At a time when we are concerned about health, the smart ring, which can track sleep and body temperature, is too flawed to recommend.There couldn’t be a better time for wearable technology to shine. In the coronavirus era, we’re all concerned about our well-being. So wearable computers with tiny sensors that offer insight into our health seem particularly useful.One such gadget that stands out as intriguing is the third-generation Oura Ring, which was unveiled last November. It’s a tiny $300 health-monitoring device worn on a finger as if it were a piece of jewelry.The ring, according to Oura Health, offers the unique ability to measure minute changes in body temperature to help women accurately predict their menstrual cycles and potentially detect when a person is getting sick. That might even reveal early symptoms of Covid-19, the company has said.Who wouldn’t want that these days?The Oura Ring has also made a splashy debut. You may have seen it in a recent episode of “And Just Like That,” the reboot of “Sex and the City.” Prince Harry, Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Aniston have been seen wearing one. And ads for it have surfaced on Instagram and other social media, portraying the ring as a replacement for devices like the Apple Watch.Despite all the hype, I’m disappointed to report after two weeks of wearing an Oura that it was a letdown. The ring failed to accurately measure basic data like my footsteps, which raised broader questions about my general health data. (More on this later.) And while the charts about my heart rate and sleep patterns sure looked neat, I didn’t feel more enlightened about my overall health.I also can’t confirm whether the Oura can detect Covid-19 or any disease because I (fortunately) haven’t gotten ill.For a second opinion, I turned to Dr. Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who owns an older version of the Oura Ring that he used to track sleep, body temperature and fitness activity. Dr. Weiss said he had stopped wearing it years ago.“It didn’t give me anything I could use to help me,” he said. “A lot of these technologies are looking for problems to solve. This is one of them.”There might be some people who would like the Oura Ring — body hackers and competitive athletes who are striving to optimize their fitness levels jump to mind — but I wouldn’t recommend it for most of us.Here’s what I found.Off on the Wrong FootThe Oura smart ring comes in four finishes.Oura HealthGetting started with an Oura Ring is a multistep process. First, you order a free sizing kit from the company’s website to measure your finger. Then you tell the company your size. When the ring arrives, you place it on a dock to charge it and sync it with a smartphone app. Once worn, it takes about two weeks for the software to calculate the baseline of your health data and make accurate estimates.After Week 1 of testing, something unusual came up. A relative needed help with an emergency, so I hopped on my motorcycle and rode 50 miles to his house.After I rode home, I opened the Oura app. It said I had walked 20 miles. This was obviously wrong. I had walked only a mile that day when I took my dogs out for an afternoon stroll.Brian X. ChenIt was clear what had happened. The Oura had incorrectly logged a portion of my 100-mile motorcycle ride as footsteps.A quick web search revealed that Oura customers complained about this issue last year with the ring’s previous version. The company’s response at the time, posted on Reddit, was that the ring falsely detected “excess motion” from motorcycling as a fitness activity, and it suggested removing the ring and putting it in a pocket while riding a motorcycle.Chris Becherer, Oura Health’s head of product, told me that the company was aware of the problem and researching a fix. He suggested that in the meantime, I could go back and delete workouts to inform the app that I wasn’t walking.This didn’t work. The app had permanently recorded my movements as walking, and the data could not be purged. I ride motorcycles regularly, including for errands around town, so that meant nearly a week of activity data was ruined. Having to manually edit my data would also have defeated the purpose of an automatic tracker.For comparison, I also wore an Apple Watch while testing the Oura. Even after my 100-mile trip, the Apple Watch correctly reported that I had walked only about a mile and had not exercised much that day.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4Omicron in retreat.

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTech FixHow to Get a Peloton-Style Workout Without SplurgingDon’t want to pay $1,900 for a Peloton bike, plus a subscription fee for classes? Here are ways to reduce the cost of using tech to exercise at home.Lisa Whitney of Reno, Nev., has created her version of a do-it-yourself Peloton bike. Credit…Max Whittaker for The New York TimesMarch 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETLisa Whitney, a dietitian in Reno, Nev., came across the deal of a lifetime about two years ago. A fitness studio was going out of business and selling its equipment. She scored an indoor exercise bike for $100.Ms. Whitney soon made some additions to the bike. She propped her iPad on the handlebars. Then she experimented with online cycling classes streamed on YouTube and on the app for Peloton, a maker of internet-connected exercise devices that offers interactive fitness classes.Ms. Whitney had no desire to upgrade to one of Peloton’s $1,900-plus luxury exercise bikes, which include a tablet to stream classes and sensors that track your speed and heart rate. So she further modified her bike to become a do-it-yourself Peloton, buying sensors and indoor cycling shoes.The grand total: about $300, plus a $13 monthly subscription to Peloton’s app. Not cheap, but a significant discount to what she might have paid.“I’m happy with my setup,” Ms. Whitney, 42, said. “I really don’t think upgrading would do much.”The pandemic, which has forced many gyms to shut down, has driven hordes of people to splurge on luxury items like Peloton’s bikes and treadmills so they can work out at home. Capitalizing on this trend, Apple last year released Apple Fitness Plus, an instructional fitness app that is exclusively offered to people who own an Apple Watch, which requires an iPhone to work.But all of that can be expensive. The minimum prices of an Apple Watch and iPhone add up to $600, and Apple Fitness Plus costs $10 a month. Then to stream classes on a big-screen TV instead of a phone while you exercise, you need a streaming device such as an Apple TV, which costs about $150. The full Peloton experience is even pricier. With the economy in a funk, many of us are trying to tighten our spending while maintaining good health. So I experimented with how to minimize the costs of doing video-instructed workouts at home, talked to tinkerers and assessed the pros and cons.Here’s what I learned.To measure her energy output, Ms. Whitney added a sensor that tracks the bike’s rotations per minute.Credit…Max Whittaker for The New York TimesShe also straps a heart rate monitor to her arm as part of her routine.Credit…Max Whittaker for The New York TimesThe Pros and Cons of FreeTo start my experiment for working out at home on the cheap, the first question I tackled was whether to subscribe to a fitness app or stream classes from YouTube for free. Both largely provide videos of instructors guiding you through workouts.So I bought an $8 yoga mat and a $70 pair of adjustable dumbbells and turned on my TV, which includes the YouTube app. I then subscribed to three of the most popular YouTube channels that have free content for exercising at home: Yoga With Adriene, Fitness Blender and Holly Dolke.One immediate downside was almost too much content — often hundreds of videos per YouTuber — making it difficult to pick a workout. Even when I finally chose a video, I learned I had to brace myself for some quality issues.In the Yoga With Adriene channel, for instance, I selected the video “Yoga for When You Feel Dead Inside,” which felt appropriate for the time we are living in. The video looked good, but at times the instructor’s voice sounded muffled.Production problems were more visible in the Holly Dolke channel, which has a collection of intense workouts that you can do without any equipment. When I tried the video “Muffin Top Melter,” an instructor in the background demonstrated how to do a more challenging version of each exercise, but the other instructor, in the foreground, constantly blocked her.Then there were the ads. As I lifted weights while following a 10-minute fat-burning workout from Fitness Blender, YouTube interrupted the video to play an ad for Dawn soap. That left me holding a dumbbell above the back of my neck while I waited for the ad to end.Those issues aside, I was able to do all of the exercises demonstrated by these YouTubers, and they left me winded and sweaty. For the cost of free, I can’t complain much. Most important, Yoga With Adriene succeeded in making me feel less dead inside.What You Get When You PayTo compare the free YouTube exercise videos with the paid experience, I subscribed to Peloton and Apple Fitness Plus on my Apple TV set-top box. I did workouts using both products for the last two months.Peloton and Apple Fitness Plus addressed many of the problems plaguing the free exercise content.For one, workouts were organized into categories by the type of workout, including yoga, strength training and core, and then by the difficulty or duration of the workout. It took little time to choose a workout.Peloton’s app organizes workouts by category, difficulty and duration.Credit…Brian X. ChenIn both Peloton and Apple Fitness Plus, video and audio quality were very clear, and the workouts were shot at various angles to get a good look at what the instructors were doing. The bonus of Fitness Plus was that my heart rate and calories burned were displayed on both my Apple Watch and the TV screen.In short, paying those subscriptions provided convenience and polish, which led to a more pleasant workout. I concluded that Peloton’s videos were worth paying $13 a month. And $10 a month is reasonable for Apple Fitness Plus, but only if you already have an Apple Watch and iPhone.Apple Fitness Plus on an iPhone and Apple Watch.Credit…AppleMaking a D.I.Y. PelotonSo what about exercise equipment like spin bikes? If you want the tech frills of a Peloton but don’t want to spend on the equipment, there were two main approaches.To go the cheapest route, you can make use of a bicycle you already have. Here’s where home tinkerers can be especially crafty and resourceful.Take Omar Sultan, a manager at the networking company Cisco. He modified his road bike with a few add-ons: a bike trainer, which secured the rear wheel and bike frame and costs roughly $100; a $40 Wahoo cadence sensor that tracked his energy output and speed and transmitted the data to a smartphone; and a heart rate monitor that strapped around his chest, such as the $90 Polar H10. Then he used a streaming device to follow Peloton classes on his TV.“The D.I.Y. setup is 80 percent of the way there” to a Peloton, Mr. Sultan said.The more expensive option was to buy an indoor exercise bike and use a tablet or phone to stream cycling classes via YouTube or the Peloton app, as Ms. Whitney did. The $700 IC7.9, for example, includes a cadence sensor and a holder for your tablet. You could then buy a heart rate monitor and a pair of $100 indoor cycling shoes that clip into the pedals.But if you use your own bicycle or a modified spin bike and try Peloton’s app, you won’t be able to participate in the app’s so-called leader board, which shows a graphic of your progress compared with other Peloton users online.With a D.I.Y. bike, it can also be difficult to figure out how to shift gears to simulate when the instructor is telling you to turn up the resistance — like when you are pretending to ride up a hill.Nicole Odya, a nurse practitioner in Chicago who modified a high-end indoor bike, the Keiser M3i, said there were major upsides to the D.I.Y. route. Using her own iPad, she has the flexibility to choose whatever fitness apps she wants to use, such as Zwift and mPaceLine. It also gave her the freedom to customize her bike, so she swapped out the stock pedals for better ones.“I didn’t want to be locked into their platform,” she said of Peloton.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story