I don’t wear rings and I don’t like wearables, so this week’s device – a sleep-tracking wearable in the form of a ring – has its work cut out. And that is even before you consider the name. Oura sounds like the noise you would hear bellowed at a regatta, having no clue whether it constituted approval, or some form of upper-class put-down. The fact that Prince Harry has been spotted wearing one suggests I’m not wrong.
However, I am surprised by its chicness. The smouldering band I wear for a few weeks garners many compliments. It is described as “beautiful” by one woman – she was trying to get me to upgrade my phone at the time, but still. It is more fashion-forward than many other wearables, which generally pack hardware into a chunky bracelet or watch. To nitpick, it is slightly too wide and is uncomfortable when someone shakes my hand too firmly. (In fairness, people with too firm a handshake make me uncomfortable anyway.)
Does it work? Yes and no. The waterproof Oura is partly an activity tracker, although not a particularly special one. The accelerometer only tracks activities that involve moving hands, so spinning or pushing a pram count for nothing. (’Twas ever thus, eh?)
Sleep is what the Oura is really all about. Unlike some other wearables, Oura uses infrared to penetrate deep into the skin, reading heart rate, temperature and movement to determine how good or bad your night’s sleep was. In the morning, the phone-linked app pulls up the metrics, showing your time in bed and time asleep, cycles of REM, light and deep sleep, sleep efficiency, resting heart rate, heart variability and fluctuations in the body’s heat signature. Not particularly helpful in itself, but with such specific feedback, one can try different routines – exercising earlier or later, phasing out screentime before bed, a quart of whiskey – and see how the body reacts through the night. Based on your data, the app also feeds you tips of its own. Think of it as the biofeedback route to Bedfordshire.
Not being an astronaut, I find the data overwhelming. On the website, you can dive deeper into deviations from baseline behaviour and sleep latency with more graphs than a South Pacific seismology centre. The tips are a bit off the mark, though. “Strive for balance,” the app advises, as if Yoda’s been at the matcha. Doesn’t this apply all the time? I cancel the ultramarathon I had planned, and balance myself on the sofa with a rogan josh. I lack enough routine to make the feedback meaningful. I have quite a few late nights, and on the evenings I don’t, the ring seems almost disappointed. “Tonight, try to push your bedtime a bit later than usual, and go to sleep between 01.30 and 02.30,” it says. Really? I have zero idea of its reasoning, and don’t trust it more than my intuition.
“Quantify yourself in ways you never thought possible,” promises the markerting blurb for the ring. More bluntly: “Hack yourself.” Very Patrick Bateman.
The ideal of the quantified body is that our biological essence is nothing but a mainframe susceptible to digital assault, another economy primed for disruption. A meat computer, reduced to an app that sits on the phone between the other app that says when the bus is coming, and the app full of pictures of sunsets and models pretending to eat pasta. Two-dimensional thinking at best, and, at worst, a conveyor belt to dystopia. Ironically, it keeps me up at night.
Not that it’s Oura’s fault. The device packs an astonishing amount of technical capacity into a tiny, elegant surface area. The company’s current market is athletes, Silicon Valley CEOs and actual princes. I can see the appeal. A diamond-studded version is also available, a snip at €1,049 (£900)! But do most of us need supercomputers to tell us coffee after 6pm is a bad idea? Why not just try peppermint tea and see how you feel? If you’re a wealthy insomniac who longs to be a robot, knock yourself out. Sorry, I mean initiate auto-concussion, Siri.
Most surprising feature
Oura provides a “Readiness” score for the day, an intriguingly lyrical proposition. How ready are you, really? Are you ready for love? Ready to rhumble? Ready player one? To be honest, I think it means “Are you ready to go to the gym?”, but I already know the answer to that.
Wellness or hellness?
I’m more than a number! 2/5
