Two names. Two survivors of the great wearable purge that had unfolded across my torn quarter‑page: Fitbit and Oura. That’s how the previous post ended. A very short list built from a single video by The Quantified Scientist — a video that compared all the wearables for sleep at once. And not a box‑opening or a cheerful influencer review. No. A scientifically grounded analysis, where each device was judged against the gold standard of sleep measurement: Polysomnography. Which one overestimates what, which one underestimates everything, and which one pretends you slept like a baby when you actually spent half the night negotiating with your pillow.
But let’s be honest: it wasn’t really a list. Not in my head. Not in my heart. By the end of that video, I was already leaning toward the ring — the Oura Ring 3, that tiny scientific outlier glowing in the top‑right corner of the scatter plot like a promise, “best sleep tracker out there.” Best in 2024 1. And yet, Fitbit wasn’t there by accident. It had earned its place in the data — yes — but beyond the numbers, Fitbit carried two quiet advantages. First, it was familiar — the ghost of a gift from 2015, something even my brain frozen in technological amber could still recognize. And second, it aligned with the original intent of my wife’s idea: a step‑counting device, not a sleep lab on my finger. My sleep obsession was my own twist on the story, but I couldn’t bend her idea too far. No headbands. No mattress covers. No electrodes. A bracelet — that was the deal. Still, the ring had captured me. And this is where this post begins…
So I did what any reasonable person would do after falling in love with a dot on a scatter plot: I started digging. More videos, more reviews, more comparisons — all about the Oura Ring 3, because that was the one glowing in the top‑right corner of the graph 2. But “digging” is perhaps too strong a word. I didn’t wander off into Google or YouTube’s algorithmic jungle. I stayed exactly where I was. The Quantified Scientist (external link) had gained my trust. He was doing precisely what I needed: not telling me the ring was “cool” or inviting me to click an affiliate link, but evaluating its sleep‑tracking accuracy against EEG‑based devices. Real science. Real numbers. Real validation. And he had plenty of videos on his channel — enough to keep me busy without ever leaving the safe perimeter of evidence.
So I kept watching. Until I reached a video titled: “Why Buy It in 2022!” 2022? That wasn’t the same as 2024. And definitely not “recent” anymore. A four‑year gap in technology is an eternity — especially for someone whose brain had been asleep for a decade. So I finally did what I had avoided until then: I checked Google. But Google, in its infinite wisdom, did not show me the latest Oura. It showed me what was available in Czechia — which, as I would soon discover, was not the same thing as what was available in the rest of the world. I hate geolocation. The country’s online retailers were still proudly displaying the Oura Ring 3, as if time had politely stopped at their borders. And I, too naïve, too amber‑preserved, didn’t notice. It took me a while — longer than I care to admit — to realize that I shouldn’t be looking at the Oura Ring 3. I should be looking at the Oura Ring 4.
Still within The Quantified Scientist’s channel, I updated my search term: Oura Ring 4. And there it was: “Oura Ring 4 — Ultimate Scientific Review,” posted one year ago. Good. Reassuring. Up‑to‑date. Until the cracks began to show. The first one was subtle — almost ironic. The ring wasn’t great for sport. Not a deal‑breaker. I wasn’t planning to run a marathon with a screw trying to escape from my knee like a prisoner of war. Swimming was my only remaining activity, and even that was more theoretical than real. So “not great for sport” barely registered. I shrugged and kept going. But then came the second crack — the one that made me stop.
A cursed word. A forbidden word. A word that should never appear next to an object I intend to own. At first, I didn’t even believe it. I rewound. Listened again. Checked other sources — I didn’t want to accept it. Subscription. And not a cheap subscription either. Let me remind you of my budget: zero. If not negative. The price of the ring was already beyond what my wife could afford — even with the whole family contributing. I had already accepted that I would help pay for it, because this was an object I imagined keeping for the rest of my life. But a monthly fee? Forever? No. Absolutely not.
And just like that, the ring — my ring, the one I had already chosen in my mind — died.
In the first video — the one detailed in the previous post — the meta‑analysis of publications had crowned the Fitbit Charge 3 as the best Fitbit for sleep. But in the third plot — the YouTuber’s own EEG‑based tests, more recent — the winner was suddenly the Fitbit Charge 6. And floating nearby, the Fitbit Inspire 3. So… which Fitbit? My 2015 brain was not prepared for this Pokémon‑evolution level of product proliferation. Back then, Fitbit was Fitbit. Singular. Understandable. A species, not an ecosystem. I didn’t want to overthink it — the simplest move was to pick the one sitting at the top of his personal‑test plot: Inspire 3. But I also didn’t want to repeat the Oura fiasco — confusing generations, trusting whatever my geolocated Google results decided to show me, mistaking availability for recency.
And sure enough, the same geolocation trap that had fooled me with Oura was now playing its tricks again. Czechia was behind. Not dramatically — just enough to make everything confusing. Enough to make me question every model number, every release date, every “new” badge slapped onto a product page. Czech retailers were proudly displaying Fitbits that didn’t match the ones in the videos. Some were older. Some were renamed. Some were “new” but not the right kind of new. Too many names. Too many models. My list kept mutating: Fitbit Charge 6, Fitbit Inspire 3, Fitbit Versa 4… But I had no clue whether this was even a current picture. And that’s when I finally had the only good idea of the entire afternoon (of that Sunday, 26th of April): go directly to the Fitbit website — and strip away every possible trace of geolocation.
The fog lifted instantly. From chaos, order. But what I found there was not what my memory was looking for. I searched for the Fitbit my friends had given me in 2015. The original Fitbit Flex (released in 2013). A simple black bracelet with five tiny horizontal LEDs to show how close you were to your daily step goal. A bracelet that looked almost like jewelry. Not as elegant as the Jawbone UP, though 3. But unmistakably a band, not a watch. And yet, on the official website, nothing resembled that memory. Every single model had a screen. A tiny smartphone strapped to the wrist. A watch in disguise. And that was the moment my heart sank.
Fitbit died for the second time.
To be continued…
1 That 2024 video was not as outdated as my 2015 brain, but it was for me like a message from a future that had already moved on. I didn’t know it yet. I didn’t know anything yet. I was a technological time‑traveler, stepping out of amber and blinking at a world that no longer resembled the one I remembered. 2024, that is. What about 2026? ^
2 Not “Oura Ring,” not “Oura,” but specifically Oura Ring 3. Why? Because my brain, still preserved in its 2015 amber, didn’t even imagine there could be a newer one. The number “3” didn’t register as a version. It registered as a name. And besides, 2024 didn’t feel outdated to me. Not yet. ^
3 Designed by Yves Béhar, the Jawbone UP looked like a high‑end, textured fashion accessory rather than a piece of tech. Unlike the Flex, it was a single, rigid, semi‑flexible band with an open clasp — no lights, no screen, no display. That is exactly the image I had in mind when I thought “bracelet.” And yes, my memory had fused the Flex and the UP into one idealized object that no longer exists. ^