So I’m trying to decide between an Oura ring, Whoop, and a Apple Watch Ultra 2. I am in no means in athlete and am in an average health. I’m looking for a tracker to be able to give me insights into how I am sleeping, recovery levels, and basic workout tracking and other health metrics. I’m more interested in things like how does how much I sleep or how much alcohol I have to drink affect my wellbeing instead of how well I recover from a workout. Would the Apple Watch be good for this or should I consider the other options above?
There is a youtuber called The Quantified Scientist who reviews many smartwatches in a VERY detailed and scientific manner. Apple, Garmin, Samsung, Fitbit, etc. He is impartial and shows you his data on the screen. He tests everything related to health and fitness tracking in terms of accuracy and functionality. You should check out his channel.
All that being said, the Apple watches often are at the TOP of his lists in terms of health, fitness and sleep tracking.
I switched from a lifelong Samsung Galaxy user to iPhone specifically because of the superiority of Apple watches. And I fucking hate round smartwatches.
Ultra excessive overkill. Just get the watch.
Disagree.
Battery life is huge QoL improvement. You’ll never have to worry about making it through a day.
Got a watch for a parent for health tracking. Ultra 2. (After she tried both regular and ultra and liked the ultra; not too heavy — she’s teeny, mind.)
Harder for them to scratch or damage. Comes with cellular option if they ever want it. Twice the battery life. (Supports sleep tracking more easily if desired because no need to charge overnight.)
Ultra is just a good choice for lots of things.
Regular watch is fine, but just how you live your life. (And aesthetics if you’re into that.)
Ultra 2 is well worth the money.
For doing what it is designed to do. Yes.Otherwise. No. Fashion dictates.
Battery life is a very fashionable herring that glows bright red in all illumination.
Charge phone every day. Charge watch every day. It becomes a routine meaning neither will ever run out of battery.
Scratch/damage. Simple question. Do they do that to “normal” watches. No? Then it’s irrelevant, like it is for the phone.
I see excuses rather than reasons.
I think it’s pretty fantastic. Not sure about the alcohol part but it tracks everything else I need. Perfect for gym workouts, gps workouts (walk hike run bike), swimming, sleep, and all the other random stats it tracks.
There are a few apps to download that are better than stock Apple ones but they all integrate and are very inexpensive.
My partner sees a change in their resting heart rate after a decent amount of alcohol consumption.
Ultra 2 is overkill for what you are looking for. I’d consider the investment of each vs what you get if that is important.
Yes, it’s more than “good enough” for your use-cases.
I’ve used Apple watches for several years to monitor sleep (now have a series 9).
Monitor heart rate, sleep quality, SP02, respiration etc.
It does tend to temper alcohol use - just a couple glasses of red wine result in zero deep sleep and increased heart rate throughout the night.
SP02 and respiration were indicative of a lung disease which I’m being treated for.
The alcohol raises night readings so it becomes useless besides guessing I drank to much. Without alcohol I predict if I over exerted in a hard cardio day. Otherwise I might be getting sick (I test for Covid). A few drinks depending on the person didn’t show but more just throws valuable reading off. Like they say, if in doubt, remove alcohol for a time period. I stopped drinking for now and the readings are useful. I’m not an athlete. I’m on and off.
What kinds of workouts?
I have the Ultra 1 and I don’t like it for sleep. Too bulky. You might prefer the slimmer ones.
If you don’t mind charging once a day, the regular AW will work for all of this and is likely more comfortable to sleep with.
I also use WorkOutDoors for additional workout stats, and Lose It! for nutrition tracking.
I’m in my second year of my Whoop subscription and I do like it. One thing I like is you can charge it while wearing the strap, so it’s a 24hr monitor. I use it to track my cycling as well as sleep, stress and general health. It’s a good warning sign for anything effecting your health that you don’t know about yet. HRV is a good way of tracking stress levels in your body and the Whoop app tracks this overnight.
I wish however that my Apple Watch did the same, as I do miss the other features my iWatch has, but the Apple health app isn’t as good.
Can someone tell me, is it possible to import apple exported health data (saved on a mac for example) back in to apple health app. Plz and thank you
I do wish the app I use to track alcohol intake had a watch app.
Oura ring isn’t as good as the other two for basic workout tracking - but Apple Watch Ultra 2 sounds like it might be too much for your needs. I recently bought the Watch 9 and an Athlytic subscription and it’s been perfect for all of the above (as someone who is also in average health looking for the tracker that does what you’ve requested above.
So it looks the the Oura ring tries to “analyze” the data in addition to just tracking it- it looks like it tries to give you a sleep score, readiness score, and interpret data to give you insight on your stress levels. If the data is all you care about I would do some research on how accurate the data capturing is for each device, but just as a quick glance it looks like the Oura ring has more “features” when it comes ti data tracking. But if you care about other things than just the data, of course it’s important to note that the Apple Watch has many more features than the Oura Ring just around the board. To me it seems like it would be more of an issue of if you would rather wear a ring or a watch, and if the little bit more robust (it doesn’t seem like it’s that much more tbh) data gathering is worth it to you to throw out other features that the watch would provide