I love everything wellness. From the best probiotics to the smartest home gym, I’m always looking for the best wellness products that help me to achieve my goals. I hesitated to buy the Oura Ring at first because I was a pretty loyal Apple Watch wearer, and wasn’t sure I needed something else.
That all changed when I saw Oura partnered with Natural Cycles, a digital birth control app (hormone free!) that uses your temperature to track your cycle and determine your fertility status.
I loved the idea of Natural Cycles, but knew I would never consistently take my temperature every morning for the best results. The Oura Ring removes that obstacle (the placement on your finger allows it capture an accurate temperature) and finally sold me enough to give it a try. That plus I could write this Oura Ring Review!
Oura Ring: A Quick Look At This Smart Ring
Oura was founded 10 years ago in Finland (aka the happiest country in the world) with the intention of making it easy to monitor your health. Humans are at the center of everything they do, and I’m here for it.
While the company is centered around one product: a smart ring. It’s continuously evolving. Currently, the newest version on the market is the Oura Ring Gen3. On top of new generations of the ring, they do a TON of new things via software updates. I feel like there’s been a lot of updates even since I got mine in May (2024).
The Basics You Need To Know
- The Oura Ring comes in two styles: Heritage and Horizon. The only difference is the Heritage has a flat ridge at the top of the ring whereas the Horzion is fully rounded.
- The Heritage starts from $299 and comes in four colors: Silver, Black, Stealth (matte black/gray) and Gold.
- The Horizon starts from $349 and comes in six colors: Silver, Black, Stealth, Brushed Titanium, Gold and Rose Gold.
- You also have to decide if you want to purchase the Oura Membership. You get the first month free with purchase, and it’s currently $5.99 per month afterwards.
- Without the membership, you only get your Sleep, Readiness and Activity scores without the in-depth analyses, personal insights and recommendations and more.
- The Oura App syncs with other fitness apps like Apple Healthkit for iPhone, Google Health Connect for Android and Natural Cycles (of course).
Oura Ring Comes With A Lot Of Features But Is Expensive
Sounds great, right? But it comes with a pretty hefty price tag. That’s what took me so long to commit. Is the Oura Ring worth it? To decide, I’ll focus on these factors:
- Oura Ring Fit & Design
- Oura App (& Oura Membership)
- Oura x Natural Cycles integration (& Improving Menstrual Health)
- Oura Ring For Improving Sleep
If there’s something else that’s pushing you to buy the Oura Ring, I’m happy to answer any questions you might have! Just DM me on Instagram (@taylormgrantham).
Oura Ring Fit & Design Did Not Have Good First Impressions
TBH, my first impression of the ring was not good. It was much lighter than I was expecting. It felt like plastic, and for that price?! At the same time, it felt really clunky on my hand. I have pretty small hands so this was a big concern of mine.
In retrospect, I learned to appreciate the lightweight aerospace-grade titanium, and I don’t even feel that I’m wearing it. I chose the Heritage style in gold. I knew I wanted gold to match my other jewelry, plus the lower price tag was appealing.
Pro Tip: Don’t skip the Oura Ring Sizing Kit. Even if you know your ring size, the Oura Ring is shaped differently, and I sized up quite a bit than my normal size. You can get it for $10 and they’ll remove that from your ring purchase so that it’s actually “free.”
Oura App (& Oura Membership) Is Really Easy To Navigate
I really like the Oura App. It’s really easy to navigate, and there’s just SO MUCH INFORMATION. I thought it would be information overload, but there’s tons of insights and recommendations based on your health data and trends. For example, your Readiness Score is broken down into 9 different readiness contributors:
- Resting heart rate
- HRV balance
- Body temperature
- Recovery index
- Sleep
- Sleep balance
- Sleep regularity
- Previous day activity
- Activity balance
What is the Readiness Score? It’s a calculation that ranges from 0-100 (based on the above contributors) that determines how ready you are for the day, or how well you recovered mentally and physically. 85+ is optimal; 70-84 is good; 60-69 is fair; and less than 60 is pay attention.
I can tap into the details of each of those contributing factors like activity and find ways to improve it so I improve my readiness. Similar to the Apple Watch, it tracks if you move every hour, but somehow it’s less annoying. Not sure if I’m moving more than I did with my Apple Watch, but I rarely get the “time to stretch your legs?” notification. I feel like I got the a”time to stand” notification much more often.
What is the Activity Score? Another Oura calculation that ranges from 0-100 that measures your activity. It looks at the following activity contributors:
- Stay active (i.e. avoiding long periods of inactivity)
- Move every hour
- Meet daily goals
- Training frequency
- Training volume
- Recovery time
The Oura Ring is a smart ring (i.e. wearable device) that helps monitor your health by measuring heart rate, temperature, movement and more.
The Oura Ring has also proved to be a more valueable fitness tracker than I would have thought. I read reviews that it wasn’t a good replacement for other fitness trackers, but honestly, I have no complaints. It tracks everything I want to know, and picks up my workouts really well!
I can’t go on without mentioning the stress management features! Stress and cortisol levels are a key piece to managing PCOS and hormone imbalances… Honestly, I look at the data regularly but I haven’t quite figured out how to use it. Maybe I’ll update this once I do!
The Oura Membership Is Worth It, Trust Me
Another subscription?! I know… it sucks, but this one is worth it. I’m not sure buying the ring without it would be. The personal tips and recommendations alone are incredible to create actual change in your well-being.
“But I just paid $300+ for the ring itself, shouldn’t that be included?!” The short answer: no. You paid for the production of the ring and the technology inside of it. The subscription pays for the continuous software updates, personalized recommendations and more.
You can go without the subscription, and still get the basic data you’re looking for, but the subscription takes it a step further by analyzing that data with real time insights and advice.
The way I look at it… you’re making an investment in your health. If you don’t, you wouldn’t be reading this article 👀 So it’s really up to you how much of an investment you want to make! For me, it’s worth it!
Oura x Natural Cycles Integration Is Available
Tracking your cycle is all the rage, and for good reason. Those that menstruate go through four hormone cycles every month while those that don’t have a 24-hour hormone cycle. Managing the different fluctuations of hormones within each menstrual cycle is not for the weak. That said, it’s REALLY difficult to track your cycle when you have irregular periods, and an extra long cycle at that.
All of which I’ve learned with the help of the Oura x Natural Cycles integration. The catch? You have to pay for another subscription 🫠 Oura Ring also can detect your cycle without Natural Cycles just by using the variations in your temperature. However, I’ve found that to be not as accurate as the Natural Cycles algorithm.
Additionally, Natural Cycles tells you whether you’re fertile or not as a form of birth control which you can’t get with the Oura Ring. One thing to also call out, you have to open the Natural Cycles app everyday for it to sync with your Oura ring, see your status and get the most accurate information.
All in all, I love the ease and accuracy of the Oura Ring and Natural Cycles integration. Paying for the Natural Cycles subscription has been totally worth it for me!
Oura Ring For Improving Sleep
As I mentioned before, I primarily got the Oura Ring for its integration with Natural Cycles, but the sleep tracking has been life changing. I’ve never tracked my sleep with other wearable devices (i.e. Apple Watch and Fitbit) because I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping with it on my wrist.
Sleeping with the ring was an adjustment, but an easy one! One thing that I feel isn’t mentioned enough…it lights up red and green at night. With the lights out, it’s really noticeable and also takes getting used to. For me and my husband!
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Now let’s get into the life changing part. I noticed my Sleep Score was heavily impacted by Latency which is the amount of time it takes you to fall asleep. The thing about me is I fall asleep watching comfort TV shows. You’d assume, oh it’s the TV! But I wouldn’t let it go that easily so I bought a sleep mask to see if it helped improve my sleep.
What do you know? It did!! It was a combination of watching TV and my husband’s night light that impacted my sleep latency. Putting the mask on and listening to my show instead of watching has completely changed the game.
It’s so cool to see how my sleep data has improved, and excited to try other things that can help improve my overall wellness. What is the Sleep Score? A measure of how you sleep based on sleep quality, sleep stages and more:
- Total sleep (i.e. how long you sleep at night)
- Efficiency (percentage of time you sleep vs. spent awake in bed)
- Restfulness (tracks wake ups, excessive movement and getting out of bed)
- REM sleep
- Deep sleep
- Latency
- Timing
Have questions about the Oura Ring? DM me on Instagram @taylormgrantham or leave a comment below! And if you got it, show us which style and color you picked by tagging us @whimsysoul!
The Oura Ring is a smart ring (i.e. wearable device) that helps monitor your health by measuring heart rate, temperature, movement and more.
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