Oura’s Activity Tracking Is About to Get a Lot Better

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The Oura ring is great at tracking sleep and keeping tabs on your healthy habits, but as I noted in my review of the Oura ring 4, it’s really not great at activity tracking. That may be changing with a rollout of new activity-tracking features that the company has announced today. These still aren't enough to replace, say, a proper sports watch, but they do look like a significant improvement on Oura’s previous abilities. 

I’m going to test these features over the coming days and weeks to let you know how much of an improvement they really are. Here’s what Oura says is included: 

• Step counting will use a new algorithm that is supposed to be more accurate.

• Calorie burn for activities will take heart rate into account (allowing Oura to estimate how intense your workout was).

• Split times will now be available for runs automatically tracked with Oura.

• Heart rate data will be included when Oura pulls in workouts from other sources (for example, if you track a workout with your Apple Watch or Garmin). 

• You can add or edit activities from the past week, not just the current day. Past readiness scores will update accordingly. 

• Automatic activity detection will now work at any time of day or night, removing the previous limitation where activities would only be detected during the day. 

• There will be a new trend view for activities, showing your daily, weekly, and monthly active time. 

• You will finally be able to edit your max heart rate. This will change your zones and your heart rate trends accordingly.

That last one is a biggie, and makes Oura’s heart rate zone reporting a lot more useful. Previously they used an age-based formula, even though people’s max heart rates vary too much for any one-size-fits-all formula to be accurate. (Oura previously thought my easy runs were done mostly in zone 5. I promise you, Oura, they are not.) 

Oura has also announced integrations with several apps that can pull in data like HRV from the Oura app, and use those to inform your workouts or analysis in those apps. The new integrations include CorePower Yoga, The Sculpt Society, Technogym, and meditation app Open.

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