I like wearing nice watches and yet I also wanted to do some basic wellness tracking. I looked at both Motiv and Oura as the leading providers for alternative wellness tracking and I decided on Oura. This was due to the longer battery life and what I perceived to be more advanced sensor technology. I’ve now been using my Oura for nearly a year! Wow! I’m a technologist and this impresses, it works like flawlessly! I’ve never had an issue, the latest IOS release did introduce some connectivity issues but within a few days an update was released. The ring fits will and whilst a little less subtle than I would like it’s garish. Anyone who asks about the ring is blown away when I tell them what it actually is. The data I’ve found to be accurate and consistent. And rather than the constant notifications the app and ring give nudges, my lifestyle doesn’t mean I can make radical changes. This however provides guidance based on current and past metrics. It just helps be be that little bit better, drink a little less, sleep a little more, be a little more active than I might be on some days and try to relax more on others. It’s called bio hacking but I see this as simple informed guidance. The hardware has never gone wrong, the app has always worked and been responsive. My greatest fear is that it works so well the company revenues will not enable them to continue to invest and support existing customers. I couldn’t recommend Oura more highly I’ve been mightily impressed and I still am a year down the line.

Now I don’t normally do reviews unless I’m moved to do so. But it was only in reading another review whilst upgrading the app software that I realised something. The ring and app are flawless. I realised yes, I too have not had any bugs, no app issues, no rebooting or resetting. 12 months on, the ring is just taken for granted and just takes what seem to be the most accurate and meaningful data in any wearable. It’s not a fitness tracker per se, but the recent upgrade to recognising activity was smooth and welcomed. The sleep tracking is world class and the readiness score matches the whoop band I had, with no bulky wrist worn tech. The rest function is excellent when you need it and to me Oura just do what they do incredibly well and it’s as if day by day my body is just kicking out stats, so unintrusive is the ring to wear. Would I like to be able to see my heart rate when exercising? You bet.... but that’s nit-picking. I’ve worn Fitbit, whoop, Garmin and Samsung tech. This was the best switch I ever made. Beautiful tech beautiful app.

I’ve been using Oura for nearly 3 years, and when it first came on the market it was impressively and truly innovative. The Oura team do continue to release upgrades and new features, most of which are good. But considering sleep is the primary focus of the product, their sleep algorithm has always been patchy, and recently a new algorithm release has been really awful. True, they did beta test it for a long while. But I consistently saw the original algorithm much closer to my experience of my actual sleep than the new one. The new one is so, so bad, it’s making me wonder if I should even bother with this product any more. It consistently takes off about an hour of sleep every night, regardless of how well you’ve slept. It throws in random wake up events that simply haven’t happened. Further, if you reduce the amount of time it says you were awake before you go to bed, it cuts down your sleep time even more, even if you are just cutting out solid awake time!! And when you complain to Oura, they say it’s perfect and your perception is incorrect (classic techie user error blaming). I wish they would roll back this update, it is so disheartening to see poor sleep scores when you know you’ve slept well, and beyond that, the data is just bad and they should be embarrassed.

I've followed and recommended the OURA for a few years so when the Gen3 version came out I decided to order one each for myself and my partner. A couple of my ProLongevity clients who were happy with their gen2 rings (bought on my recommendation) gifted me their gen3 upgrades. NB this was a suggestion OURA actually made in their Facebook group. Cue a complete nightmare. Oura then completely mixed up my account with my clients' account. I got their emails. They got mine. Eventually the sizing kit turned up..(that took 20 or more emails) . Eventually both devices arrived but despite another 20 emails back and forth Oura customer services are too incompetent to disentangle the mess. The device is brilliant. The app is best in class but OURA customer service..I have no words Its literally the most incompetent least helpful customer experience I've had in decades