I still prefer Apple Watch over Oura Ring for 3 key reasons – but there is one big drawback

I have been sporting an Apple Watch day-after-day for the previous decade and I have been utilizing it to trace my sleep each night time since 2019. Over the previous few years, I’ve recognized increasingly more buddies, household, and colleagues choosing good rings as an alternative of good watches to trace their well being. I’ve additionally personally examined the Oura Ring, the Samsung Galaxy Ring, and the Ultrahuman Ring Air. 

However ultimately, I preserve taking off the rings and coming again to the Apple Watch as my sole well being tracker.

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The humorous factor is that I had stop sporting a look ahead to years earlier than the Apple Watch arrived in 2015, preferring to only use my cellphone to maintain observe of the time. However through the previous two years, I have been sporting the Apple Watch Extremely — the most important and most cumbersome watch within the lineup. 

So why do I want the Apple Watch to a lot smaller and extra discreet good rings? It comes down to 3 causes. 

1. Consolation

Regardless of sporting the heavy Apple Watch Extremely whereas I sleep, I’ve gotten so accustomed to sporting an Apple Watch that I am not very aware of it when it is on my wrist — both through the day or after I sleep. 

I am unable to say the identical for good rings. The Oura Ring 4 and the Ultrahuman Ring Air are significantly cumbersome for rings and never very snug to put on after I’m sleeping. The Samsung Galaxy Ring is a little bit bit higher as a result of it is thinner and lighter. It is wonderful how a lot know-how is packed into these tiny rings, however I nonetheless discover them much more noticeable and uncomfortable to put on in comparison with my marriage ceremony ring, as an example. 

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I am going to admit that it is doable I would get used to those rings over time the best way I’ve with the Apple Watch, however I’ve worn good rings for weeks and months at a time for testing and nonetheless discovered them distracting to put on to sleep and I at all times felt relieved to cease sporting them after I was achieved testing the ring.

2. Glanceable data and fast actions

The folks I do know who love good rings usually say that one of many issues they respect is that the rings haven’t got screens and so they’re much less distracting. Nevertheless, I truly come at it from the opposite course. There are a number of issues the Apple Watch does to avoid wasting me from pulling out my cellphone all through day-after-day. 

To be clear, I’ve arrange the Apple Watch Extremely to do quite a bit. I take advantage of the Modular Extremely watchface and it has eight completely different problems you may set — plus I additionally use a Shortcut to customise the Motion Button. So that provides me a complete of 9 issues the Apple Watch Extremely can present and do: time, date, climate, battery life, exercise, exercise, mindfulness, hydration, and my customized Shortcut to pair coronary heart monitoring with the Supernatural workout app on Meta Quest. 

I additionally frequently catch essential notifications on the Apple Watch that I probably would have missed on my cellphone. To be clear, I do not get all of my notifications on the watch, however I’ve tuned the watch notification settings in order that crucial ones ping my wrist. In different phrases, the Apple Watch does much more for me than simply telling the time and monitoring my exercise.

3. Fewer well being stressors 

Sensible rings can arguably supply higher sleep and stress monitoring than the Apple Watch and different good watches, for the reason that rings sometimes supply extra particulars about each sleep and stress. And you may argue that an individual may use that knowledge to alter a few of their habits in order that they will get extra and higher sleep, or launch a guided respiratory session to assist relieve their stress, for instance. 

Nevertheless, in apply there are some realities which can be exhausting to shift, and having an app in your cellphone repeatedly remind you that you simply’re not getting sufficient sleep and/or not managing your stress very effectively can truly be extra detrimental than useful. That is what I discovered. 

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I additionally found that among the measurements and insights that the good ring made have been shallow, or no less than not very nuanced. As an illustration, I might get extra sleep than regular one night time after which much less the subsequent night time and so I might really feel fairly regular general. In the meantime, the ring app can be lighting up with pink notifications that I wanted to regulate my sleep schedule. And so I puzzled, “Possibly I am extra drained than I assumed?” However I wasn’t. And after I stopped sporting the ring I felt like my stress stage truly went down.

Downside: Fewer actionable insights

I am going to additionally admit that there is one factor I want Apple Watch may do extra like the very best good rings and that is present extra actionable notifications and training ideas. For instance, in my evaluation of the Samsung Galaxy Ring I famous that it did a superb job of correlating between two knowledge factors and offering a useful advice. 

In that case, the Galaxy Ring famous that one of many elements that had lowered my “Power” rating was when my “Earlier day exercise” confirmed “moderate-to-vigorous train time” that was considerably beneath my common of 33 to 87 minutes. That was a great reminder that not getting in sufficient cardio the day earlier than might be a consider lowering my power stage — and that tracked with my lived expertise. It was additionally one thing that was extra manageable for me to alter.

The Apple Watch can produce a ton of insights within the Apple Well being app and it does a pleasant job of exhibiting modifications in “Tendencies” equivalent to resting coronary heart charge, miles walked or run, steps, train minutes, and much more. However what it does not do is present a sleep rating, power rating, or other forms of rankings, and it does not correlate its developments with potential outcomes. 

If the Apple Watch took a web page from good rings on that, it may absolutely present much more actionable insights that would assist us get much more usefulness out of the watch — particularly for these of us who’ve been sporting it over a interval of not simply months however years.