Smart ring company Oura announced that it is adding two new fitness features. First is Cardio Effort, an assessment of how much strain the wearer has put on their body during activity. The personalized metric will offer five ranges — light, fair, maintaining, building and reaching — that offer a gauge of how the week's activities compare to the individual's baseline. The feature is based on the Training Impulse method and is designed to monitor long-term trends in cardiovascular activity, the company said.
The second feature is that the smart rings will automatically estimate VO2 Max stats. This feature was previously called Cardio Capacity in the Oura Labs tool. It wasn't an automatic metric and it required a six-minute walking test before it could be enabled. The revised VO2 Max makes passive estimations on regular GPS-enabled workouts, meaning the test is no longer needed. VO2 Max stats will be available in Oura Labs for the third-generation Oura Ring and later models.
These new additions further expand Oura's offerings for holistic health data. Other wearables, including the Apple Watch and Fitbit, have been able to track similar cardio metrics for some time, so the change could make Oura a viable option for people who prefer the ring form factor to the watch or bracelet ones.
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