The Oura Ring requires a free app to see your collected data. The app is available for both iOS and Android. We tested the Android version as part of this review, which was quick and easy to install.
After installing the app you’ll be prompted to create an account and enter in some personal information such as your date of birth, weight, height and gender.
The app will then require you to plug in the charger and put the ring on it before it syncs. The whole process only took about five minutes from start to finish.
Once installed, the ring will start to collect and present insightful findings using three scores to help you train better and become healthier: a sleep score, an exercise readiness score and an activity score.
Each of these scores is built on a mixture of data from the array of sensors in the ring and also manual data you might need to input depending on the activity.
I found the sleep tracking and exercise readiness scores to be more useful than the activity score, which was not as effective when doing an activity other than running or cycling.
The sleep tracking uses a mixture of sensors to determine your sleep stages, sleep time, periods where you wake up, your resting heart rate and more. When you wake up you’ll see a score showing the quality of your sleep and you can then use this score to tailor your daily activities and what you drink or eat during the day.

An example of the sleep scoreIf your sleep score is low, you can make sure you hit the sack earlier the following night, consume less caffeine or go easy during your workouts, although your optimal workout intensity can be determined using the readiness score mentioned below.
The exercise readiness score is a great metric for those who train multiple times per week. It’s calculated using a mixture of data collected from the sensors. The cornerstone is your heart rate variability, which is a number representing the intervals between your heartbeat. Irregular intervals are a sign that you’re rested and ready to train hard, so the ring will measure these to determine whether or not you should train with intensity or go easy.

A low readiness score using the Oura RingThe ring will also measure your respiratory rate, body temperature fluctuations and resting heart rate, then mash this with your sleep scores and previous days’ activities to give you your final readiness score. As you can see, this score has a lot of data to back it up, so I took note of when the app told me to slow down with my training for the day.
The activity tracking is a little weaker. The ring registered me once as enjoying a rest period while watching Netflix and laying down one afternoon, but yet never registered other similar activities as rest periods.
When doing an activity other than running or cycling, I found the ring lacking. For example, I wore the ring during all of my weights training sessions and it still recorded these as no activity, even though I could see my heart rate rising in the app. Once I finished the workout, I logged it and it copied over the real data it had just recorded, giving me an estimation of the intensity of my workout using the preloaded profiles provided.

Before logging an activity manually
After logging the same activity manuallyIf your activity isn’t in the list provided by Oura, you’ll need to log it manually. When you log it in you can select a low, medium or high intensity. This adds a bit of guesswork to the logging and could be improved if Oura allowed you to override a manually logged activity with data you’ve recorded using the ring itself.
The app works well apart from this. It offers you a dashboard on the initial screen showing your readiness score, sleep score and activity for the day, and detailed breakdowns for your sleep, exercise readiness and activity scores respectively through the menu.
Another feature I loved about the app was that most of the metrics offer explanations when you press them, so you’ll never be scratching your head wondering what one score means.

A tooltip example using the app