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A bit more than $200- An Oura ring. Some quantitative insight around sleep, heart rate, heart rate variation, temperature, etc. SUPER interesting to see how th

A bit more than $200- An Oura ring. Some quantitative insight around sleep, heart rate, heart rate variation, temperature, etc. SUPER interesting to see how things change when sick, drink alcohol, etc. Also- I confess to not minding the tone/language the product uses for coaching purposes. It is not an asshole. Relatedly, tracking food/calories/water consumption in the (free- no need to pay them) Noom app has been useful quantitative insight as well. Rare that the free version of a paid thing has any utility whatsoever.

fullstackchris 4y ago
I just started tracking the same stuff with myfitnesspal, but I did see Noom as well. Do you have any experience with both? Maybe I'll check out Noom, myfitnesspal sometimes feels overly complicated.
- AdamGibbins 4y ago
  Check LoseIt or Litesum, much more polished app than MFP. Lots in the US seem to rate Cronometer but in the UK its database is terrible.
eps 4y ago
I bought Oura a couple of years ago because it's a ring that runs Linux and gives you some insight into your life. Well, it does run Linux, but the rest - not so much. Did side by side tests with another sleep tracker and Oura was pulling its data seemingly out of its ass. Completely random stuff. After seeing that all other data it reported didn't instill much confidence either, nor did it correspond to what I was actually observing. So packed it up and stashed into a closet. It's still a cool gadget, but inaccurate to the point of being utterly useless.
- jonahbenton 4y ago
  Yeah, I have definitely seen an evolution, shall we say, in their modeling and data aggregation and smoothing. Oura is doing a public "beta" of a new sleep model now and it is VERY different! But much better. So it goes. There are also inherent power limitations in the ring form factor compared to the watch, which impact data granularity. If you want to be monitoring apnea you really need seconds level resolution, and Oura is tens of seconds. Anyway, agree about limitations. It has still been very useful for me! Cheers.
- lobocinza 4y ago
  That applies to most wearables unfortunately. I was thinking on buying a moderately priced smartwatch to track my BPM during exercise but correlation can be as slow on 0.3 on some devices and with delay and never accurately reporting peaks and valleys due to aggressive exponential smoothing. Just bought a cheap ANT+ chest strap instead, does the job without requiring an app.
mindwork 4y ago
I keep hearing good things about Oura ring, but I'm fended off by subscription model for the hardware that you buy and own. Is there any way around that? I don't want to pay for Yet Another Subscription
- jonahbenton 4y ago
  No, it's a subscription. But I look at it like- the hw will have a limited lifespan, both because fingers are a very high traffic modality, and because hw and sensor advancements are going to come fast and furious. Useful life will be 2 maybe 3 years. So it's basically a $500 purchase on a payment plan. Then I'll buy another of something, maybe Oura, maybe someone else.
eiiot 4y ago
Are there really any concrete advantages to the Oura ring over something like the Apple Watch? I used to own an Oura ring, but I returned it after I found basically no difference between ring's data and the watch with an app like Training Today. Maybe I just wasn't looking at the right stuff, though?
- jonahbenton 4y ago
  My sense is watches actually have much finer granularity data collection, because of power capacity. The Oura collects data during wearer sleep about once a minute, while Samsung watch at least collects every 5-10 seconds. But in terms of sensor modalities they are the same. Personally I much prefer rings to watches, that's all.

fullstackchris 4y ago

I just started tracking the same stuff with myfitnesspal, but I did see Noom as well. Do you have any experience with both? Maybe I'll check out Noom, myfitnesspal sometimes feels overly complicated.

AdamGibbins 4y ago
Check LoseIt or Litesum, much more polished app than MFP. Lots in the US seem to rate Cronometer but in the UK its database is terrible.

eps 4y ago

I bought Oura a couple of years ago because it's a ring that runs Linux and gives you some insight into your life. Well, it does run Linux, but the rest - not so much. Did side by side tests with another sleep tracker and Oura was pulling its data seemingly out of its ass. Completely random stuff. After seeing that all other data it reported didn't instill much confidence either, nor did it correspond to what I was actually observing. So packed it up and stashed into a closet. It's still a cool gadget, but inaccurate to the point of being utterly useless.

jonahbenton 4y ago
Yeah, I have definitely seen an evolution, shall we say, in their modeling and data aggregation and smoothing. Oura is doing a public "beta" of a new sleep model now and it is VERY different! But much better. So it goes. There are also inherent power limitations in the ring form factor compared to the watch, which impact data granularity. If you want to be monitoring apnea you really need seconds level resolution, and Oura is tens of seconds. Anyway, agree about limitations. It has still been very useful for me! Cheers.
lobocinza 4y ago
That applies to most wearables unfortunately. I was thinking on buying a moderately priced smartwatch to track my BPM during exercise but correlation can be as slow on 0.3 on some devices and with delay and never accurately reporting peaks and valleys due to aggressive exponential smoothing. Just bought a cheap ANT+ chest strap instead, does the job without requiring an app.

mindwork 4y ago

I keep hearing good things about Oura ring, but I'm fended off by subscription model for the hardware that you buy and own. Is there any way around that? I don't want to pay for Yet Another Subscription

jonahbenton 4y ago
No, it's a subscription. But I look at it like- the hw will have a limited lifespan, both because fingers are a very high traffic modality, and because hw and sensor advancements are going to come fast and furious. Useful life will be 2 maybe 3 years. So it's basically a $500 purchase on a payment plan. Then I'll buy another of something, maybe Oura, maybe someone else.

eiiot 4y ago

Are there really any concrete advantages to the Oura ring over something like the Apple Watch? I used to own an Oura ring, but I returned it after I found basically no difference between ring's data and the watch with an app like Training Today. Maybe I just wasn't looking at the right stuff, though?

jonahbenton 4y ago
My sense is watches actually have much finer granularity data collection, because of power capacity. The Oura collects data during wearer sleep about once a minute, while Samsung watch at least collects every 5-10 seconds. But in terms of sensor modalities they are the same. Personally I much prefer rings to watches, that's all.