The Generation 3 ring has additional body temperature and heart rate sensors, and can measure blood oxygen levels. The simple design, which was my device’s major benefit, seems quite similar. Since I completed my evaluations this summer, Oura has introduced a new version of its device, the Oura Generation 3. The result was that I started sleeping like I did before the pandemic.Īnd my time with the Oura and the other devices taught me a simple but powerful lesson: The best sleep tracker is the one you can ignore. It served as a gentle but persistent reminder about the importance of good sleep habits while keeping me from obsessing over them.
In short, I began using Oura as a long-term companion that became part of my everyday routine. The Oura used my sleep trends combined with my heart rate variability (the consistency of the intervals between each heart beat) to suggest that I needed rest more than I needed another hard workout. It detected, for example, when I had eaten a late-night snack (and suggested I might try eating earlier). I found the Oura’s app robust, and it fed me useful information. Which meant that I went to Oura’s app not when I was prompted by something that caught my attention on a device’s screen, but when I had the time and inclination to really absorb the Oura’s granular sleep information. On the data front, the Oura has no display-it doesn’t even tell you if it’s charged-so I could pretend it was a dumb device. Its low-key personality makes it a genial everyday companion. It’s sized like a piece of jewelry, and I found it comfortable enough to be worn 24/7. It’s a gossamer-light band made of titanium that’s just a bit bigger than a wedding ring. This elegant device was my Editor’s Choice, largely because of how easily it slips into the background. Which led me to a revelation: A couple of days after I was done, I looked down at my fingers and realized I had simply forgotten to take off the Oura Ring ($300 and up). Most devices then roll that info into a sleep score.Īfter consulting with five sleep specialists, I settled on six trackers to evaluate, wearing each of the devices at the same time for 14 consecutive nights:Īfter I was done with the two-week-long evaluation, I was pretty happy to take off the devices and get back to sleeping in just my pajamas. Today’s consumer-grade trackers are relatively inexpensive, rechargeable devices that may use your movement and other metrics such as your heart rate to log your sleep duration, sleep stages, or the number of times you awaken at night. There’s even a term for it: coronasomnia.
That has taken on added momentum as more Americans like me report sleep problems amid the disruption of COVID-19. Wearable sleep trackers are part of a $30 billion sleep improvement industry that includes everything from sound machines to sleep drugs that promise sounder slumbers.
Since I’m a tech editor at Consumer Reports and self-professed gear geek, I planned a deep dive to find a device that would help me better understand my out-of-whack sleep patterns. After trying the easy stuff, such as buying a squishy down pillow I liked at Marshalls, I decided to turn to technology.
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