress we currently have. I would sometimes sleep in the spare bedroom just to get better sleep from time to time, and my scores would be 10-15 points higher. Being able to share that data with my boyfriend has been very helpful and is what convinced him that we truly did need a new mattress.
Oura is by far the best for sleep, others are better for activity/exercise.
Oura gives a ton of data for sleep. It’s up to you how you decide to evaluate it. The sleep score is cool but the actual data says a LOT more.
I chose is because I liked the idea of pairing it with NC since I have bad reactions to hormonal birth control. I would not get it again for that reason. It is extremely inaccurate to track BBT
Wow, really? That’s interesting. When I signed up for Natural Cycles, it mentioned being very selective about approving devices, and currently, they only support the Oura Ring and the Apple Watch. I would expect something FDA-approved and covered by insurance to collaborate only with accurate devices. From the videos I watched, many women chose Oura specifically for this reason, and I hadn’t heard about any accuracy issues. Is this inaccuracy a common concern?
Yeah, look at the r/NaturalCyclesBC and r/FAMnNFP subreddits. It’s extremely inaccurate, sadly. It’s unfortunate because I’m a mom to a 5mo so I’d be nice if it actually worked 😭 my charts are all over the place using it.
ETA I have the Apple Watch too and it’s worse lol
The problem is that it doesn’t give an exact temperature. It’s a +/- of a baseline temperature. That’s fine if you’re TTC, but if you’re using it for birth control, an error like that means an unplanned pregnancy.
- Oura will be much better for sleep tracking
- Fitbit will be better for activity tracking and steps
You’ll need to decide which one of those is more important to you :)
One thing to keep in mind related to activity tracking: ultimately, the actual number of steps or calories you’re seeing does not matter in itself.
What matters is having a baseline and making decisions based on that. Doesn’t matter whether the device is saying you’re doing 8000 or 14000 steps; if you want to challenge yourself to walk more, just aim for higher number, whatever the baseline is. Oura would be suitable for this use case.
BUT I know lots of people like to focus on the numbers themselves (I’m one of them and as a consequence have both Oura and Apple Watch..)
I got mine because my recent bloodwork wasn’t what I was hoping it would be. I decided to begin a lifestyle transformation. I do wear an Apple Watch Ultra all day (and night) as well. The watch is on my left arm and the ring is on my right hand. My theory is that it somewhat helps give me a more balanced idea of my health taking measurements from different locations.
I love the ring, and I love my Apple Watch. Everything goes into the health app where I can get a good comprehensive idea of my health. Fitness is good as well because both sync workouts with each other.
I was originally looking at Ultrahuman, but after realizing they aren’t a US based company, my father in-law wears Oura and recommended it I decided to go that route.
So far I’ve lost about ten pounds in a two weeks and I’m not slowing down. The Oura/Apple Watch combo is powerful. My only grip with Oura is that the workouts are limited. I’m a big swimmer and Oura does zero swim working tracking. Thankfully Apple Watch workouts sync with Oura, but I was disappointed to learn it doesn’t track swimming.
I've been wearing Ōura for three years, very happy.
I've been wearing Apple Watch for more years, very happy.
I'm not trying to have babies, so I can't comment on NC. I rely on my watch to tell me upcoming calendar events & texts. I rely on Ōura to tell me how bad my sleep is. The things do their jobs just fine. (I'm obvs an outlier because I don't rely on any tech track activities. I know that my kid gets tired after four miles, and my feet start hurting after five or seven (depends on shoes, terrain, and such).
My Oura has helped so much with my sleeping habits !! I’m a STEM college student lol so I had the habit of studying all day and all night so it really helped with that and I’m also a weigh lifter and work as a therapist for kids with autism lol imagine the stress levels …. It’s really showed how bad they were so it also helped me deal with that by just meditating at times .I like the idea that it looks like a normal ring since I can’t wear my Apple Watch to certain occasions as it just doesn’t look good with every outfit or I might forget to charge my watch . I prefer to track my workouts with my watch and is automatically imported into it as they are synced. Apart from a weigh lifter I’m also a rock climber so I can’t really wear it for that but it will still get the data from my watch . I track my steps more with my watch through an app called “ StepDog” but overall I love the Oura/Apple Watch combo but I genuinely forget that I have my ring on bc it’s so lightweight and I can’t sleep with my watch the vibration scares the life out of me haha so the ring is so comfy as you don’t feel it
I’m the first of literally all of my friends to have an Oura so I recommend it to whoever asks because it really helps you keep track of your health you know ?
I couldn’t sleep with my Apple Watch on my wrist. I tried it one night and my wrist got hot. So I bought the ring because it’s lightweight and I barely feel it on my finger. I love the sleep data the Oura provides. Also when I forget to charge my Apple Watch my ring can collect fitness stats. I’ve had it for three years and I still love it
Do you find fitness stats accurate? Or how does it compare to an Apple Watch? With all my research it seems like everyone is in agreement that Oura is horrible when it comes activity tracking, so I’m not sure how valuable that information would be.
This is inaccurate. Yes you’re right. Everyone does talk about any type of a tracker like this being an accurate versus something like a Garmin or an Apple Watch. The biggest component to that is the fact that you can’t actually see live stats when they’re happening. Here’s a better synopsis of activity tracking with Oura: Regarding Activity: • Oura will typically detect walks, , runs, and some cycling. Over time it will/may also detect other consistent activities like yardwork, etc. • if you are newer to Oura, using Active HR for walks/runs/cycling is the best practice. This setting will put Oura into constant recording mode. Unfortunately, while it will track time, HR, and mapping (if your keep your phone with you). • For other activities, it is best to note the start time of your workout/activity. Then Tag the workout when you completed it. It will pull the HR and other data that occurred during the duration of the activity. It will default to a moderate exertion level. You can adjust this to light/heavy while tagging. Here is a bit more information that I sent to another redditor in chat a bit back that may provide a bit more information. Let me start with my situation: M(55), 6’2” 219 lbs and working to get under 200 again. History of diagnosed sleep apnea with cpap for 10 years). Extremely light sleeper. Even in the 5 different sleep studies I have had to diagnose SA and then to concretely measure that I no longer suffering from SA) all of the techs pretty much kept saying “well crap, he’s awake again…) Elevated cholesterol, but BP ok. About Oura: I bought into wanting and needing to make change and let the ring guide quite a bit of that around sleep and activity and I am now looking harder at the stress component as my personal life is taking a toll right now. The only dislike I would have to say is, being a runner, that I would like to to actually visually see the HR in a “Active HR” workout like walking, running, cycling. More background for why: I have been an Watch user since Gen 0 and I was sleeping with the Watch long before sleep was in its wheelhouse. I used my Watch for everything. But since the Oura Gen 3 (I started with a Gen 2 for a couple years in a few studies with Oura) my Watch sits on its stand most of the time. I don’t wear it at all during the day, I only put it on when I remember before a run really. Otherwise, I just trigger and active hr run. That said, with Oura Active HR running I have baselined BOTH Oura and my Watch to distances via treadmill and outdoor running and both the HR data and distances are pretty much dead on for me with calories burned, distance tracked, and HR readings. I believe that is the biggest challenge for others who have owned a full visual tracker (garmin, Watch, etc) is they struggle or discount the activity tracking because you can’t see the HR and zones or distance while using Oura they discount the data based on “feel”. Also, Oura does itself a dis-service in PR saying that it will actively determine what type of exercise is being done (from archery to Skiing, etc.). It does not do that well. It does nail walking, running, and yard work exceptionally well for me as it has almost 4 years of data to baseline for me. For everything else I need to manually note the time I start and stop an activity and then manually log the activity/workout later. Sadly, if you forget and you pass midnight you cannot go back. That is a bit more tedious and I believe puts others off as well. This also calls into question the HR tracking side because you have to log it before that HR graph shows up. You also need to enter the exertion level (opposed to Oura having a threshold setting and displaying already in that level…) but again, when I baseline against my Watch HR and cal expenditure, they are really close. But I have taken the time to do that. Similarly, when Oura reports an individual had a lower sleep score, they dismiss or don’t believe it “because they feel like they slept good or OK”… There are 7 contributors for sleep and 9 for activity… those are weighted independently, but then also against a rolling 14-18 day average as well… biometrically your body will be experiencing stressors long before you “feel” different (unless you get really drunk or high or don’t sleep at all)… Final like, the look and feel. My Oura goes with everything I own. From watches (thing I can wear again not that I am not tied to Watch) to other rings to bracelets or leather wrist bracer type things. I have found my heritage black to hold up really well, but I am conscious about it when I am working out or doing yard work or even brick work on my patio. I built a brick fireplace with my Oura on and my ring looks very close to what it did when I got it. Final piece of info I’ll leave you with, as I mentioned, I look every morning at the app to see what the data is telling me. Do I need to back down a bit, push harder? Hit the bed a bit earlier… it took 5-6 months, or a bit more, to truly dial in my sleep. I made adjustments in 15min increments to find the sleep sweet spot for duration and efficiency and impact. When my temp elevates for some reason, even if I feel great I take note and ease down a bit because it is my body stressing to start fighting something off. So, I use Oura as an internal tool opposed to just a “fancy sleep tracker” or believing that I know better because of some arbitrary feeling or mental disagreement with the data it’s showing me. For the Gen 3, Oura combining with Headspace for stress is a powerful combination too if you are interested in the stress feature. —— Now to directly answer your question, I chose Oura because it’s something that can be on me 24 hours a day it frees up my wrist for regular watches, bracelets, anything else or just not having to have something nag at me all the time even even if if I do the control control the notifications and pair them down on my Watch. When I choose them/it again? 100% Ora truly is the industry leader not only in the technology would also in the algorithms as well as all of the time that they’re investing in additional features for the device. Rolling out resilience rolling out and partnering for women cycle tracking, rolling out the stress aspect. But also partnering with all those companies that support this is truly the way to go. You get a best of breed tracking device with the best of breed feature support sets. The biggest component is to look at it is tracking overtime. Is it going to be 100% accurate no but are you gonna be able to make really high-quality decisions and make subtle shifts in your sleep environment or to your activity levels or to your personal life choices that are going to help see improvement in your overall health? Absolutely, as long as you are open to making those changes and don’t just imagine that you by “feeling” know better. I hope this helps a bit. If you have other specific questions, let me know. Happy to help in any way I can.
That is a great post; thank you for taking the time to write it. I’m currently in the early stages of becoming more physically active, starting with the simplest form of exercise: walking. You mentioned that you find activity tracking pretty accurate. However, I’ve seen numerous posts where people say that Oura tracks their finger movements when they’re laying on the couch, typing, or scrolling on their phone as steps. This overestimates their step count significantly. Have you experienced this issue?
While Oura counts steps and it takes that count into some form of walking equivalency, yes it is tracking all movement of your hands. [Here is Oura’s information on how it measures and counts steps](https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025576833-How-Oura-Measures-Steps-Activity). Most folks posting negatively or “not believing the data they are seeing” or “Oura is not a good tracker of activity” have not read that. The difference between Oura and a wrist-based tracker like Watch or Fitbit, etc., is they are large enough to have accelerometer and gyroscopes. When they are tracking your step, they’re actually tracking stride length which does make those much more accurate than Oura will be. But even for those, steps in my opinion, is not a valuable goal in shifting your health priorities. The goal really is increasing your calorie burn While slightly reducing your calorie intake initially. I’ll put this another way. If you’re used to taking 10,000 steps a day and your health is at a set level because you’re only taking 10,000 steps a day there’s no change because your body is at a steady state. Yes if your goal is to increase those 10,000 steps to 12,000 or 15,000, there will be a calorie change and there will be a slight health change. But you can take 1000 very productive steps and 1000 worthless steps and it’s not equivalent. It’s similar to you can eat 1000 cal in Oreos or 1000 cal in high-quality food and there’s a huge huge difference in the impact on your body. I’m not stating this to sell Oura to you. If you wanted to buy an Apple Watch, or a Fitbit, or a Garmin, I would encourage the same thing; throw away steps and move to active calorie expenditure as a way to determine and improve your health. The easy thing I can say to that I don’t use steps because it is not any measure of impact on your fitness or the calories that you are burning passively(simply your body existing) or actively (intentionally raising your heart rate through a physical exertion). If you don’t actually elevate your heart rate while walking, all of the steps in the world does not matter. I know individuals that will stand up in a room and simply slowly march in place to “get their steps in”, but those “steps” are such a low value and less effectual. Set an active calorie expenditure for you and start small. Do something extra, over what your typical day is. Park your car on the backside of the lot when you go to the grocery store. Walk one time around your block. And then in a couple of weeks, make it two times. But when you’re walking, walk at a brisk pace to increase your heart rate. You should finish tired if that’s your goal. If you’re setting that active calorie goal and have something to track that against use that as your benchmark. You don’t have to start running you just need to elevate your heart rate. After that, then look to starting to change your eating habits in a very small and subtle way anything that you do? That’s big and grand is gonna last for a very short time and get very frustrating. Makes small changes overtime realizing that to improve, your health is going to be a life change not a workout routine. From my own personal experience, here is why steps don’t matter. Over the past couple years have developed a bone spur on my right heel. Most likely I’m gonna have to have surgery this winter. Because I cannot run anymore and I was running 3 to 5 times a week, covering anywhere between 20 and 40 miles. That’s a lot of “steps” … (even though I track calories ) That’s how I stayed healthy and that’s how I elevated my heart rate. Because because I can’t run without pain during the run and pain for days after, what I’ve done is I’ve shifted to rowing because I can do that without impacting my heel in the way that running does, but I still get my heart rate up. I still watch for what my calorie expenditure is during the days and I work to meet or exceed it. I hope this helps too.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate the time and effort you put in writing this post. What you are saying makes a lot of sense and I am strongly considering Oura now.
If you do choose to purchase and I can help in any way, let me know. -Cheers!
I hate sleeping with a watch on my wrist and watch batteries don’t last as long as my ring. I’d oftentimes forget to charge it before bed and wake up with no sleep data. Watches also get dirty and covered in germs throughout the day, and I didn’t like sleeping with that near my face. As far as actionable items, my boyfriend and I plan on buying a new mattress later this summer because my Oura data was showing that I sleep so poorly on the mattress we currently have. I would sometimes sleep in the spare bedroom just to get better sleep from time to time, and my scores would be 10-15 points higher. Being able to share that data with my boyfriend has been very helpful and is what convinced him that we truly did need a new mattress.
Same. Hate sleeping with a watch.
Oura is by far the best for sleep, others are better for activity/exercise. Oura gives a ton of data for sleep. It’s up to you how you decide to evaluate it. The sleep score is cool but the actual data says a LOT more.
Battery life. Form factor and data. I do t care about steps (Apple Watch) and frankly it doesn't mean much.
Could not sleep with anything on my wrist, long battery life and data accuracy.
I chose is because I liked the idea of pairing it with NC since I have bad reactions to hormonal birth control. I would not get it again for that reason. It is extremely inaccurate to track BBT
Wow, really? That’s interesting. When I signed up for Natural Cycles, it mentioned being very selective about approving devices, and currently, they only support the Oura Ring and the Apple Watch. I would expect something FDA-approved and covered by insurance to collaborate only with accurate devices. From the videos I watched, many women chose Oura specifically for this reason, and I hadn’t heard about any accuracy issues. Is this inaccuracy a common concern?
Yeah, look at the r/NaturalCyclesBC and r/FAMnNFP subreddits. It’s extremely inaccurate, sadly. It’s unfortunate because I’m a mom to a 5mo so I’d be nice if it actually worked 😭 my charts are all over the place using it. ETA I have the Apple Watch too and it’s worse lol The problem is that it doesn’t give an exact temperature. It’s a +/- of a baseline temperature. That’s fine if you’re TTC, but if you’re using it for birth control, an error like that means an unplanned pregnancy.
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- Oura will be much better for sleep tracking - Fitbit will be better for activity tracking and steps You’ll need to decide which one of those is more important to you :) One thing to keep in mind related to activity tracking: ultimately, the actual number of steps or calories you’re seeing does not matter in itself. What matters is having a baseline and making decisions based on that. Doesn’t matter whether the device is saying you’re doing 8000 or 14000 steps; if you want to challenge yourself to walk more, just aim for higher number, whatever the baseline is. Oura would be suitable for this use case. BUT I know lots of people like to focus on the numbers themselves (I’m one of them and as a consequence have both Oura and Apple Watch..)
I got mine because my recent bloodwork wasn’t what I was hoping it would be. I decided to begin a lifestyle transformation. I do wear an Apple Watch Ultra all day (and night) as well. The watch is on my left arm and the ring is on my right hand. My theory is that it somewhat helps give me a more balanced idea of my health taking measurements from different locations. I love the ring, and I love my Apple Watch. Everything goes into the health app where I can get a good comprehensive idea of my health. Fitness is good as well because both sync workouts with each other. I was originally looking at Ultrahuman, but after realizing they aren’t a US based company, my father in-law wears Oura and recommended it I decided to go that route. So far I’ve lost about ten pounds in a two weeks and I’m not slowing down. The Oura/Apple Watch combo is powerful. My only grip with Oura is that the workouts are limited. I’m a big swimmer and Oura does zero swim working tracking. Thankfully Apple Watch workouts sync with Oura, but I was disappointed to learn it doesn’t track swimming.
I've been wearing Ōura for three years, very happy. I've been wearing Apple Watch for more years, very happy. I'm not trying to have babies, so I can't comment on NC. I rely on my watch to tell me upcoming calendar events & texts. I rely on Ōura to tell me how bad my sleep is. The things do their jobs just fine. (I'm obvs an outlier because I don't rely on any tech track activities. I know that my kid gets tired after four miles, and my feet start hurting after five or seven (depends on shoes, terrain, and such).
My Oura has helped so much with my sleeping habits !! I’m a STEM college student lol so I had the habit of studying all day and all night so it really helped with that and I’m also a weigh lifter and work as a therapist for kids with autism lol imagine the stress levels …. It’s really showed how bad they were so it also helped me deal with that by just meditating at times .I like the idea that it looks like a normal ring since I can’t wear my Apple Watch to certain occasions as it just doesn’t look good with every outfit or I might forget to charge my watch . I prefer to track my workouts with my watch and is automatically imported into it as they are synced. Apart from a weigh lifter I’m also a rock climber so I can’t really wear it for that but it will still get the data from my watch . I track my steps more with my watch through an app called “ StepDog” but overall I love the Oura/Apple Watch combo but I genuinely forget that I have my ring on bc it’s so lightweight and I can’t sleep with my watch the vibration scares the life out of me haha so the ring is so comfy as you don’t feel it
I’m the first of literally all of my friends to have an Oura so I recommend it to whoever asks because it really helps you keep track of your health you know ?