Getting a good night’s sleep is a key part of living a healthy life. We know this, and the importance of sleeping properly has been drilled into us for, well, years. So, when you’re *not* sleeping well, your tiredness, frustration and concern over what it’s doing to your body can all feel pretty stressful.
Thankfully, there are a whole bunch of tools out there these days to help you get a real handle on your sleeping habits - including basics like your iPhone Health app, plus all kinds of smart watches. However, there’s another kid on the block almost entirely dedicated to sleep. Enter the Oura Ring: a smart ring calling itself “the world’s best sleep tracker”, keeping tabs on your fitness, stress, sleep and health. Oh, and it has plenty of celebrity fans, ranging from Kim Kardashian to Prince Harry.
So, how does the Oura Ring work, and can it really improve your sleep habits for good? As a notoriously terrible sleeper, I grabbed one to try out. To offer up some backstory, I’ve struggled with sleeping for as long as I can remember. I’m a staunch night owl and have always preferred to stay awake super late. However, come morning time, I’ll lie in for hours and battle relentlessly to drag myself from the depths of sleep and actually Wake TF Up.
Some people on the other hand struggle to fall asleep due to insomnia or anxiety, while others have trouble actually staying asleep throughout the night. Whatever your sleep battle, here’s some insight into how the Oura Ring might be able to help…
How does the Oura Ring work?
I tried out the newest Oura Ring Generation 3. To summarise, the ring is built with research-grade sensors which monitor your different sleep stages and overall sleep quality. You connect your ring to an app which tracks the data and builds up a picture of your individual sleep patterns as you wear it over time, offering personalised guidance on how to improve your sleep quality.
You wear your ring 24/7 (so it’s important to pick one you like - more on that below). They’re water resistant up to 100m and a full 20-80 mins of charge will get you seven days of battery life (winner).
Your first month of app membership is included in your ring purchase and you’ll pay $5.99 (about £4.90) per month afterwards for the full subscription. You can continue to use the app for free, but you don’t get access to all of the in-depth sleep analysis, personalised insights and live heart rate/temperature monitoring without a full membership.
The actual ring itself starts at $299 (£245):
Finding the right Oura Ring size
There are five main Oura Ring colours to choose from: silver, black, stealth (a more matte black as opposed to shiny), gold and rose gold. You can also select a style: Horizon, which is more smooth and rounded, or Heritage, which has a flat surface on top.
Heritage rings start at $299 (£245) and Horizon begins at $349 (£285), with some colours more expensive than others.
The important thing to remember is that you’ll be wearing your ring every day (and investing a fair amount in it), so you want to select a colour, style and size that feels comfortable and that you’ll enjoy wearing alongside your other jewellery.
As for size, Oura will send you a free sizing kit so you can make sure you’re getting the perfect fit. Rings come in sizes 6 to 13, and you can try on plastic rings in all sizes to see what feels best. Top tip: your ring is best worn on your index finger and you want the sensors to sit palm-side. It should be tight enough so that your skin moves with the ring when you twist it, and not so loose that it spins around while wearing (you want those sensors to stay in place).
Next, select your final size and colour and you’re good to go!
What happened when I tried an Oura Ring
First up, your Oura Ring will arrive with a size-specific charger. Once all charged up, you can connect to the Oura app, where all of your data and insights will be personalised. You start off by selecting your current goal (mine was ‘be productive and energetic’), how your sleep is (‘I have trouble sleeping’) and the things affecting your sleep (‘I live a hectic life’). You can revise your focus area at any time, but it helps to get a handle on your problem areas and what you want to improve.
Once you wear the ring to sleep, you’ll be able to access an in-depth stack of analytics. ‘Sleep contributors’ tracked include your total time asleep, plus time spent in REM sleep and deep sleep. Then there’s your ‘sleep efficiency’ percentage (time spent asleep compared to time spent awake in bed), ‘restfulness’ score, and timing. I found it particularly interesting to learn about ‘sleep latency’, which is how long it takes you to fall asleep. FYI, this can actually be too fast (less than five minutes is a sign of overtiredness, and 15 to 20 minutes is ideal).
Information tabs also explain what each sleep contributor is, what an optimal measurement would be, and how you can improve each aspect. Further down you’ll find graphs showing your movement throughout the night, heart rate variability (HRV) and lowest heart rate, as well as time spent awake and in light, deep and REM sleep. All of this adds up to generate your overall Sleep Score, which is marked out of 100, and you’ll be instructed on whether you need to ‘pay attention’. I’ll admit I found *lots* of red scores. But, hey, that’s what I was expecting.
Still, that’s not all. There’s a separate tab for Activity, tracking calorie burn, steps, inactive time and (crucially) recovery time, aka how many ‘easy’ rest days you’ve had during the week. I also found it eye-opening to see my total calorie burn each day, as it was always higher than expected, even on days when I had literally zero movement (most of your total calorie burn actually happens at rest, aka your Basal Metabolic Rate).
There’s also a tab for ‘Readiness’ which tracks factors including your resting heart rate, HRV balance, body temperature and your previous day’s activity - helping you decide whether it’s time for more activity or time for rest. If you have periods, you can track them more accurately with your ring too using body temperature indicators (a win if your usual calendar counting isn’t 100% reliable).
Oura takes around two weeks to gather your baseline data. Admittedly, at first, I found the app’s generic settings slightly impersonal. For example, the app routinely prompted me to start ‘winding down’ for bed around 21:00, when my regular sleep time is wayyy past midnight. However, after a few weeks, the app started sending me tailored recommendations. The first: after seeing my tendency for being a night owl, Oura recommended a bedtime between 23:45 and 01:15. Yep, that’s more like it.
When I first set out to use the ring, I was after the kind of tailored recommendations that would work with my irregular sleep patterns and late bedtimes, rather than forcing me against them and into a set ‘normal’ sleep schedule which I’ve never been able to adhere to. Literally: I’ve tried and tried to become someone who sleeps and wakes up early (looking at you, TikTok That Girl), and it is just not for me. In fact, err, yes, this is being written during a productive burst of energy at precisely 23:02. So, being directed towards a sleep pattern which suits me was hugely helpful.
I’m all for ‘listening to your body’, and the app helped me to do just that. On days when my Readiness score was low, the app would instruct me to ‘give yourself a break’. When I’d had a few consecutive days of rest, it would prompt me to boost my day’s movement if I felt like it.
As the owner of a smart watch, I also found that the Oura Ring makes a good alternative for people who want the health tracking benefits of a fitness watch without the constant buzzes and notifications.
You know what they say: knowledge is power. And having insights into your sleep and health patterns can give you the tools to actually improve them. Plus, we spend about a third of our lives asleep, so we may as well make our snooze time as beneficial as possible. As for me, I’m enjoying guilt-free late nights and, most importantly, understanding when I need more rest. Can’t argue with that.
