Product1 publisher3 min readPublished
Apple ships the readiness score Oura built its brand on
Apple will put a 0-to-10 readiness score on the Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, a metric Oura has kept central since its 2015 Kickstarter. The score depends on battery life, and that is where Oura still leads.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Apple said the upcoming Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 will carry a readiness score for the first time, on a 0 to 10 scale computed from health metrics including sleep and activity.
- Readiness has been central to Oura since the first ring launched on Kickstarter in 2015, and Oura scores it from 0 to 100.
- Apple also introduced Health Age, which the company says will be determined from your VO2 max, heart-rate variability and sleep.
- Oura requires a subscription at $6 a month or $70 a year to reach every feature, while Apple says its watch health metrics need no subscription.
- Apple rates the Series 12 at up to 24 hours of normal use and the Ultra 4 at up to 50, against five to eight days for the Oura Ring 4 and six to nine for the Ring 5.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Sleep is an input to Apple's score, so the number is only as good as how often a customer sleeps in a watch and finds a daylight window to charge it.
- cost Oura's $70 a year now sits beside a competitor charging nothing extra for a comparable score, so the fee has to be justified by the ring itself.
- decision Any hardware team whose paid tier rests on one computed metric has to name the part of the product a bundled operating system cannot reproduce, and price against that part.
CNET's reviewer has worn an Oura ring for nearly two years and opens the app each day for readiness, sleep and activity scores [11]. The standing complaint in that review is activity tracking, not the score. "When I go for a walk, it thinks I'm hiking; when I play tennis, it thinks I played volleyball," the reviewer wrote [10]. Apple, for its part, says its updated pedometer will make the Watch the most accurate step-tracking wearable [7].
The two readiness scores are built to different resolutions. Apple's runs 0 to 10 [2]. Oura's runs 0 to 100 [4]. One point of Apple's scale covers the ground ten points cover on Oura's [4]. Apple's version also updates through the day to tell you whether to push or rest [3], while CNET's reviewer says Oura's overall score can move after a nap but rarely does in practice [6].
Readiness is computed partly from sleep [2], so the device has to be on the body at three in the morning. In hours, the Oura Ring 5's rating is 144 to 216, six to nine times the Series 12's [3]. The Ultra 4's 50 hours is roughly a third of the Ring 5's low end [5]. "I will never have the desire to wear a chunky watch around my wrist when I go to bed," the reviewer wrote, adding that without sleep data nearly every metric the watch tracks is missing an important factor [17].
Over three years, a Ring 5 at $399 plus the annual subscription comes to $609 [1]. A Series 12 at $399 gives you the health metrics with no subscription at all, a $210 gap [2][12]. Apple gates guided workouts from trainers behind Fitness Plus, not the numbers themselves [13].
None of the new scores have been tested against Oura's; the watches are still upcoming [2]. CNET's reviewer is careful about the switching case, writing that "if the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 can provide accurate activity tracking along with nearly everything the Oura Ring offers, I wouldn't be surprised if some Oura users considered making the switch" [19]. The same review says Apple can easily surpass Oura on activity while placing Oura at the top of the market [21][20].
For a team selling one metric behind a paywall, there are two questions to ask. The first is the input: whether a general-purpose device already carries the sensors. Apple says Health Age uses VO2 max, HRV and sleep [8], which is close to the input list behind Oura's cardiovascular age [9], so that question is settled against the ring. The second is the occasion: whether keeping your device on costs the user a habit change the bundled device does not. Overnight, on this reviewer's account, the ring is the thing that stays on [17]. The recommendation follows from the second question, and so does its cost: the ring gets sold on the night, the score goes out at zero, and sleep is a narrower pitch than fitness. Apple's health metrics come with the $399 watch [12], so Oura's $70 a year has to buy something the watch cannot collect while it charges [14].
What to watch
- Whether Apple's claim to the most accurate step tracking survives independent testing once the Series 12 ships.
- Whether Oura moves any features out of the $6-a-month subscription now that Apple charges nothing extra for its health metrics.
- Whether Apple brings the readiness score to older watches in software, which would widen the installed base without a hardware sale.