Oura Activity Tracking Is About to Get a Whole Lot Better
The Oura Ring is great for tracking sleep and keeping track of your healthy habits, but as I noted in my Oura Ring 4 review , it’s not very good at tracking activity. That could change with the new activity-tracking features the company announced today. They’re still not enough to replace, say, a real sports watch, but they look like a significant improvement on Oura’s previous capabilities.
I’m going to test these features in the coming days and weeks so you know how much of an improvement they really are. Here’s what Oura says is included:
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Step counting will be done using a new algorithm, which is expected to be more accurate.
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Your heart rate will be taken into account when calculating your calorie burn during exercise (which allows Oura to estimate the intensity of your workout).
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Split times will now be available for runs automatically tracked by Oura.
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Heart rate data will be included when Oura receives workout data from other sources (for example, if you track a workout with an Apple Watch or Garmin).
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You can add or edit activities from the past week , not just the current day. Past readiness scores will be updated accordingly.
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Automatic activity detection will now work at any time of the day or night, removing the previous limitation of only detecting activity during the day.
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A new activity trend view will appear , showing your daily, weekly, and monthly active time.
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You can finally edit your maximum heart rate . This will change your zones and heart rate trends accordingly.
That last one is important, and makes Oura’s heart rate zone reporting much more useful. It used to use a formula based on age, even though people’s maximum heart rates vary too much for any one-size-fits-all formula to be accurate . (Oura used to think that my easy runs were mostly in zone 5. I assure you, Oura, they’re not.)
Oura also announced integrations with several apps that can pull data like HRV from the Oura app and use it to inform your workouts or analysis in those apps. New integrations include CorePower Yoga , The Sculpt Society , Technogym , and the meditation app Open .
The new features will be available to iOS users now and to Android users in June.