[…] Now in its third iteration, the Oura Ring tracks and analyzes a host of metrics, including your heart-rate variability (HRV), blood oxygen rate, body temperature, and sleep duration. It uses this data to give you three daily scores, tallying the quality of your sleep, activity, and “readiness.” It can also determine your chronotype (your body’s natural preferences for sleep or wakefulness), give insight into hormonal factors that can affect your sleep, and (theoretically) alert you when you’re getting sick.
I wore the Oura Ring for six months; it gave me tons of data about myself and helped me pinpoint areas in my sleep and health that I could improve. It’s also more comfortable and discreet to wear than most wristband wearable trackers.
However, the ring costs about $300 or more, depending on the style and finish, and Oura’s app now requires a roughly $72 yearly subscription to access most of the data and reports.
(Oura recently announced that the cost of the ring is eligible for reimbursement through a flexible spending account [FSA] or health spending account [HSA]. The subscription is not.)
If you just want to track your sleep cycles and get tips, a free (or modestly priced) sleep-tracking app may do the trick.
[…]
So what do you get with the membership?
- In-depth sleep analysis, every morning
- Personalized health insights, 24/7
- Live & accurate heart rate monitoring
- Body temperature readings for early illness detection and period prediction (in beta)
- Workout Heart Rate Tracking
- Sp02 Monitoring
- Rest Mode
- Bedtime Guidance
- Track More Movement
- Restorative Time
- Trends Over Time
- Tags
- Insights from Audio Sessions
And what if you want to continue for free?
Non-paying members have access to 3 simple daily scores: Sleep, Readiness, and Activity, as well as our interactive and educational Explore content.
Source: More power to you with Oura Membership.
This is a pretty stunning turn of events:
one because it was supposed to be the privacy friendly option, so what data are they sending to central servers and why (that’s the only way they can justify a subscription) and
two why is data that doesn’t need to be sent to the servers not being shown in the free version of the app?!
For the price of the ring this is a pretty shameless money grab.
Robin Edgar
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