I've Worn The Oura Ring For Almost 2 Years: 7 Reasons I Love It (& What I'd Change)

The sleep score is a measurement of how well you slept the night before, taking into account the below data:

Along with your sleep score, Oura shows your average oxygen saturation, breathing regularity, heart rate, and HRV for each night. 

After 90 days of tracking your sleep with Oura, you’ll be given information about your sleep chronotype (i.e. whether you're a night or morning person) and your optimal sleep schedule. 

It's important to note that, while you start gaining insights as soon as you begin wearing your Oura ring, Kryder says it takes about two weeks for Oura to establish your baseline data. From there, the ring will continue to learn from your data—so the longer you wear it, the more personalized and accurate your insights will be.

The readiness score tells you how well you've recovered mentally and physically by taking into account:

Within the Readiness tab in the Oura app, you'll also see your respiratory rate, which is the average number of breaths you take per minute.

As the name suggests, the activity score tells you how active you've been. You can adjust your baseline activity goal within the home screen, with the choice to measure your goal on step count or active calorie burn (you can also choose to hide calories all together, if preferred).

Each day, Oura assigns a minimum daily activity goal based on your baseline goal and your readiness score.

Your activity score fluctuates throughout the day based on movement detected, activities logged, prolonged periods of stillness, and recent personal trends.

Within the activity tab in the Oura app, you'll see your overall activity score along with the below details:

While the activity details are insightful (and I do appreciate the movement reminders!), Oura would not be my top choice if you're looking primarily for an activity tracker. Most workouts (e.g. Pilates, strength training, or yoga) are not detected and instead need to be added manually, so the estimated calories burned should be taken with a (very coarse) grain of salt.

Per Kryder, "The Automatic Activity Detection (AAD) feature does not automatically detect some unsupported workouts, workouts under 10 minutes in duration, or activities you undertake while not wearing your Oura Ring." She adds that the ring's predictions get stronger as more feedback is given.

"For example, if you tell Oura 'I just went surfing,' it will be better at detecting it the next time around," Kryder explains.

My ring does detect walks, runs, and even the occasional badminton match—and I find it to be incredibly accurate at tracking steps. My steps per day are always in line with the Apple health data on my iPhone, give or take a couple thousand steps taken when my phone isn't on me.

Along with the daily sleep, readiness, and activity scores, Oura also provides insights on other important aspects of your health. My personal favorites are the stress and cycle tracking, which both recently received upgrades from the Oura team.

Shown in graph form, this measures your heart rate, HRV, motion, and temperature and provides insights into your physiological stress. This is super useful to see what habits and activities may be causing you more stress than others.

Kryder notes that it takes about 30 days for Oura to calibrate to your 24-hour heart rate averages and overnight temperature deviation to start providing fully accurate insights on stress levels.

You'll see your stress in four zones:

The Oura ring measures your nightly body temperature and shows a bar graph comparing it to your baseline. It also provides useful insights on how your body temperature fluctuates throughout your menstrual cycle, with cycle predictions based on the measurement.

Per Kryder, it takes about two months to establish a baseline for the cycle insights. As you log your period and wear the ring for longer, the predictions become increasingly accurate.

I used to have an extremely irregular cycle, but after religiously wearing my ring, logging my data, and integrating with Natural Cycles (more on that in a few), my ring now predicts the start of my period within a day or two every month.

A wearable device is only as useful as it is accurate—and the Oura ring showed accuracy levels up to 92.6% when compared to a polysomnography (PSG) test (the gold standard for sleep testing). 

I've tested three Garmin models, two Apple Watch iterations, the WHOOP, and the FitBit—and while some are great devices, my Oura ring takes the cake in terms of comfort and wearability.

I don't wear any other rings while sleeping, so I was a bit skeptical about my ability to stay consistent with this one. After all, how effective is a sleep tracker if it's not comfortable to sleep in? Thankfully I got used to the Oura ring in just a day or two. Now I tend to forget I'm even wearing it.

While the Oura's fit is spot on for me (praise to the sizing kit), a few mindbodygreen team members wish the brand offered half sizes. That said, the brand recommends a snug fit for best results—so I'd size down if you're in between. My ring is a bit tighter at times when my finger swells in in warmer weather (or when I eat too much salt), but it's never uncomfortable.

I prefer gold accessories, so I opted for the gold Horizon ring, and I love how it blends in with my other jewelry. If anything, the shiny device actually enhances my aesthetic and I wear it like a badge of honor. I often bond with other Oura ring wearers in the wild, each pouring over the impact the device has had on our sleep and overall well-being.

Not only does the Oura ring provide accurate personalized data, it also gives useful recommendations to improve your scores. Over the past year, the ring's suggestions have adapted based on my lifestyle and habits.

For example, when the ring detects that I might be coming down with something, the app kindly suggests taking it easy that day (or even enabling Rest Mode to take a break from activity goals). Alternatively, if my scores are peaking, the app motivates me to take advantage of the higher readiness by tackling a tougher workout.

Since I started wearing my Oura ring in November 2022, I've learned valuable insights on how factors like caffeine, alcohol, travel, stress, movement, and nutrition impact my sleep and overall health.

The best part? I'm still able to enjoy my favorite indulgences (proof below)—but I'm way more mindful of how they'll impact my well-being. I've used this knowledge to truly optimize my workouts, productivity, meal timing, and more.

I wouldn’t love the Oura ring so much if the data wasn’t so easy to comprehend. Oura does an amazing job of explaining each and every metric that the ring tracks, along with how it relates to your well-being. 

Within just a few weeks of testing the Oura ring, my sleep knowledge skyrocketed—and I already knew a lot. I was finding myself bringing up topics like HRV at the dinner table and explaining to my friends and family just how much sleep quality impacts every aspect of your well-being.

Any time Oura introduces a new metric or feature (such as cycle tracking or the recently added stress tracker), it does so with a wealth of digestible information on how the metrics are tracked and why they're important.

As someone who's had an irregular cycle for the past decade, I was ecstatic when Oura launched its Natural Cycles integration. On its own, Oura taught me a lot about how my body temperature changes throughout my menstrual cycle—but the ability to pull my temperature data into Natural Cycles has been a total game changer.

To do this, you simply need to open the Natural Cycles app and click “sync Oura ring.” You can sync the data manually each day or set it up to auto-sync. 

From there, Natural Cycles can more accurately calculate your fertility status and where you are in your cycle. This has been an incredibly tool for me while regulating my own cycle; Oura now predicts my period within a day or two every month.

In addition to body temperature insights, I've learned a lot about how my heart rate, heart rate variability, and energy levels change throughout the various stages of my menstrual cycle. This has helped guide me in terms of which workouts to do during specific times of the month and when to lean heavier into rest.

Of course, you'll need to pay for Natural Cycles to gain these additional insights. A monthly membership costs $14.99 per month, or you can save 35% with an annual membership which costs $119.99 (nets out to $9.99 per month).

Within the Oura app, you can view trends for sleep, readiness, activity, and stress in a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual breakdown. These graphs outline any tags and activities you've added (e.g. period, sauna use, alcohol intake, workouts, etc.), so you'll be able to spot factors that might be impacting different areas of your health.

Oura also provides shareable reports which you can view for each week, month, quarter, or year. These are my absolute favorite! I love looking back on the month or year to see what my highs and lows were.

In these reports, you'll be able to see your average scores for each category, how various habits impacted your scores, how many steps you took over the full period, how often you hit your activity goal, your most active time of day, and more.

We'd be here all day if I listed all the ways the Oura ring has impacted my well-being. Since I started tracking my sleep with Oura one year ago, I've improved my HRV (a key indicator of health and longevity!), increased my REM sleep by over 400%, logged more steps than any other year, regulated my menstrual cycle, and even ran one of my fastest marathons yet.

Most importantly, I feel great. My biggest gripe with wearables is that they can cause obsessive behavior, but the Oura ring lends itself to mindful tracking—and the data is almost always in line with how I'm actually feeling that day; a lower sleep score validates my sluggishness and makes me feel better about taking it easy, and the app's cues help me know when I'd benefit more from a rest day than a workout.