[ildon]

I use the Oura ring [1] for sleep tracking, it's by far the best I know of for sleep. The fact that it's a ring is convenient for comfort, and very precise as it adheres well to the finger even during night movements.

[1] https://ouraring.com/raf/34be98b1fd?utm_medium=iac

[JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B]

It’s interesting but needing a subscription for sleep and heart rate analysis is a bit too much for a $400 device.

At such a price (more than my Apple Watch) I expect all the analysis to be done on the phone.

[FirmwareBurner]

Devil's advocate take: Apple can afford to give you "free" sleep tracking because it makes its money from other sources like crazy markups on hardware and 30% tax on Appstore purchases, plus other subscriptions people pay Apple for like iCloud, Apple Care, etc.

But small specialized shops like Oura can't fund constant R&D on hardware dev and sleep tracking algorithms, infrastructure, plus continuous SW patches & updates to existing customers and products, without subscriptions, because they lack Apple's other revenue streams and muscle to negociate steep discounts on HW and cloud infra, so the one-time sale fee of Oura's HW product is not enough to cover all those on-going dev costs and keep the company afloat.

Not an Oura customer or shareholder, just though I'd share some light on the costs and challenges of competing in this space. It just doesn't work without continuous subscription based revenue streams. Low margins on HW sales are not enough to fund such businesses.

[greggsy]

I’m not sure what you get with the Oura sub, but I would expect to get some form of ‘value’ in the form of services or analytics. Otherwise I’m just paying perpetual instalments for a device I thought I paid for.

Software app subs are one thing, but hardware is something else, IMO.

[morjom]

There's also the Ultrahuman Ring Air which is around the same price but requires no subscription as far as I can tell.

https://ring.ultrahuman.com/

[tguvot]

https://us.emfit.com/features/ seems to be more comprehensive

[2Gkashmiri]

Their marketing says

> research-grade sensors

Are these people really this shallow? What does that even mean

[Borealid]

It means the sensors received the same grade as the research papers of the people who wrote the marketing copy.

[2Gkashmiri]

haha good one