- Oura has updated its smart ring with improved health-tracking features
- There are tweaked algorithms, new features, and fresh integrations
- The changes are available today
The Oura Ring is one of the best smart rings around, giving you a slate of in-depth insights into your health, all from a high-tech ring on your finger. Now, its maker has announced a slew of updates to make activity and movement tracking more accurate and useful.
Oura says these changes, which it describes as “a suite of algorithm improvements and product updates”, have been prompted by the idea that “all movement counts.” To that end, you can expect a range of different adjustments and new features across a variety of activity types.
For instance, Oura’s step-counting algorithm has been updated to no longer estimate steps and instead work more like a pedometer, making it more accurate, while measurement of active calories has been improved to consider the intensity of the movement (gauged using your heart rate). Heart rate info from Oura’s partners (like Google Health Connect and Apple HealthKit) will now be included in activities you import from these partners’ apps and platforms.
Elsewhere, Oura’s Automatic Activity Detection now works at any time of the day or night, including in the early hours. If you want to add an activity or workout from the last seven days manually, you can now do that too, and your Readiness and Activity scores will be tweaked accordingly.
There are also new views and metrics to be found in Automatic Activity Detection, such as running splits. Oura will use your phone’s data to add more detail to runs and walks, and there’s a new trend view for active minutes, which should give you more insight into your workouts.
While these changes all impact Oura’s own platform, there are also new integrations with third-party providers including CorePower Yoga, The Sculpt Society, Technogym, and Open. In each case, Oura users will be able to see data gathered from their wearable ring in each platform’s own app. Discounts are also being offered to Oura members.
Whether you want to stick to Oura’s own service or use one of these integrations, these updates should bring some intriguing new features to one of the best fitness trackers you can buy. Oura says all the new features are rolling out to users today, May 21, so be sure to check them out if they sound like they’re of interest.
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