As competition in the smart ring market escalates, Oura is introducing two new features to give people more insight into their workouts and how they impact their bodies. The company announced on Tuesday it’s rolling out Cardio Effort and VO₂ max metrics to expand workout tracking beyond exercise duration and heart rate zones.
While Oura has largely dominated the smart ring market for years, rivals like RingConn and Ultrahuman are emerging to dethrone it, putting pressure on the company to keep innovating. By launching more advanced workout metrics, Oura is looking to differentiate itself from competitors.
With Cardio Effort, users will be able to see how much a workout taxes their cardiovascular system. This measurement is aggregated over the week relative to each user’s individual baseline to provide more insights. Oura explained that this metric shifts users’ focus from “How many minutes did I move?” to “Am I maintaining my fitness, building it, or overdoing it?”
Since Cardio Effort accounts for both intensity and duration, a shorter, more intense workout can yield a similar score to a longer, less intense one, the company says.
Oura notes that the metric has two components: Workout Cardio Effort and Weekly Cardio Effort. The first metric evaluates the impact of an individual workout, while the latter aggregates effort into a weekly total, categorized as “Light,” “Fair,” “Maintaining,” “Building,” or “Reaching.”
Oura measures elevated heart rate relative to each member’s long-term resting heart rate, avoiding the variability associated with maximum-heart-rate estimates. Weekly effort levels are then determined using personalized ranges based on recent activity patterns.
Cardio Effort is rolling out to Oura Ring Gen3 and later models.
As for VO₂ max, the metric shows how workouts contribute to long-term fitness. It measures how effectively the heart, lungs, and muscles work together to deliver and use oxygen during exercise. Previously, measuring VO₂ max typically required a lab test or a six-minute walking test. Oura can now estimate it passively using GPS-enabled workouts.
After completing five qualifying activities, users receive an initial VO2 Max estimate. Within the My Health Heart Hub, they can view their current VO2 Max estimate in ml/kg/min, their fitness category (Low, Fair, High, or Peak), how their estimate has changed over time, and when it was last updated. Users also receive insights highlighting meaningful changes in their VO2 Max or indicating when their estimate remains consistent.
VO₂ Max is launching in Oura Labs, the company’s hub for experimental features, for members with Gen3 and newer Oura Ring devices.
Oura says these two new features are designed to work together to show users how hard they’re working and how that effort is adding up over time.
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Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University.
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