Oura Ring

Another day, another tracker. This time, I’ve got a ring for you.

I usually like to wait a couple of weeks before reviewing a tracker, but I’ve actually been wearing this one for nearly 3 months. It’s the Oura Smart Ring.

There’s been a few rings on the market before - some have notifications, some do steps, some do sleep, so let’s just run down specifically what this one does:

• Tracks movement through a gyroscope and accelerometer

• Measures body temperature

• Reads your pulse

That’s the core of it - and honestly, that’s quite impressive for a device that no one will notice is a tracker unless you show them. Given these few pieces of data, the system extrapolates how well you are likely sleeping every night and gives you charts and summaries to inform you of why you might be feeling how you feel on any given day and then you can use this information to adjust your behaviours to perhaps improve your future performance.

It’s a bit of an odd duck, though. It’s focused solely around helping you to understand how well you sleep - it won’t tell you anything about your heart rate, for example, before and after exercise. You can only get data for sleeping periods. I wonder how much of that is an intentional product focusing by the company, or whether it’s actually a smart battery saver choice if it doesn’t have to be constantly tracking and reporting all of your bio-metrics throughout the day.

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I’ve found it to drastically over-report on steps, so I wouldn’t recommend it as a replacement for another device that is focused on activity tracking, but it will give you enough of a general overview of how active you’ve been to at least consider it a factor in how well you rest later. I expect that the nature of having it on a hand (which, at least in my case, is a very animated part of the body) rather than a wrist or body tracker leads to the over-reporting.

It also has trouble connecting to my phone from time to time (over bluetooth, naturally) and some nights it just doesn’t bother to track me at all. It’s not clear to me if it’s moved to a position on my finger where it thinks I’m not wearing it at all, or if it’s having technical issues of some other kind on those nights.

The other irritating thing - and I make this critique of a lot of smart systems - is the way it tells me in a peppy tone that I’m going to have a truly wonderful, productive day, but in reality I woke up feeling like a truck ran me over. There’s no way to correct the system and “well, actually” it so that it can learn its expectations and your realities have not met one another. It almost makes me feel guilty some days that I haven’t met up to the high expectations that were set for me.

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It’s definitely one of the most invisible devices I’ve ever worn. No one has asked “What’s that?” as they have done with other trackers I’ve worn. Folks have generally been impressed at how it just looks like normal jewelry. I had to buy the very smallest size ring the company offered, and it’s a tiny bit loose still but it’s comfortable enough. I do find that it’s a bit thick and it’s not something I would wear if it wasn’t “smart” (see the photo above comparing the Oura to my wedding bands).

If you’re interested, a word of warning: They’re not cheap and they’re not fast. A basic ring from Oura costs $299 and order-to-delivery took nearly 4 months for mine. I wouldn’t give it a strong S&S recommendation unless you really don’t like highly visible trackers but still want some of the data.

Sleep data - Comparing Hello Sense, Fitbit Charge and Bellabeat Leaf

Thought it might be fun to run a comparison of sleep logging on a few of my devices.  

For reference, I wore the Fitbit Charge on my left (non-dominant) wrist, the Bellabeat Leaf clipped to the neckline of my night vest and the Hello Sense is of course clipped to my pillowcase. I sleep primarily on my side/smushed partially face-down and I'm quite a light-sleeper.

In terms of data points I've recorded, here's a break down:

• Sleep score - This is a number the software gives, generally a percentage of total sleep time.
• Total sleeping time - The time the software said I was asleep in some way (with caveats, see next item).
• Deep sleep - This seems to vary by system, some counting what I presume they're inferring to be REM time, but it looks like Fitbit is counting this as all the time I was "asleep" with "total sleeping time" being time in bed total, asleep or not.
• Times woken - Exactly what it says.  I wake at least once a night, every night, for sure.
• Fell asleep - The time the software believes I, well, fell asleep.
• Wake up - The time the software believes I was first awake in the morning.
• Out of bed - The time the software believes I physically got out of bed.
• A ? indicates - The software doesn't offer a value that fits the category.

So, let's have a look at the numbers!  

I've got 3 full days of data, and one partial. Why so little? I forgot to record the Sense data each morning for a few days and it turns out you can't go back and look at previous nights.  Major fail for the Hello Sense right there.  I'm also missing a night of the Leaf's data because I forgot to put it on. Update: The friendly Hello Sense people just emailed me to let me know I can go back and see previous nights data! The gesture was a little non-obvious - but a slide right will go backwards. 

		Fitbit Charge	Hello Sense	Bellabeat Leaf
Monday	Sleep score	96%	77	-
	Total sleeping time	7h54m	6.7h	-
	Deep sleep	7h2m	2.5h	-
	Times woken	2	0	-
	Fell asleep	23:56	0.31	-
	Wake up	07:56	07:12	-
	Out of bed	?	08:35	-
Tuesday	Sleep score	93%	81	97%
	Total sleeping time	10h11m	8.9h	9h24m
	Deep sleep	8h49m	2.7h	?
	Times woken	2	0	1
	Fell asleep	22:41	23.58	23:07
	Wake up	08:51	8.52	08:42
	Out of bed	?	8.48	?
Wednesday	Sleep score	97%	78	98%
	Total sleeping time	9h36m	9.9h	8h58m
	Deep sleep	8h56m	4.8h	?
	Times woken	3	0	2
	Fell asleep	23:39	23:17	00:19
	Wake up	09:14	09:13	09:39
	Out of bed	?	09:24	?
Thursday	Sleep score	95%	81	76%
	Total sleeping time	10h7m	7.6h	5h32m
	Deep sleep	9h35m	3.1h	?
	Times woken	2	0	0
	Fell asleep	22:43	23:06	01:36
	Wake up	08:49	06:42	07:08
	Out of bed	?	09:01	?

On Wednesday, the Sense alarm failed and didn't wake me up, so I overslept and on Thursday only 1 of two Sense alarms went off (I reported the outage, and I think they know what it was and fixed it). Thursday night I *definitely* got up at least twice.  I had a Leaf alarm set every morning, and although I felt it go off once (because I was already awake), it was never the thing to wake me up. The Fitbit alarm works well and has yet to not wake me up when used.  For reference, my first alarm in the morning goes off at 8:00am (lucky me) and then a second to get me up at 8:25 if I haven't shifted by then.

Which feels more accurate?  

Based on what I know about my own sleep habits and routine (don't judge my lazy ass), the Fitbit Charge data fits best and I'd take that one as feeling most accurate - not having any proper professional equipment strapped to me, I can't be certain, of course.  

Comparing the BellaBeat Leaf to the Fitbit data, it does seem to be pretty far off the mark - often not noticing that I've fell asleep until after the other systems.  It was also the weakest in terms of the amount of data and breakdowns in the 3 systems. 

The Sense seems intermittently accurate and is prone to believe I'm awake a lot earlier than I generally am.  I'm very surprised that the Sense hasn't noticed when I've been out of bed at night, but I wonder how much bed sharing effects that (it often just notes "you and your partner were both restless" at certain times that I suspect may be when I've been up or awake).  

Having said that, I don't think any of them are accurately recording how much time I spend in quality sleep, but I don't particularly expect a system that relies solely on tracking movement to be able to do that.  Make of this data what you will , but the bottom line on sleep data by fitness trackers should probably be to take what they tell you with a large pinch of salt.

Bellabeat Leaf activity tracker review

Finally, I'm writing up a review.  I thought I'd have one ready after a week, but I've been having trouble getting to use it.  But first, let's take a look at what this pretty little thing does.

Physical design

The BellaBeat Leaf is a small-ish wearable tracker.  It's quite pretty, if it's your style - a nice leaf motif in silver (actually stainless steel), soft wood nicely complimented by some turquoise highlighting.  Really, it's quite decorative and I commend the designers for taking a strong direction on the look and feel of the device - it's a refreshing departure from the usual utilitarian approach of most of the other wearable vendors.

The device comes with a chain to wear it as a necklace and a leather strap to attached it to wrists.  I opted not to use either of these, however, which I'll get to in a moment.  There's no charger because it runs on a coin-cell battery that should last around 6 months.  Apparently there's a second necklace on it's way to me along with a small special screwdriver to take the back off the Leaf to change the battery (not sure why it needs a special one).

Functionality

The Leaf is toted mainly as a "women's health" wearable.  Both through it's branding and the app itself, it's pretty clear that it's designed with women of child-bearing-capabilities in mind - it offers features such as menstruation and ovulation tracking, for example.  But, if you don't menstruate and you like the design, there's no reason that it has to be restricted to that group of people, both of those features are ignorable.  And, you probably should ignore both of those features, since the period tracking is done by inputing cycle length and period length - which is fine and dandy if you're like clockwork, which a number of us are not. If you're trying to get pregnant (hell no), or track your regularity, there are many better apps out there for such things, allowing you to input specific dates over time for averages and patterns to be noted.

Anyway, moving on.

The Leaf's other features are more traditional of that of a wearable.  It tracks sleep and activity (steps) along with a slightly odd addition of breathing, meant to help you do something about stress, and it'll alert you to inactivity and has optional additional alarms.

I definitely find the step counter is under-reporting compared to the Fitbit Charge, and the sleep tracking is all over the place.  I've compared the data for sleep with my Hello Sense and Fitbit Charge and it seems totally off - regularly thinking I've gone to sleep hours after I actually have, and rising earlier than I do.  The quality of the data is also a bit lacking - the graphs of sleep data don't allow you to see more than peaks and troughs - no total amount of either deep or light sleep.  Additionally, the alarm feature is completely useless. The Leaf's alarm consists of 4 short buzzes over the space of about a second with the ferocity of a dying hummingbird's last breath. Completely ineffective to wake me up on any day.

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I definitely walked more and slept more than these screens convey

A quote from one of Bellabeat's press releases:

It tracks activity and stress levels in relation to breathing while providing lifestyle data and recommendations for a healthier living through the LEAF app.

The stress levels part is basically nonsense. Yes, it tracks your breathing - but only if you go into the breathing section of the app and follow one of the breathing exercises.  It's not tracking stress levels and then encouraging you to do an exercise - the act of stopping to do a breathing exercise probably would help you to feel less stressed - but you could do that without the Leaf and the Leaf isn't going to try and tell you "Hey, you seem a bit stressed, maybe take a breather?". Quite disappointing.

The app is fine, if data light.  It feels very much like a work in progress.  There's no API yet, but the FAQ suggests there's one in the pipeline.  You also can't export any of the data or access it in any way except via the app.  

The most frustrating thing about the app is it does not do a background sync, so to update your data you have to open the app - and then 9/10 times you need to double tap the Leaf itself to get the sync to begin. That'd be fine except it takes me more than 1 double-tap to get the damn thing to start syncing (which only increases stress levels for me - I hate finicky things like that - plus I look like a mad person repeatedly tapping some part of my body).

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Why it took me so long to review

So, I started this post talking about how I'd had trouble using it.  Here comes the real crux of the problem with the Leaf and me: It's a pain to wear.

The Leaf is very versatile, you can wear it in a huge number of ways - on your wrist, around your neck, clipped to a collar or trouser pocket - I even clipped it to the side of my bra one day when I had no suitable clothing-edge to attach it to.  The fact that I had to find somewhere to wear it every day meant I just didn't bother.  The design itself is too much of a statement piece for me, which coupled with the weight (18g - not a ton, but enough to bug) meant I did not want to wear it in a highly visible way, or around my neck or wrist. It's thickness pulls the neckline of dresses and shirts away from my body in a way that I just don't think looks good. Additionally, certain activities require you to move it's position - the breathing exercise must be done with the device clipped against my tummy, sleep tracking had to be attached to my night vest.  It's just too much of a hassle.

Compare it to my Fitbit Charge with a band that is an innocuous, but functional (thanks to the clock display) that I wear at all times except in the shower, and occasional charging at my desk. It's one position is good for all activities it wants to track. I can just ignore it.  Now, the Leaf needs me to take it off for showers (it isn't even water-resistant), clothing changes, bedtime, various activities - I put it down so many times and just forgot I owned it or couldn't be bothered to find a nice way to wear it.  Consequently, my data has been spotty at best. It looks like jewellery and I treat it as such - occasional wear when it suits what I'm wearing and a nuisance the rest of the time.

Conclusion

If you love the look of the Bellabeat Leaf and would like to wear it as a piece of jewellery only, by all means go ahead and get one.  It's not the best tracker out there in terms of data quality, but it's pretty and it might just be the thing for you.  

If you like the style and you want better data, I'd wait for the next version.

Hello Sense sleep tracker review

Backed on Kickstarter sometime last year, my Hello Sense unit materialised without much warning. I've had it about 2 weeks now, so I think it's about time for a review. 

The Sense consists of two parts - an orb about the size of a small apple that lives on your nightstand and low-powered Bluetooth trackers called "pills" that clip onto your pillow. 

Physical design

Design wise, this thing is lovely. The unboxing and styling is very Apple-influenced, with all the packaging designed to warm you up to loving the device. The orb glows pleasingly with different colours to indicate what's going on (purple is pairing mode, for example) and it has a sharp modern look about it that makes it feel a bit like an art object on my nightstand rather than just another piece of technology. 

The little pills that clip onto your pillow are pretty cute. They have jaws of doom however and are a complete bastard to get onto the pillow, but once they're on, they're on - so at least they're not going to pop off in the night and disappear into the bed someplace.  I worry about accidentally washing them, but I'll cross that bridge when it happens (extra pills are $59 each, though, so I hope they have decent customer service when that does happen, because that's not cheap).

My one complaint about the design? They made the plug round instead of a neat rectangle (the orb needs to be plugged in, and it's a bit fussy about the cable it gets given), so it takes up two plug spaces on my power strip. I intend to swap it with a neater USB plug at some point.

Setup

Sadly, the setup somewhat ruins the initial design good feels. It was a complete pain in the arse to get connected. Putting the orb on the wifi went smoothly enough, but pairing the pills was hit and miss. I bought two pills, one for me, one for Husband (who doesn't give a monkey's about sleep tracking, but I want a comparison point), and we struggled to pair both. You have to do this shaking thing while the orb is in pairing mode, and the Bluetooth processes kept crashing, so you feel ridiculous and you spend a lot of time waiting for phones to reboot. It all appeared to be faulty software, at least, so hopefully they can iron that out, but I'm not looking forward to having to replace or change the setup any time soon. 

So, what does it do?  

Via the app, you can always see the current status of the bedroom - it shows you the current temperature, light level, sound level and humidity plus all of those over time in a graph. If you pass your hand over the orb, it'll glow a colour to indicate the current room quality based on these values. The Kickstarter advertised a particulate sensor, that at first I thought was missing, but for whatever reason it's not available with the other data in the "right now" screen, you only get to view this via the "before sleep" tab as an AQI value. I assume because they don't want to show the average out of context.

Based on these values and the movement of your pillow, it has a go at telling you when you're sleeping and how soundly. If you have forced your loving bed partner into tracking their sleep too, the app will reflect that in the overnight data, indicating when you were both moving or if it thinks it was just you. In the morning, you'll get a sleep score - mine hovers around 82 most nights. I think that's OK, but I'm not sure what it really means because Husband's is roughly the same and he definitely sleeps better than I do so I really don't know how it's being calculated.

The sleep tracking data quality is on a par with the data I get from my current FitBit Force (and Jawbone Up I had before), but it attempts to quantify it more by telling you about conditions before bed and asking you a few questions about how you slept and your habits. It says things like "you move in bed 13% more than other sense users" and it constantly tells me my room is too warm - got it - but attempts to lower the temp haven't been praised or shown to improve my sleep yet. I want a pat on the head! But my sleep quality is my own fault and I should feel bad, I guess. But in short, the data looks about right. Consumer level sleep trackers just aren't that detailed, and this one is no exception - but at least I don't have to physically wear a device to get a similar quality to that of a Jawbone or Fitbit.

The thing I like most - the alarm. I've switched to just using the sense alarm, because they have really nice sounds that aren't shrill and jarring, it fades up slowly in volume and the little orb glows a pale blue to wake me up. I just have to wave my hand over it to shut it up. It really is that future feeling I want out of my personal tech, plus it stops me reaching for my old alarm (my phone) which helps delay me checking my email. However, it doesn't have snooze so I've just set up a series of alarms 10 mins apart to fake it, but I really hope they add that (snooze could be a short wave over, off could be a triple wave over or something, Hello guys).

The thing I'm saddest about? The Kickstarter said it would have a white/pink noise generator for falling asleep. It's not there. They haven't done it. I use a few apps on my iPad for this already (I actually usually opt for rainstorm sounds - I think I miss the motherland), but I was super excited to have a noise generator connected to a sleep tracker, so I could build up some data on what sounds work best. I'm bummed they didn't add that - I'm hoping they still will, after all, the orb is basically a Bluetooth speaker. If they would just open it up to let me pass whatever audio out I wanted to the Bluetooth that'd work, too.  

Oh, and while I'm begging for features - there is no way to connect this system to anything else in the house/life. I can't even get it to send me an email with the day's stats that I could then IFTTT out to do something else based on that (Slept badly last night? Here's a reminder to go to bed earlier. Room too hot again? Turn on a fan. That sort of thing). If I could communicate with it, I'd be able to use the speaker for notifications or set light sequences for things, too. Oh, and can I have a web interface with an export? I hate having my data locked away and the small screen is not ideal for studying graphs. 

In summary

Pros: 

• Slick modern design
• Nice alarm
• Good for bed sharers
• Data quality on par with FitBit Force
• Don't have to wear anything on my body for tracking

Cons:

• Pain in the butt to setup
• No snooze
• No white noise generator
• No API / integration points
• Lack of detailed particulate information
• Data only accessible via the app

The Sense orb + 2 pills cost me $129 during their Kickstarter campaign. The same setup today would cost $188, which is really pushing their luck on price point.

So, do I like it? Yeah, I do, although it feels a little under developed right now. I don't think there's anything I'm griping about that can't be fixed in the software, so I hope they keep working on that to improve the data / feature set and if they open up an API there's plenty of opportunity there to do some cool stuff. I've got my fingers crossed that this isn't just a one trick pretty pony.