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How online reviews shape the success of digital services in the tech era

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How online reviews shape the success of digital services in the tech era

We live in a digital era where technological interventions are at the core of society. These shape our everyday life and have become an integral part of a functioning society. Activities and services which used to be based on in-person features are now striving in the digital realm, influencing everything from the products we buy and the services we choose. As more and more products and services have embraced online technology, so has consumer behavior.

One massive online trend among consumers has been to rely on online reviews for a critical lens to navigate products and services online. Consumers leverage these reviews to assess services before making a commitment, and this consumer behavior encompasses all types of online activities, from online shopping platforms and cloud computing services to online casinos and gaming platforms. For operators and companies, reviews can be leveraged to enhance visibility, drive engagement, and also improve user experiences.

The influence of online reviews

The influence which online reviews hold cannot be overstated. Online review statistics show that in 2024, 95% of consumers said they read Google reviews before purchasing or engaging with a service online, which is an increase compared to 2020 when it was just 63% of consumers that read the site’s reviews. For Trustpilot, 89% of global consumers check online reviews as part of their buying journey. The prominence of review sites like Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, and specialized platforms are crucial for businesses, especially those operating in the tech space, since these reviews are the first touchpoint for customers with the brand.

Reviews are not only crucial for product-based businesses, since they also extend into service-oriented industries. These for example include software-as-a-service (SaaS), IT solutions, and online casinos. Take the online casino industry as an example: Reviews in the online casino industry are significant, since the market is highly competitive. Casinos therefore rely on user reviews in building trust and attracting new players.

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The special case of online casino reviews

As already teased previously, online casinos are a prime example of how reviews can either make or break a business. The gambling industry has migrated to digital platforms, and as a result, players are now relying on online reviews to choose where to gamble. As the variety of online casino platforms continues to grow, market competitiveness increases, and the large variety becomes overwhelming for consumers. This is where online casino review sites like Casinostugan is crucial for players to compare and contrast the services and game selections of various casino platforms.

Unlike traditional e-commerce, where it is somewhat simple to assess product quality, online casinos are also subject to scrutiny regarding fairness, payout speed, customer support, and the level of security. This is why players turn to review platforms like Casinostugan to compare and contrast opportunities. For operators, maintaining a positive reputation on such platforms is critical to attract and retain players. Many casino operators therefore actively manage reviews, respond to feedback, and address negative comments transparently, in an attempt to create a trustworthy brand image.

How online reviews impact conversions

Research also found that online reviews have a direct impact on sales. Statistics shows that product pages featuring reviews achieve a higher conversion rate and more revenue per visitor compared to pages without reviews. This pattern goes across various industries, also for tech-based services. Whether it being for cloud storage, cybersecurity tools, or casino platforms, reviews can drive customer action as it provides social proof.

An interesting aspect is that a large number of reviews, even if they include some negative feedback, can still enhance credibility. This is because the average customer expects a balanced mix of reviews, resulting in users trusting platforms more when both positive and negative reviews are present. This added authenticity helps customers make more informed decisions.

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How business leverage reviews for tech-based services

As much as reviews have many great features for consumers, so is it a tool for businesses to leverage as well. Online reviews have a power which businesses with tech-based services can harness, but this requires a strategic approach.

By seeing customer reviews as an endless source of opportunities, companies can improve their approach to customers, and how to meet changing consumer demands. Reviews does contain a lot of information that can be translated into tangible and feasible actions by any tech-based business.

Encouraging user feedback

For any business that wants to leverage reviews for improving services and products, it is crucial to encourage customers to leave reviews. There are various ways to achieve this through various channels such as email campaigns, social media, and during interactions with customer service. Most users are willing to provide feedback, with 70% of consumers saying they would be willing to leave a review if asked to do so.

Asking for feedback also entails doing it at the right moment. This can for example be after a service has been provided or when a milestone has been reached, since this can help the businesses increase the volume of reviews while also maintaining a steady influx of fresh testimonials.

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Responding to reviews

One item that should be key in a strategy for leveraging reviews is responsiveness. For consumers, the interest is not just in reading reviews, but also to see how companies actively engage with feedback. More than half of consumers (53%) expect a reply to negative reviews, and 89% of consumers are more likely to use a business that reply to reviews.

However, it is not all companies that realize these potentials of responding to reviews. Statistics show that 87% of businesses do not address negative reviews at all. So, to sum up, for tech services, responding to reviews will allow the company to address customer concerns, while demonstrating that the company cares about the experiences and voices of their customers.

Speaking of negative reviews…

So, as we are speaking of negative reviews, there is no doubt that these are inevitable. However, they can also be turned into opportunities. Companies with a small percentage of negative reviews see a higher revenue than companies only having positive feedback. In other words, statistics actually show that the revenue for companies is higher with a percentage of negative reviews, and that this number diminishes for companies with fewer negative reviews.

This might seem contradictory, but negative reviews have a degree of authenticity which customers appreciate. For companies, addressing these negative reviews quickly and transparently can help retain customers, while also improving the service by resolving any outstanding issues.

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Fighting fake reviews

In the past years, fake reviews have become an everyday challenge for companies. About 75% of consumers expresses concern about fake reviews, which is reflecting a growing awareness of the presence of such fake reviews. For tech services, and especially for online casinos and software solutions where trust is key, maintaining review integrity is critical to continuously foster trust. As a result, it is a necessity for businesses to actively monitor reviews for authenticity, and to flag and remove content that is not authentic.

Take the example of Google, which took drastic measures against fake reviews. The site deleted around 55 million reviews in 2020 that were deemed to be fake. It can be worth it for companies in tech spaces to implement a similar strategy based on review moderation tactics to detect suspicious patterns and take action. On the flipside, this is where comparing sites like Casinostugan is a great tool for consumers to leverage. At Casinostugan, reviews of online casinos are constantly monitored and updated by experts, which provides players with a great level of trust towards the reviews. Relying on expert reviews is a great way to ensure high quality of the review.

Showcasing reviews on websites and utilize reviews for SEO

Choosing to display reviews on websites is an effective way to influence purchasing behavior of consumers. Numbers show that product pages with visible user reviews see a higher conversation rate, since they provide useful information to potential customers, fostering a good environment for making informed decisions.

Online reviews are also a powerful SEO tool. Freshly user-generated content such as reviews will go in and improve a website’s search engine ranking, which makes it easier for potential customers to discover the page. Google and other platforms prioritize companies with regular review activity in search results, as this provides trust and transparency for online users, and this will consequently boost visibility. Encouraging this type of continuous feedback means that businesses can ensure continuous relevance and stay competitive in the ever-changing tech landscape.

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Incentivizing reviews

Many companies have started to boost review generation by having incentives available for consumers. Incentives offered by companies include discounts, coupons, and exclusive features provided in exchange for feedback. The only flipside to this strategy is the slippery slope towards biased and inauthentic reviews.

It is important to maintain transparency and ensure that reviews based on incentives do not become biased and inauthentic, as this can undermine the reputation of a company. It is therefore important to manage this approach carefully.

Concluding remarks

As the world is becoming more and more digital, trust has become everything. This is why online reviews have become an essential tool for consumers and tech-based businesses alike, to maintain a high level of trust and interaction for the best user experience. Whether it being software companies, cloud service providers, or online casinos, reviews provide valuable insights about user experiences which ultimately can influence buying decisions.

Encouraging feedback and responding to reviews have become a crucial part of a strategic approach for companies who want their customers to be satisfied and feel heard in the vast landscape of online interactions. In industries built on trust, which is especially the case for online casinos, online reviews about online casino sites are crucial for players.

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NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is on its way to Jupiter

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October 15, 2024

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NASA's Europa Clipper mission is on its way to Jupiter

NASA has launched its Europa Clipper spacecraft, the biggest one it has ever built for a mission heading to another planet, on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have confirmed that the Europa Clipper successfully separated from the rocket’s second stage and has already deployed the two solar arrays flanking its main body. Now, the spacecraft has started its 1.8 billion-million journey Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons and one of the most promising habitable worlds outside our own planet, which will take it five-and-a-half years to reach.

The Europa Clipper will not be heading straight to Jupiter — it will instead fly by Mars and, in 2026, by Earth to use the planets’ gravity to boost its momentum. NASA’s plan is to use that momentum to slingshot the spacecraft towards the outer solar system. Europa has a thick icy shell that’s estimated to be around 10 to 15 miles thick, covering a saltwater ocean that could have twice the water in our planet’s oceans combined. Since scientists believe that life on our planet originated from the ocean, Europa’s could also host organic compounds and contain energy sources.

“Scientists believe Europa has suitable conditions below its icy surface to support life. Its conditions are water, energy, chemistry and stability,” said Sandra Connelly, the Deputy Associate Administrator in the NASA Science Mission Directorate.

Upon reaching Europa in 2031, the Clipper will fly by the moon 49 times, coming as close as 16 miles to its surface. NASA equipped the spacecraft with nine instruments, including an ice-penetrating radar, cameras and a thermal instrument, housed inside a vault made of titanium and aluminum to protect them from the intense radiation produced by Jupiter. The Clipper will operate its instruments simultaneously every time it passes by the moon to investigate how thick Europa’s outer shell truly is and how deep the ocean underneath all that ice is. It will also look for areas with warmer ice and find any plumes of water vapor that could be escaping from Europa’s icy shell.

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NetEase announces Destiny: Rising, a mobile RPG spin-off of Bungie’s series

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October 15, 2024

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NetEase announces Destiny: Rising, a mobile RPG spin-off of Bungie's series

NetEase Games announced today that it is developing a free-to-play mobile RPG called Destiny: Rising, set in the same universe as Bungie’s first-person shooter franchise. Bungie itself has licensed the Destiny brand to NetEase, which will develop and publish the title. According to the latter, Destiny: Rising features familiar Destiny characters in unfamiliar settings, as well as both returning and new game modes. At present, the game has no release date.

Destiny: Rising is set in an alternate universe to the primary Destiny canon, in a time after the collapse of civilization and the Dark Age. The game features single-player and co-op play, as well as competitive multiplayer. Players can switch between first-person and third-person modes, and Rising is compatible with both controllers and touch-based controls. It features multiple playable characters, explorable biomes and weapons from which to choose.

Ethan Wang, SVP of NetEase Inc, said in a statement, “With Destiny: Rising, NetEase Games is honored to partner with Bungie to deliver a Destiny-caliber experience to mobile devices. Destiny is an incredible franchise with a passionate and dedicated global fanbase. As huge fans ourselves, we are humbled and thrilled for the opportunity to bring gamers an action-packed RPG shooter set within the Destiny Universe.”

Bungie’s collaboration with NetEase goes back several years, as the two first announced they were working together on a new game in 2018. NetEase also invested over $100 million in Bungie and obtained a minority stake in the developer the next year. At the time, all it revealed about the game was that it wouldn’t affect the development of the mainline Destiny titles.

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Concourse is building AI to automate financial tasks

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October 15, 2024

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AI, startups, hype

In a typical organization, finance is one of the most important functions. Yet teams are often bogged down by manual workflows. According to a survey by Paylocity, an HR software provider, 38% of finance teams spend more than a fourth of their time on manual jobs, like reviewing invoices.

Matthieu Hafemeister, an ex-fintech investor at Andreessen Horowitz, says he’s seen many finance orgs struggle to scale up as a result of all the work they’re doing by hand.

“​The status quo for finance is countless point solutions that are cobbled together within the finance department,” Hafemeister told TechCrunch. “Excel continues to be the lowest common denominator, limiting the promise of automation.”

To Hafemeister’s point, most finance departments are indeed heavily reliant on spreadsheets. One survey found that 82% still use Excel files for budgeting, forecasting, and other core financial planning activities.

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After experiencing these frustrations firsthand while leading growth at fintech firm Jeeves, Hafemeister decided to team up with Ted Michaels, Jeeves’ previous head of finance and an old friend, to launch a platform to automate financial tasks.

Called Concourse, the platform connects to a businesses’ financial systems to let finance teams retrieve and analyze data, generate charts, and ask ad-hoc questions such as “What’s our non-GAAP revenue?”

“Concourse can proactively surface insights that allow finance teams to be better prepared by enabling them to stay ahead of trends,” Hafemeister said. “Instead of a tool that tries to improve the speed or efficiency of completing a task, Concourse can be given discrete tasks to do entirely on its own.”

Concourse
Concourse’s back-end dashboard, which shows the status of its various AI integrations and settings to fine-tune them.Image Credits:Concourse

Now, finance automation isn’t exactly new technology. Linq recently emerged from stealth with AI to automate aspects of research for financial analysts. Ledge and Doopla are also building a range of finance-specific generative modeling tools.

But what makes Concourse different, according to Hafemeister, is its ability to execute financial workflows with “complex, multi-step operations.” For example, the platform can retrieve data from a company’s NetSuite dashboard to download CSV files, then copy that data to an Excel spreadsheet.

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“We leverage large language models to do what they are best suited for and pair them with more traditional methods of data analysis,” Hafemeister explained.

There’s great interest in AI for finance. One poll found that 58% of finance teams are now using some form of AI technology, up 21% from 2023. Grand View Research estimates that the “AI in fintech” segment, worth $9.45 billion three years ago, is growing 16.5% annually.

But to stand a chance of making a dent in the market for finance automation tech, Concourse will have to demonstrate its product’s ROI — a challenging feat. Per Gartner, showing or estimating the value of AI is a top barrier to adopting it for close to half of companies.

Concourse will also have to assuage potential customers’ fears of AI-introduced errors and hallucinations. In a poll of U.K.-based executives by HR specialist Peninsula, 40% said inaccuracies from AI tools were a key concern, followed by concerns around data confidentiality.

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Hafemeister said that Concourse employs “a variety of tools and techniques” for fact-checking and validation to try to ensure its AI performs tasks as intended. He added that Concourse doesn’t use companies’ data to train its AI models — at least not without explicit permission — and that the platform only collects data customers share with it.

“Data accuracy is paramount in finance, where answers are typically either entirely correct or entirely incorrect,” Hafemeister said. “As such, at Concourse we’ve spent a lot of time and effort on delivering AI that can accurately perform the task it’s been assigned. We also take data privacy and security very seriously, and have built Concourse using industry best practices.”

Folks seem willing to be take Hafemeister at his word.

Concourse, which is still in beta ahead of a broader launch planned for next year, has several customers, including Instabase and Shef, and $4.7 million in capital. Hafemeister’s ex-employer, a16z, has invested in the startup, along with Y Combinator, CRV, and Box Group.

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Hafemeister says the focus at the moment is product development and growing New York-based Concourse’s six-person staff.

“We raised money to hire more engineers, build out more workflows that our AI can take on, increase coverage on data integrations, and start to scale our go-to-market function,” he said. “The strong focus on engineering recruiting is to hire backend, machine learning, and AI engineers.”

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Kamala Harris got $1 million from Ripple’s Chris Larsen, crypto warms

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October 15, 2024

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Kamala Harris got $1 million from Ripple's Chris Larsen, crypto warms


Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple.

Source: YouTube

SAN FRANCISCO — For months, crypto companies and their executives have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into Donald Trump’s effort to win the White House. Chris Larsen isn’t one of them.

The co-founder and chairman of Ripple recently contributed $1 million worth of XRP tokens, the currency created by Ripple in 2012, to Future Forward, a super PAC that’s supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

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Larsen, who’s backed candidates across the aisle for the last few years, told CNBC in an interview on Monday that his comfort level with Harris comes from conversations he’s had with people inside the campaign and what he’s seen from the vice president since she replaced President Biden at the top of the ticket in July.

It helps that Harris is from the Bay Area.

“She knows people who have grown up in the innovation economy her whole life,” Larsen said. “So I think she gets it at a fundamental level, in a way that I think the Biden folks were just not paying attention to, or maybe just didn’t make the connection between empowering workers and making sure you have American champions dominating their industries.”

Larsen’s affection for the Democratic nominee isn’t brand new. In February, he gave the maximum personal contribution of $6,600 to Harris (which would cover the primary and general election), about five months before she became the Democratic presidential nominee, FEC filings show. At the same time, he contributed $100,000 to the Harris Action Fund PAC.

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In total, Larsen has given around $1.9 million to support Harris’ campaign directly and through PACs, according to FEC data compiled by crypto market and blockchain analyst James Delmore and independently verified by CNBC.

Larsen, 64, has a net worth of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership of XRP and involvement in Ripple, which provides blockchain technology for financial services companies.

He’s part of an industry that’s become suddenly prominent in political fundraising, though more heavily in support of Republicans. Nearly half of all the corporate money flowing into the election has come from the crypto industry, according to a recent report from the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen.

Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she arrives at Erie International Airport ahead of a campaign rally, in Erie, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 14, 2024. 

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Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

The sum was raised from a mix of contributors, with Coinbase, Ripple, and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz accounting for most of those business donations. The industry has raised roughly 13 times the amount it brought in during the last presidential election year.

Close to two-thirds of crypto contributions have gone either to supporting Republicans or opposing Democrats, according to Delmore’s compilation of FEC data. Trump has received more than $4 million in virtual tokens, an FEC filing shows, and in July, the ex-president keynoted a major bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

‘More pragmatic approach’

Larsen’s recent contributions include $1 million to Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in December, and almost $7,000 in February to John Deaton, the Massachusetts Republican who’s taking on Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a vocal crypto critic. He also donated $250,000 in 2022 to the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund and contributed to a pro-Biden PAC in 2020.

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Larsen told CNBC that he’s “really confident” that Harris will bring a “more pragmatic approach and clear rules” to the crypto industry, in contrast to the current situation with Gary Gensler running the SEC. Gensler’s open hostility towards much of the crypto industry and his aggressive crackdowns on companies, including Ripple, is a big reason why many in the space say they’re supporting Trump.

In January, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who has also donated to members of both parties, called Gensler a “political liability.”

“What we’ve had to date has been almost like purposeful chaos by Gensler to kind of crush the domestic industry,” Larsen said. That “has only empowered sketchier foreign operations. It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said, adding that “Gensler must be the most unpopular person in Washington, D.C.”

CNBC reached out to Gensler’s office for comment and didn’t hear back.

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Ripple’s legal chief said in June that the company has spent over $100 million on litigation to defend itself against civil charges brought by the SEC. In 2020, before Biden took office, the SEC accused Ripple, Garlinghouse and Larsen of violating securities laws by acting as unregistered brokers of digital currency tokens, which the SEC regulates as securities. The SEC later dismissed the charges against the two Ripple executives, and the company has denied it broke securities laws. They remain in active litigation.

Earlier this month, the agency filed a notice of appeal in its multi-year case with the Ripple.

Ripple has given about $50 million to the pro-crypto super PAC Fairshake, which has been contributing to candidates up and down the ballot, and on both sides of the aisle.

Crypto companies outspend Big Oil and banks in 2024 elections

Harris has been gaining momentum within the crypto community.

Two days after Biden dropped out of the race, Marvin Ammori, legal chief at decentralized exchanged Uniswap, gave money to the Harris Action Fund. Uniswap is also battling claims it violated U.S. securities laws.

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Skybridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci, who spent 11 days as White House communications director under Trump, has given more than $36,000 to two PACs supporting the Democratic nominee. Scaramucci says he’s among a group of crypto advocates working with Harris to develop her campaign’s policies on digital assets and to help the vice president distance the Democrats from Sen. Warren.

And then there’s venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, who maintains a sizable portfolio of crypto companies. The Andreessen Horowitz co-founder and his partner Marc Andreessen said in July they were planning to make significant donations to PACs supporting Trump’s run for president due to what they characterized as his friendliness to the “little tech agenda.”

That was when Biden was the nominee. By early October, Horowitz appeared to have had a change of heart. He told employees at his firm that he would be making a “significant” personal contribution to Harris’ election bid. Horowitz said that he and his wife, Felicia, “have known Vice President Harris for over 10 years and she has been a great friend to both of us during that time.”

A couple weeks earlier, in late September, Harris finally gave a nod to cryptocurrency in a public address.

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“We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors,” she said at a $27 million fundraiser in New York.

On Monday, the Harris campaign unveiled its “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” in a report. The plan explicitly mentions creating a framework for cryptocurrency in the U.S. designed to safeguard those assets. The campaign said more than 20% of Black Americans own or have owned digital currencies.

Despite Larsen’s track record of donating to Democrats, he took heat on social media after his latest contribution was reported on CNBC on Friday.

“The Ripple community and even the crypto community in general has a lot of skepticism toward Kamala’s candidacy and what policies she would put into place,” Delmore said, reflecting much of the online sentiment

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Larsen blew off the criticism, and said he doesn’t pay attention to social media.

WATCH: Trump launches new crypto venture

Trump family unveils new details of their DeFi crypto platform 'World Liberty Financial'



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Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now

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October 15, 2024

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Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now

For the greater part of this past summer, I wore six smart rings at once. I wanted to see which was best, and the Oura Ring Gen 3 was the clear winner. Well, it’s been about two weeks since my experiment ended, and there’s now a new winner: the Oura Ring 4.

Oura has been the top dog in smart rings for the past decade. Sure, there’s been a smart ring renaissance this year, but its rivals are mostly either just getting into the game or launching a second version. This is the fourth Oura Ring. Oura has spent years collaborating with researchers and conducting its own studies. It’s the most readily available at third-party retail stores in the US; it’s the one wellness influencers keep flaunting in TikToks; and it’s seen on the fingers of A-list celebrities. In response to increased competition, Oura has launched half a dozen new features in the past 12 months. And now, Oura is closing out 2024 with several hardware and software refinements.

How we rate and review products

The Oura Ring 4 extends the company’s lead over the competition. The question is how long Oura can maintain it when its rivals cost less, eschew subscriptions, and have started innovating in new directions.

Slightly better in every way

Wearing the Oura Ring 4 is better than the Gen 3. Just not by much.

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The Oura Gen 2 and Gen 3 rings had resin interiors with domed sensor bumps. The fourth-gen ring is made entirely of titanium, and the inside is flatter, with recessed sensors. It might not seem like it, but this is impressive engineering for a device so small. Compared to titanium, the resin in older rings diffused light from the sensors in a less precise way. Since rings naturally rotate during the day, it’s also easy for those sensors to move out of proper alignment. That’s partly why the previous Oura Rings had raised sensor bumps — they ensured good skin contact to mitigate those factors. 

The Oura Ring 4 (bottom left) doesn’t have sensor bumps compared to the Gen 3 (top) and Gen 2 (right).

This time around, Oura’s introduced a new Smart Sensing algorithm that increases the number of sensor signal pathways from eight to 18. The sensors are placed asymmetrically to allow for a variety of distances and measurements. Basically, it now matters less if your ring rotates and better accounts for the fact that everyone’s fingers are different. This also means you don’t need those sensor bumps anymore. 

My brain appreciates all the engineering sweat and tears that went into making this possible. Technologically speaking, Oura is flexing on its rivals. But practically speaking, it means close to diddly squat for the average wearer. Ninety-nine percent of the time, wearing the Oura Ring 4 felt the same as the Oura Ring Gen 3 and the Gen 2 before that. The only time I noticed a difference was when I felt bloated. I have knobby knuckles, and the sensor bumps on older Oura Rings could be painful when trying to take the ring off. It was a relief to not have that problem this time around. 

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Design-wise, this all-titanium ring is nice but not dramatically different from other premium options like the Samsung Galaxy Ring or the Ultrahuman Ring Air. You’ll notice more of a difference if you’re coming from older Oura models with flat or angled tops. All of the fourth-gen rings are fully round. This isn’t new — Oura introduced fully round versions of the Gen 3 in 2022 — but I’ve found it to be more comfortable. If you are mulling an upgrade, I highly recommend trying the new sizing kit first. I was a size 8 in the old rings, and now I’m a size 9. Plus, Oura’s size range has four new options, spanning sizes 4 to 15. If you were previously a size 6 or 13, you may find one of the newer sizes fits you better.

The charging dock is nicer, but I would’ve preferred a case.

Another improvement: battery life. You can now get up to seven or eight days on a single charge. I’ve been able to get about 6.5 days, even with the power-guzzling blood oxygen sensing feature enabled. With a Gen 3, I got three to four days. Again, your mileage will vary depending on ring size. (Larger size, larger battery.) This is a significant bump, though I did get longer with the first-gen RingConn and from the Samsung Galaxy Ring when it was paired with a smartwatch. 

Speaking of battery, Oura’s updated the charging dock. It’s larger, metal, and looks sleeker than previous docks. Unfortunately, my hangry cat had no problems knocking it off my nightstand. I wish Oura had opted for a more convenient charging case like many of its rivals, but alas. Maybe next time.

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Software and science

Oura’s hardware isn’t that much better than the competition. I maintain the Galaxy Ring’s concave shape is more comfortable, and its charging case more convenient. The Evie Ring’s open-gap design is also fetching and clever for those of us prone to bloating. But where Oura trounces everyone else is software and its commitment to science, both in conducting and communicating it.

Let’s start with software. The app has had a much-needed redesign. Oura released several new features and metrics in the past year, turning the dashboard into a cluttered mess. Now everything’s been streamlined into three tabs: Today, Vitals, and My Health. 

New Oura features

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Oura’s introduced a bunch of new health features since I last reviewed the Gen 3. They aren’t specific to the new Oura Ring 4, but here’s what you need to know after several months of testing:

  • Daytime stress tracking: Relatively accurate for physiological stress, but doesn’t always accurately reflect my mental state. The redesigned app also lets you take a deeper dive into the factors that play into your stress.
  • Resilience: Estimates how well you balance stress with recovery. It takes a long time to calibrate — roughly 14 days. Probably won’t tell you anything you don’t already know.
  • Cardiovascular age: Long-term metric measuring your vascular age versus your chronological one. Another way of gauging your fitness progress.
  • Cardiovascular capacity: Oura’s way of approximating VO2 Max via a six-minute walk test. I’ve had several tests randomly fail, and it underestimates my VO2 Max compared to other devices.
  • Oura Labs is a beta program for things like Symptom Radar — which flags potential illness — and Oura Advisor, an AI chatbot. I’ve never triggered the former, and I’m still testing the latter. So far it’s mildly helpful. Labs are also now available on Android!

The Today tab contains shortcuts to specific metrics, a timeline of all your daily activity, and cards that highlight different things (e.g., sleep score, readiness, etc) depending on the time of day. Vitals is where you’ll find all your metrics, albeit in a more digestible format. My Health is where you’ll find longer-term health trends and reports. All redesigns take a hot second to adjust to, but overall, I’ve found this to be a helpful reorganization.

Another needed improvement: automatic activity detection has been expanded to 40 activities. (Oura lists roughly 30 of them here.) This makes the ring a much better standalone activity tracker, especially since enabling location permissions will also generate automatic GPS route maps. It’s flexible for smartwatch users, too. I typically don’t track walks on my smartwatch, but Oura picked them up easily. Start and end times, as well as the route maps, were also accurate. Conversely, I much prefer to record my runs and strength sessions with a smartwatch. For those instances, Oura prioritizes manually tracked or imported activities so I didn’t have to worry about duplicate activity records. 

For tracking, Oura cites an external study saying the new Smart Sensing algorithm supports a significant bump in accuracy for signal quality, blood oxygen, and breathing disturbance detection. It also claims users should see fewer occurrences of heart rate data gaps both during the day and at night. 

I picked the brushed silver finish.
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It’s impossible for a single reviewer to definitively test these claims. The general consensus is that consumer-grade wearable sleep tracking is broadly accurate at the basics but should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. All I can tell you is what I experienced in my own testing. The Oura Ring 4’s sleep and wake times align with my own manual testing logs. I still saw occasional gaps in nighttime heart rate, though it’s hard to say after only two weeks whether there were fewer or greater than before. My heart rate metrics, however, were all on par with my smartwatches — which is a good thing. Step counts and calorie estimates can be inflated compared to smartwatches, but that’s been true of every smart ring I’ve tested. What I can say for Oura, however, is its measurements are consistent and its margin of error is on the smaller side. After years of testing wearables, I trust the Oura Ring’s measurements for sleep and recovery tracking — in fact, I use it as a control for evaluating the sleep tracking features of other devices. 

A big reason for that is this is a heavily studied device. For example, a recently published peer-reviewed study compared the accuracy of its sleep algorithm to the Apple Watch Series 8 and Fitbit Sense 2. Oura’s algorithm was found to be 5 percent more accurate than the Apple Watch and 10 percent more than Fitbit at detecting sleep stages. You should take all studies, including this one, with a healthy dose of skepticism. Not all studies or meta reviews are created equal, and one of the researchers here is a member of Oura’s medical advisory board. That said, Oura has also consistently made an effort to partner with outside researchers to validate its results for years. It also has a record of publishing these weeds-y findings, even if the results are not the most exciting. You see this from big companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google, but it’s much rarer from smaller companies in niche wearable spaces. 

It’s the best smart ring you can get right now, but the competition is heating up.

All these things together give Oura the edge among smart rings. The app is polished, I never have to think twice about syncing, the company puts immense effort into continually improving accuracy, and it’s had frequent feature updates in the past year. I’ve no doubt Oura’s competitors will start catching up here. Samsung and Ultrahuman aren’t too far off. But for now, Oura is the one to beat.

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The elephant in the room

The weird thing about the Oura Ring 4 is it’s the best smart ring you can get right now. I also think most people don’t need to upgrade.

The hardware experience isn’t drastically different. Oura also won’t gatekeep any of these new software updates or the app redesign to the newest ring. That’s great! But it means there’s little incentive for folks with a Gen 3 to upgrade unless their battery is toast, especially since the starting price has increased to $350, and there doesn’t seem to be a trade-in program. (Current Oura members can get a 10 percent discount, but that’s it.) Really, the Oura Ring 4 is best for new users or people who previously couldn’t find a size that fit them.

There’s not a whole lot of incentive to upgrade, especially from a Gen 3.
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For those folks, it’s a matter of whether you can stomach the Oura Ring’s single biggest con: the $6 monthly / $70 annual subscription. I don’t see a point in trying to justify its subscription. You’ll either think everything Oura’s brought to the table is worth it, or you won’t. If you’re the latter, fair enough. My take is that the Oura Ring is worth it if sleep tracking and recovery are your top priorities. Otherwise, a smartwatch is a better investment.

This is and will continue to be Oura’s greatest obstacle. It’s got a substantial lead in this space, but its rivals have made a point of eschewing subscriptions. Samsung, in particular, has large coffers and interesting ideas about how smart rings should interact with other gadgets like phones and smartwatches. For instance, the Galaxy Ring has gesture controls for the Galaxy phone’s camera and gets longer battery life when used with a Galaxy Watch. If Apple comes out with a smart ring, it’ll be a dark day at Oura headquarters. Meanwhile, smaller rivals like RingConn can undercut Oura’s price, even if the tracking is more basic.

Oura is betting that the best is worth paying for. It’s a gambit that will probably hold so long as everyone else is playing catch-up. But ask anyone who races: it’s hard to maintain a lead forever.

Agree to Continue: Oura Ring 4

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Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.

To use an Oura Ring, you must pair it with an iOS / Android smartphone. That includes the phone’s terms of service, privacy policy, and any other permissions you grant. You may also be asked to share permissions for location data, Bluetooth, etc.

By using the Oura Ring 4, you’re agreeing to these mandatory agreements:

There are several optional agreements for health sharing:

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  • If you integrate with Apple Health / Google Fit or third-party apps like Strava, you agree to their terms.
  • You can select which metrics are shared to or read from Apple Health / Google Fit.
  • You can agree to import workouts from other apps. If you do, you agree to that app’s terms as well as Apple Health / Google Fit.
  • If you choose to use the Oura Ring for digital birth control with Natural Cycles, you will also have to agree to their terms, conditions, and privacy policies.

Final tally: whatever your phone requires, three mandatory Oura policies, and at least four optional agreements for health sharing.

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Science & Environment

WTI, Brent fall more than 4%

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October 15, 2024

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WTI, Brent fall more than 4%


Geopolitical fear premium for crude oil is overdone, market will focus on demand weakness soon

Crude oil futures fell more than 4% on Tuesday, as a looming global oil surplus next year overshadowed the risk of a supply disruption from the conflict between Israel and Iran.

Oil prices spiked earlier this month after Iran hit Israel with a ballistic missile attack, raising fears that Israel would respond by targeting the Islamic Republic’s oil facilities.

The International Energy Agency said Tuesday that its members are prepared to take action if there is a supply disruption in the Middle East.

“For now, supply keeps flowing, and in the absence of a major disruption, the market is faced with a sizeable surplus in the new year,” the IEA said in its monthly report.

Here are today’s energy prices around 5:30 am ET:

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  • West Texas Intermediate November contract: $70.28 per barrel, down $3.55, or 4.9%. Year to date, U.S. crude oil has fallen 2%.
  • Brent December contract: $73.81 per barrel, down $3.65, or 4.8%. Year to date, the global benchmark has declined about 4%.
  • RBOB Gasoline November contract:  $2.0197 per gallon, down 4.2%. Year to date, gasoline has pulled back nearly 4%.
  • Natural Gas November contract: $2.465 per thousand cubic feet, down 1.16%. Year to date, gas has fallen nearly 2%.

World oil demand is expected to grow by just under 900,000 barrels per day in 2024 and 1 million bpd in 2025, a significant slowdown compared to growth of 2 million bpd in post-pandemic period, according to the IEA.

Chinese oil demand is particularly weak, with consumption dropping by 500,000 bpd in August, the fourth monthly decline in a row, according to the agency. Meanwhile, crude production in the Americas, led by the U.S., is poised to grow by 1.5 million bpd this year and next, the IEA said.

OPEC has cut its oil 2024 forecast for the third consecutive month in a row.

Don’t miss these energy insights from CNBC PRO:



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