If you like this Oura ring 3 review and you’d like to buy this ring, then you can get a 50 USD discount by clicking on this (affiliate) link. At the time of updating this blogpost, I’ll be getting a pair of Ra Optics blue light blocking eyewear, if you buy the ring using my affiliate link 🙂

If you read or watch my Oura ring 3 review until the very end, then you’ll know how the Oura ring 3 works on a day to day basis, how it can help you improve your life and if it’s worth buying, especially if you already own an Apple Watch or a Fitbit for example.

Is Gen 3 Oura Ring worth it?

Let me start with my conclusion: Yes, it is. I like my Oura Ring 3 a lot. As an Apple watch user, I didn’t think that the Oura ring could add any value to the health data and recommendations that I was already getting from my Apple Watch… but I was wrong. 

The first big difference I noticed between my Apple Watch and the Oura Ring is that the Activity goal can’t be actively set to a different value. It is automatically set and adjusted by the Oura ring every single day. 

For example, on one day the activity goal might be set to 450 kilo calories, while on other days it might be set to 600.

At first I didn’t really understand why this might be but then I found out why this is. It’s because on days where you have a readiness score below 85, the Oura ring actually encourages you to take it a bit more slowly on that day.

This is in order to help you recover better. On other days, where you might wake up to a readiness score of 92, the Oura ring knows you’re fully rested and is challenging you to take your training to the next level. 

That’s why it will automatically elevate your daily movement goal for that day.

For this Oura Ring 3 review, I also compared the Oura ring to my Apple Watch. I noticed that the data gathered by the Oura ring is a lot more detailed compared to the Apple watch or what I can do with my iPhone. It also displays this data in a better and more beautiful way!

I didn‘t expect this because I just couldn‘t imagine any company could beat Apple when it comes to usability and design. Well, I was wrong again. 

In direct comparison to the Oura app, Apple‘s health app seems almost clumsy and unorderly. 

On top of that, the Oura ring measures body temperature as well, something the Apple Watch cannot do (yet) which makes it even more valuable. 

How does body temperature help by the way?

While the Oura ring doesn’t show your absolute body temperature, it DOES detect relative changes. 

For example, it can show you by how much your body temperature is above or below your own average body temperature. 

On Oura’s website it says:

“If your body temperature climbs out of this range, it will negatively impact your Readiness Score, a key indication that your recovery process is suffering.”

The exciting thing here for me is that with the Oura ring, I can monitor body temperature trends to spot potential illnesses before they arrive. 

I haven’t worn the Oura ring long enough to know whether this really works but this is something I’m really curious about.

If you already own a an Apple Watch, Fitbit or any of the like, then I can’t really really recommend you either get one device or the other. Instead, my conclusion and that of many others is that both devices work very well together at the same time. 

For a good comparison between the apple watch and the Oura ring, I can recommend this article.

Now, without further ado, let‘s have a look at the top-8 things worth knowing about the Oura Ring 3.

I. Ordering, price and special deals

I ordered my ring on Black Friday with a 50 € discount. The price for the silver version was 314 € and with the discount I paid 264 €. 

If – after reading this Oura ring 3 review – you decide to buy one, then you can use this referral link in order to profit from a 50 € / USD discount.

If you buy the ring, I recommend you buy the ring with your credit card and not with paypal because in my case I do think they added the Paypal service fee on top of the discounted price. So I didn’t pay 264 € but something like 279 €.

Alongside the Oura ring 3, Oura is introducing a new membership model. You get the first 6 months for free and then the cost is 5,99 € € per month. 

Apparently, it‘s possible to use the ring without the membership but after having watched another youtube video about this subject, I don’t recommend you do this – because you’ll most likely miss out on the data that is among the most valuable.

With the membership, the ring actually becomes more expensive than an Apple Watch over the long run. It‘s worth keeping this in mind when trying to decide whether the ring is a good investment for you.

Personally, I don‘t mind the additional cost but I could imagine that some people might be put off by this. 

II. Oura Ring 3 review: Oura Sizing kit

In my case, after ordering the ring, it took about two weeks for my sizing kit to arrive by mail. It looks like this and it has 10 different rings in it. 

Oura recommends wearing the ring on the forefinger of the non-dominant hand. The forefinger is because apparently, our pulse and body temperature can be measured most accurately there.

The non-dominant hand is recommended because this way you don‘t accidentally scratch your ring while touching everyday objects. 

You could also wear the ring on your middle or ring finger. Those are the two next best options according to Oura. I personally use my forefinger which works just fine. 

Once you know your ring size number, you simply log into your Oura account, add the ring size number there. This will then trigger the delivery of the ring. 

In my case, after another week or so, the ring arrived. So my total wait was about 3 weeks, ordering the ring on Black Friday and from Berlin, Germany. 

III. First impressions and looks

Before ordering and creating this Oura ring 3 review, I already knew from Oura‘s product images and from other people‘s reviews, that the ring itself isn‘t the most beautiful. This is mainly because of it‘s somewhat bulky nature. 

Some people have noted that the ring looks a bit like a screw-nut from a car. 

That was my wife’s first reaction as well. That’s why she doesn’t want to get one yet. Even though Oura claims the Oura ring in it’s version 3 is beautiful, I can’t totally agree.

However, I don‘t think it‘s that bad and even if it was that ugly, I‘d still probably wear one because I‘m more interested in feeling energized throughout the day than for the ring to look good on me. 

I could imagine that with the next iteration of this ring, it will be smaller as technological improvements in those sensors will most likely help to make that possible.

IV. How does the Oura ring work on a day-to-day basis?

In this section of my Oura ring 3 review, I’ll be explaining the two big metrics measured by Oura. Before I do that, let me share with you the two things I like the most about using the Oura ring on a day-to-day basis.

First: It let’s me know in a friendly way when my body might need some rest. Personally, I sometimes train 6 to 7 days a week which can be a bit too much. 

If you are into HIIT training such as offered by Apple Fitness+ then an elevated heart rate of let’s say 170 or 180 beats per minute can lead to a resting heart rate that is too high the next day.

Before using the Oura ring, I can remember how I would sometimes train even if I didn’t feel perfectly well or rested. I remember that I did this a few months ago and this led me from feeling bad to actually getting sick.

Now with the Oura ring, it recently told me in the morning that my “elevated resting heart rate indicated that I might not be fully recovered”. And that “switching to lighter activities could help me reach my full potential tomorrow.”

It seems like I need someone telling me when to stop, and while I might not always listen to my wife when it comes to this, I do tend to listen to Oura.

By the way, my wife has recently watched the new edition of Sex And The City where this character called BIG got off a Peleton bike and shortly after, he died of a heart attack.

Maybe, if BIG had worn an Oura ring, he would have never trained on that particular day. Or his overall lifestyle, including sleep, would have been better, not getting him into that situation in the first place.

Second: I like Oura’s nap and restorative time detection and how it motivates me to take some time during the day to relax and unwind. 

The Apple Watch also sends reminders to spend some mindful minutes during the day, by breathing or reflecting… but the Apple Watch somehow fails to use this information to show me how well I did in this area. With the Oura ring I can be sure it uses this information to calculate my overall readiness score.

Now, as promised, let’s have a closer look at how the Oura ring works on a day-to-day basis, especially at how those two big metrics: “Readiness” and “Sleep” are being calculated.

Every morning, each of those two metrics gets calculated, based on how much you slept, how much you moved your body and how well you rested during the day.

Those two scores can be anything from 0 to 100 where 0 is really bad and 100 is really good. 

Without explaining everything here, let me just share with you the main contributors for Readiness and Sleep. 

Readiness gets calculated by taking the following things into account: your resting heart rate, HRV balance, body temperature, recovery index, sleep, sleep balance, previous day activity and activity balance.

And sleep gets calculated by taking these things into account: Total sleep in hours, efficiency, restfulness, REM sleep, deep sleep, latency and timing.

In the Oura App, you can click on each contributor to get a short explanation of what it means, e.g. for „Recovery index“ it says…

„Recovery  index measures how long it takes for your resting heart rate to stabilize during the night. 

Alcohol, a heavy meal before bed, or late exercise speeds up your metabolism and can keep your heart rate elevated throughout the night. This can affect your recovery and leave you feeling unrested the next day.

Something that surprised me in a pleasant way was how well Oura detects when I sit down to relax or to take a nap.

For example, after a nap, it has rewarded me by adding some extra points to my overall readiness and sleep score for that day. This doesn’t seem to work consistantly though. While the Oura ring does not always detect when I nap, it almost always categorizes it as “Restorative time”. 

Another thing that is nice is that I can use it to track body changes while I meditate. After each session I can see how my skin temperature or heart rate has changed during my meditation.

V. What‘s the added value if you already own an Apple Watch?

As mentioned before in this Oura ring 3 review, I didn‘t expect the ring to give me better recommendations than the Apple Watch was already doing.

However, Oura’s way of aggregating different body data to the two main scores  READINESS and SLEEP seems like a very original and clever idea to me. This is something that the Apple Watch or the Apple Health app simply do not do.

The things that the Oura Ring does better compared to the Apple Watch are:

• It measures body temperature which the Apple Watch cannot do (yet)
• It boils a lot of contributors down to two just two aggregated scores, making it kind of fun to dive into more details about how that overall score was calculated. 
• it does give smart suggestions, like for example when is a good day to take a break from exercising.
• It measures sleep better. Oftentimes, my Auto Sleep app on the Apple would show sleep for times when   I just sat on the couch. I then needed to manually correct this which was a bit of a pain in the butt. In contrast to that, the Oura ring also detects when I‘m relaxing on the couch but it counts that time as „restorative time“. That is awesome because I know that this will elevate my Readiness Score the next day. Again, this is something that the Apple Watch simply cannot do. 

VI. Oura’s customer support and pricing policy

At the time of creating this Oura ring 3 review, I never had the need to reach out to Oura’s support and so I will not rate it here. I did however find some videos on YouTube indicating that the support might not be the best!

For example, there has been quite some confusion around Oura’s pricing policy. Apparently, people were a bit upset when Oura announced it would start a monthly membership for some bonus features that previously weren’t bonus features but regular features.

In her Oura ring 3 review, Youtuber Katie Type A did an interesting comparison between the cost of an Apple Watch and the cost of an Oura ring. It shows that with the added membership, the Oura ring becomes more expensive over time.

To conclude this section of my Oura ring 3 review: While Oura might want us to think that their membership is not needed, I’d argue that noone would want to miss out on the added features of the membership. 

VII. Oura Ring 3 review: How can it help improve your life?

If you are not currently sleeping well or if you feel that you often have low energy during the day, then the Oura ring might just be able to tell you exactly why that is.

For example, the ring calculates an individual and optimal sleeping time based on your readiness and sleeping scores. 

In my case, my ideal bedtime is from 9pm and 9.45pm. That sounds early but it’s based on the actual data collected by the ring. Basically, on days where I go to bed before 10pm, my sleep and readiness score are typically the best the very next day.

Your ideal bedtime might be different from mine of course but isn’t it fantastic to be able to make decisions such as when it’s best to go to bed based on hard data?

Also, wearing the ring and looking at the data collected by it makes it fun to make adjustments to my daily routine. 

For example, I noticed that simply taking time to walk everyday is one of the most effective ways to help me improve my Sleep and Readiness score.

My conclusion for this section of my Oura Ring 3 review is: The Oura ring can help improve your life is that it helps you sleep better and feel more alert during the day.

Just imagine how much time each one of us is spending in bed each night. Who wouldn’t want to improve this time by making the right lifestyle choices?

VIII. Charging the ring and care

Towards the end of this Oura ring 3 review, I’d like to share a few practical things when using the ring. Apparently, the battery of the ring can last up to a week of constant use.

I have never tried wearing it for one week without charging though. Oura recommends charging the ring for short amounts of time everyday. 

I have set up my ring charger in my bathroom to use it while I’m in the shower. 

About every other day I lay it there for 15 minutes or so. That is usually enough to get the ring battery up from 60% to 80% or more.

The ring also has a flight mode. While in this mode, the ring will still collect data but it won’t be connected to your phone – and so you won’t get any alerts or recommendations during this time.

I recently visited a sauna and was thinking about putting it into flight mode there. I decided not to do it though when I read that in order to reconnect it to the phone, the ring first needs to be put onto the charger.

Another thing worth knowing about the ring is that it probably gets scratches easily. With my silver version, I’m quite sure that scratches will start to appear after some time.

In order to prevent heavy scratches, I’d recommend not wearing the ring while weight lifting for example. What can also help is putting the ring on your non-dominant hand as recommended by Oura.

IX. Conclusion and bonus tip!

To conclude this Oura ring 3 review, I can highly recommend you get the Oura ring 3. It’s the most advanced piece of health tech that I know of. 

If you feel stressed, often have low energy or if you don’t sleep well, then this small accessory can really help you a lot. 

While the Oura ring can’t do the actual work for you, like constantly going to bed at around the same time, regularly walking or frequently resting during the day, it will help remind you in a fun and playful way. 

I already decided that I will most likely be wearing this ring everyday for the coming months and even years. The insights that this will probablyl give me are invaluable to me. 

Here is another way how you can profit from a 50 € discount, even if today is not Black Friday. 

Just click on this link in order to claim a 50 USD / € discount.

If read this Oura ring 3 review until here, what do you think of the Oura ring, will you get one for yourself – or if you already own one, what has been your experience with it?

Please let me know in the comments below!

About me:

I’m Julian, a husband, dad and business owner from Berlin, Germany. On this blog and corresponding YouTube channel, I share proven strategies on how to live a rich and meaningful life. You’ll also find more information about me on my about page.