Oura Ring

April 22, 2019 Frances Berriman

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.

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.

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.

Bellabeat Leaf activity tracker review

August 21, 2015 Frances Berriman

How I'm sporting the Bellabeat Leaf today

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.

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).

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.

Bellabeat Leaf Unboxing

July 15, 2015 Frances Berriman

My BellaBeat Leaf arrived today. The device is designed to track movement, sleep quality and breathing. Here's what it looks like straight out of the box.

The box itself is meant to be used to store your device in, apparently.

The leaf comes with two ways to attach it to your human meat body - a leather bracelet and a simple chain. For certain features the device is supposed to be worn clipped directly to your clothing.

Up close, you can see that the leaf is made up of a wooden box - housing all the accelerometers and bits and bobs - and a metal leaf motif that acts as a clip. The package came with a rather stern additional sheet of paper warning not to extend the clip past 4mm (the maximum thickness of material it will fit on to is 2mm), which I assume means it will break if overstretched and the additional after-box warning means they've been having issues with that.

The reverse is a very shiny metal back, where you can more easily see the small loop on the lower side intended to attach the leather strap as it's wrapped around your wrist, and some fairly functional looking screws to allow you into the device to change it's battery (which should last round 6 months).

I had to look at the instructions to work out how on earth to wrap this thing around my child-like wrist. I think it looks ridiculous. I'll be trying it out over the next few days most likely as a pendant and clip.

Back soon with a review!