Review of Ouraring
I would like to preface this review by stating that I have been an Oura customer since the earliest days of the company and have purchased Gen 1, Gen 2, and Gen 3 rings at full price through their website. In the beginning, I was quite happy with the sleep tracking and also customer service, however as the company has grown they have obviously veered far from their roots and at this point I can no longer recommend anyone purchase an Oura Ring.tldr; poor customer support, unreliable hardware, and recommendations that are too “friendly” and don’t reflect the actual underlying data.My woes began when my Heritage Stealth Gen 3 ring all of a sudden stopped holding a charge, despite being less than a year old. It would simply die after 24 hours or so. I contacted support and was told they detected an issue with the battery and would send me a replacement. Which they did. An exact replacement - Heritage Stealth Gen 3. However this replacement ring suffered an even worse fate after only 9 months or so, when one day a few weeks ago it simply decided to stop connecting to my phone. I went through all the troubleshooting steps and yet it simply wouldn’t respond. It’s important to note that I have been very careful with all of my rings, never subjected them to any abnormal wear and tear or anything like that at all. So this was definitely some kind of internal hardware defect.This time when I reached out to support, however, I was told that I could either choose to receive a discount code with a value of 50 euros/50 dollars to purchase a new ring or I would again be provided with a replacement ring, only this time it would not be a brand-new ring but a refurbished ring, since this was technically a “replacement of a replacement”. The fact that two Gen 3 rings literally died within a year should make anyone considering purchasing an Oura stop and think twice.Ultimately I opted for the replacement ring, and here is where things get wild: although I was promised, in writing, that I would again receive the exact same model and size ring as a replacement, I received a completely different model! Upon bringing this to the customer service rep’s attention, a new rep began replying all of a sudden and directly lied to me, saying that the warranty terms allow Oura to replace a defective ring with any ring of their choosing, which is obviously not the case - the warranty terms are very clear that the replacement ring will only be the same model and size as the ring being replaced.After going back and forth with this new rep numerous times, I was ultimately told that they were not willing to take back the wrong ring and send me the correct replacement, and I was basically out of luck. So now I'm stuck with a ring that I don't like and will only wear at night in bed.Besides the extremely disappointing way this situation was handled, I would also like to note that I currently wear a Whoop strap and an Apple Watch Ultra 2 together with the ring and have noticed extreme discrepancies between the three, with Oura’s activity tracking (steps and calorie burn) being way, way off from reality and the other two devices. Sleep tracking still seems fairly accurate, although Oura’s approach is much more “lenient” - Whoop will tell me that my sleep sucked and I am not at all recovered and need to relax and take it easy, for example, while Oura will basically show the same data but tell me that I’m fine and I should go do something active if I feel up to it. Combine that with Oura's high price and other competitors' rings providing the same functionality for cheaper and without a subscription, and I simply cannot in good faith recommend anyone purchase an Oura Ring now.
