After months of testing smart rings, this is the only ring I think you should buy

Oura Ring was my favorite smart ring because its app was easy to understand, and I liked some of the newer features from the latest software update. Priced at a hefty $349, this smart ring is made of aerospace-grade titanium — one of the strongest materials on Earth, according to the site — and now the brand is offering… More colorful ceramic options. Before I received my Oura ring, I was sent a ring sizer to find out my ring size. Other smart rings did the same thing, with the size varying by brand.

Once I had the Oura ring, I downloaded the Oura app (available for iOS and Android). The application interface is shown to you Latest sleep dataAnd your readiness (or how recharged you are), heart rate, cycle insights if you’re PMSing, and stress levels. There is also a timeline of when you went to sleep, woke up, and did any physical activity in the past 24 hours. Oura uses scores out of 100 to determine where you stand within the different categories they look at daily.

You can also see your ring’s battery life based on the circle icon in the upper right corner. The ring can be easily recharged using its ring holder which you can keep on your nightstand. In general, you can expect to recharge this ring approximately every three days.

To get more accurate insights and recommendations from your smart ring, we recommend that you wear it for at least a month so it can collect data about your habits. To get more from the ring, you have to sign up for an Oura membership, which costs $6 per month. As I mentioned, one of my goals was to improve my sleep or at least have a sleep schedule that could work, even with a baby interrupting my rest throughout the night. I preferred wearing a smart ring over a smart watch to track it because I can barely feel it.

Oura Ring has determined that the ideal bedtime window means being in bed between 9:30pm and 10:30pm. The episode learned that I generally wake up around 6 a.m., so it was intended to help me get 8 hours of sleep. I did a good job of following the ring recommendations for at least the first couple of months, but then I was in transition and the holidays started, so I was under extra stress. I can say that I felt more tired and less energetic on the days I went to bed after the suggested time given by Ora. It will also give me a lower preparedness score on days where it can tell my sleep and stress levels have been affected.

Once I transitioned, I was able to return to the recommended sleep schedule. I have never felt more comfortable. During a briefing with Oura, I was told that the brand never wants to make users feel guilty for not recovering well or not getting enough sleep. Instead, the brand wants to let you know what you can do to improve these factors. For example, if Oura feels that you are under extra stress, she may ask you to take it easy that day.

One interesting feature of the Oura Ring that makes it stand out from other wearables is that it can detect signs of disease. So far, I haven’t gotten sick since using Oura, but other CNET staffers said that could be telling When they were under the weather. Oura recently launched the Oura Ring 4, and along with that, the software has been updated to have more advanced functions using artificial intelligence to discover more information about your habits.

While I personally haven’t been a fan of the fitness recording option on any of the smart rings I’ve tested, I like that with its latest update, the Oura can detect when you’re active. For example, if it senses that you are doing housework or walking, it will record the time frame for which it assumes you are doing this activity and count it toward your activity score. You can confirm this through the app or change it to the correct form for the activity. I think this is the key to eventually creating a better fitness tracking feature. If you’re familiar with wearable devices to track your workouts, you know that it’s sometimes easy to forget to take a log before a workout. I like that Oura Ring acknowledges that formal exercise isn’t the only activity that counts as movement and that your daily behaviors, like cleaning your house or taking the dog for a walk, are important too.

With the new update, I can also see my cardiovascular age, which Oura estimates relative to your age. Obviously my cardiovascular system is eight years younger than my age, so it’s good to know that my healthy habits have been working. If you really want to improve your cardiovascular capacity, you can take the walking test offered by Oura. Oura can tell you too Your chronotype Based on your natural circadian rhythms and determines whether you are a morning or evening person. I’m not surprised that I was discovered to be a morning person because I’ve always been an early riser.

Another important feature that I find important to point out is stress. Oura can track your stress levels during the day and can tell when you’re stressed, engaged, relaxed, or rejuvenated. This data tells Oura if you need to focus more on your recovery based on your stress levels. I had several days (mainly movement days!) when Oura Ring noticed that I was more cranky than usual compared to other days.

I appreciate Oura’s holistic approach to looking at my health data as a whole rather than focusing on a single feature like most wearables do. Oura has an Oura Advisor who provides personalized advice based on your data to help you improve your lifestyle. If you’re menstruating and want to track your menstrual cycle, Oura tracks this information. It also provides a window into predicting when you might expect your next period. This has been accurate for me so far – even with some missed periods. If you are pregnant, it also provides pregnancy insights.

If you have an iPhone, you can let Oura share data with other app integrations like Apple Health, Strava, Wild AI, Cronometer, Noom, Zero, Headspace, Natural Cycles, Clue, and the Flo app. This is another area where I think Oura has the opportunity to expand on its integrations. It’s a known fact that new parents tend to be the most sleep-deprived, and with all the different Wi-Fi baby monitors out there, it would be great if Oura could connect with them to target this demographic. It may provide parents with a unique set of data and advice if Oura can detect that their sleep has been interrupted by a crying infant.

You don’t want to handle the ring too roughly. Since the exterior is shiny, it is easy to scratch or scuff. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t a fan of the fitness tracking aspect of any of the smart rings, and this was part of the reason why. It would be nice for the rings to have a protective cover in case someone wants to wear them while lifting weights. I had to take the ring off when I was training because I didn’t want to scratch the ring, plus it wasn’t comfortable to wear while holding dumbbells.

My other issue with fitness tracking is that the Oura is only able to detect cardio-based activities. You can log in if you’re running, cycling, or walking in real time, but with other forms of activity, you have to log in after the fact. This defeats the purpose of having a fitness tracking option, but I also acknowledge that it’s not the main premise of the smart ring.

Overall, if you want an overview of your health data, Oura does a great job of condensing it into an app that’s easy to read and follow. I realize that at $349 (plus a $6 monthly membership), it’s not the cheapest wearable, but depending on the insights you want to have about your health, it might be worth it.