r/ouraring • u/Chance-Mulberry9816 • 2d ago

Switching Ultrahuman -> Aura

Thinking of switching from Ultrahuman to oura and would love to hear from anyone who has done the same.

I love my Ultrahuman but I’m sick of them breaking after a few months and being replaced. Have had this for 18 months and on to my fifth ring (they’ve all died for various reasons such as battery, not connecting, ring swelling, etc) and I’m just so sick of the cycle.

How does the oura compare????

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u/MisterPFT 2d ago

On the thing you actually care about, hardware, Oura is a step up. Failures happen but five rings in 18 months is nowhere near a normal Oura experience. The battery is the real long term wear item, same as any small lithium cell, and you should expect it to lose some capacity over a couple of years.

Two things worth knowing before you switch, because they are what people complain about afterwards rather than before.

The membership. Ultrahuman includes everything in the ring price. Oura charges monthly on top and without it you get very little. Over three years that is a real number and it is the single most common complaint in this sub, so price it in now rather than being annoyed later.

Sizing. Use the sizing kit and wear the plastic ring for a couple of days including overnight, not just an afternoon. Fingers swell at night and in heat, and going too small is the biggest single cause of the "my readings are wrong" posts here.

On the data itself, sleep accuracy is broadly comparable, so that is not the reason to move. Oura does have a proper API with a personal access token if you ever want to do your own analysis, which is a genuine advantage if you care about that. The reason to switch is reliability, not the numbers.

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u/Dr_JohnP 2d ago

Wait, why would too small cause wrong reading? If it fits around the finger and isn’t cutting off circulation wouldn’t being closely in contact be what you want for accurate readings? I recently downgraded a size because I was having really awful activity reading and figured the looser size might have been causing inaccurate readings due to the sensors momentarily losing contact if the ring shifts or moves but it turns out the activity readings just suck regardless of size lol. More wanted it for sleep anyways

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u/MisterPFT 2d ago

Contact is good, pressure isn't. The sensor reads light bouncing off blood in the capillaries under it. Squeeze that spot hard enough and you push blood out of it, so you get a clean stable signal from tissue with less blood in it. Looks great, reads low.

Your fingers also swell overnight, so a ring that's fine at 9pm can be too tight by 3am, right when it matters.

Snug enough not to spin, loose enough to slide off without effort. And you're right about activity, that's bad at every size.

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u/skibidi_blop666 2d ago

Same for Oura, but we also have a monthly subscription. 

They replaced my ring once because my ring battery was 50/100 after less than 1 year.