Oura Ring 4 Review: My Favorite Wellness Tracker Comes With a Pricey Caveat

2 weeks ago 7

I woke up with a scratchy throat and a headache on a recent Saturday morning, but didn't really think anything of it. However, I felt progressively worse as the day went on, and by the evening I was feeling achy and warm. Sure enough, the next morning, the $349 Oura Ring 4 I had been wearing told me my temperature was elevated and advised me to focus on getting rest.

It's times like these that highlight what makes the Oura Ring stand out among other wearables. Unlike other wearable health apps, Oura doesn't just generate a stream of trends and metrics to scroll through; it tries to make meaningful observations about what's happening in your body, but without verging into medical advice territory.

It's not a new approach for Oura. Tech giants like Apple, Samsung and Google are replicating Oura's approach, either by developing new metrics that let you know when certain bodily markers are out of whack, or by creating their own scores for measuring readiness and sleep. But with its fourth-generation ring, Oura is refining the way it executes this approach with a sleeker design, more signal pathways for more accurate data and an additional day of battery life.

Pros

Sleeker design
Useful and actionable health metrics
Much longer battery life than most smartwatches
Can pick up on potential signs of sickness
Works with iPhone and Android

Cons

Most features require $6 monthly membership
Some finishes are more expensive than others
Auto workout detection doesn't always work with indoor cycling
Heart rate accuracy isn't great with indoor cycling
Largely the same features as Oura Ring Gen 3

Of course, there's a catch. To turn the Oura Ring into more than a basic tracker, you need to pay $6 per month for an Oura membership, a caveat that could make it less appealing as rivals like Samsung develop their own subscription-free alternatives. For all the health metrics and observations the Oura Ring can make -- and it's a lot -- I was also hoping to see new features or health tracking capabilities for the Oura Ring 4 at launch.

Still, Oura's personalized and actionable way of presenting biological readings makes its health metrics among the most useful of the wearables I've tested.

Oura Ring 4 design and comfort

The Oura Ring Gen 3 (left) and Oura Ring 4 (right)

If you're familiar with the Oura Ring, the first thing you'll notice about the new model is its sleek interior. Oura managed to flatten the raised domes found on the inside of the Oura Ring Gen 3 that house the ring's sensors, resulting in a much more seamless look. You can really notice the difference when sliding the ring on and off your finger; it just feels smoother. The Oura Ring 4 also comes in a wider choice of sizes compared to the previous model, with a lineup that now covers sizes 4 through 15.

The Oura Ring 4 is available in six finishes: silver, black, brushed silver, stealth, gold and rose gold. But some finishes cost more than others. While silver and black are available at the $349 starting price, brushed silver and stealth cost $399, and gold and rose gold are $499. I've been wearing the black version, which has a glossy new look.

The other major design change Oura made is using titanium for the entire ring, not just the outside. As a result, the new ring is slightly lighter than the Gen 3, with the Ring 4 weighing between 3.3 and 5.2 grams depending on the size, while the Gen 3 weighs between 4 and 6 grams. It's light enough to wear to sleep regularly without really noticing it.

The Oura Ring 4 is still certainly larger than the other pieces of jewelry sitting on my fingers. But Oura's design tweaks make it feel less like a piece of tech, which I appreciate. The black color (which I chose) is a little bold compared to the nonsmart rings I usually wear, but the shiny exterior makes it look more elegant.

Tracking my health with the Oura app

A woman's hand with rings on her fingers

Oura's app really makes the Oura Ring 4 what it is. Since the Oura Ring doesn't have a screen, checking everything from your activity progress to the battery level happens in the app.

Oura gave the app a big redesign for both Oura Ring 4 and legacy ring owners, which organizes health stats into three neat tabs: Today, Vitals and My Health. Compared to the previous version of the app, which was broken down into sections for readiness (i.e. how rested and prepared you are for the day), sleep and resilience (Oura's metric for how well you're balancing stress and recovery), the new edition is more straightforward.

The Today tab shows the most relevant pieces of information for you right now. It's based on the priorities you chose during the setup process and other factors like the time of day, so what's shown in the feed can vary based on the person. My goals are to be more productive and energetic, so during the workday I see my activity goal progress, my daytime stress levels and my heart rate data. There's also a timeline on the Today feed that shows your activity for the day, which I find useful as another means of seeing how active or sedentary I've been today (i.e. if there's only one activity on my timeline, I know I need to get up and move around for a bit).

The Vitals tab is where your scores for sleep, readiness and activity are located, and you can also dive into specific health metrics from this section of the app. And then My Health is for long-term trends like resilience and Cardiovascular Age, which estimates the health of your cardiovascular system in relation to your age.

Most wearables keep track of immediate and long term health trends. But what stands out to me about Oura is the way in which it presents the information. The tone feels more proactive, like Oura is making observations about me, rather than just displaying a dashboard of statistics and trends to swipe through. I notice this the most in the Today feed, where I'm greeted with a note explaining that my activity goal is higher than usual because I'm well-rested, and below that, it tells me my body is in a "restored" state, meaning I'm calm and recharging.

That type of insight is much more useful than seeing how many steps I took today, how long I slept last night, the number of days I've worked out this week or my cardio load target when I open the app, which is what the experience of using Apple Health, Samsung Health and Google's Fitbit apps are like. Samsung and Google, however, have been moving in a similar direction as Oura with their respective Daily Readiness and Energy Score features, which provide insight into how rested and ready for a workout you are right at the top of the feed.

Oura also lets subscribers test experimental features that aren't widely available yet, and these are some of the most interesting parts of the Oura app. Symptom Radar, which is the tool that helped me understand when I was sick, lets you know if certain health metrics are straying from their baseline, like temperature, respiratory rate and heart rate variability. Symptom Radar is being removed for now, but Oura has plans to develop it into a full feature at some point in the future. Apple recently launched a similar feature for the Apple Watch called Vitals, which also observed that my temperature and respiratory rate and temperature were higher than usual when I was sick.

Then there's Oura Advisor, which is a health-oriented chatbot that can provide advice about how to stay on track with goals or help interpret your health data. I've been chatting with Oura Advisor here and there, and like the rest of the Oura app, I've appreciated how proactive it can be. Every once in a while -- but, importantly, not too frequently -- I'll get a notification from Oura Advisor checking in on how I'm doing. Fitbit is testing a similar tool called Insights Explorer as part of its experimental Fitbit Labs program.

The Vitals tab is where you'll find the more traditional Oura features like your readiness and sleep scores, activity progress, heart rate and stress. As I've written in the past, I find Oura's score-centric approach to be useful for seeing how rested I am at a glance without having to dive into a bunch of metrics.

The Oura Ring 4 has a new "smart sensing" system that should enable it to capture data more accurately with fewer gaps, or periods throughout the day where the reliable heart rate data isn't available. Specifically, Oura conducted an external research study in August which found that the new system resulted in a 7% decrease in daytime heart rate gaps. That's enabled by a new algorithm that adapts to specific fingers along with the addition of more signal pathways for gathering more data.

I compared several days' worth of daytime heart-rate data from the Oura Ring 4 against data from June when I was wearing the Oura Ring Gen 3 to see the difference. But in my experience so far, I haven't noticed much of an improvement when it comes to reducing the number of gaps in daytime heart-rate data.

Looking back at my readings from June, there were some days in which the Oura Ring Gen 3 had no gaps, or smaller gaps, than the October data from my Oura Ring 4. In other instances, though, the Oura Ring 4 had fewer gaps. Overall, the results are too mixed to notice any type of improvement in this area yet.

Screenshots of the Oura app on a colored background

Sleeping and exercising with the Oura Ring 4

The Oura Ring's sleek design, relatively long battery life compared to a smartwatch and useful data make it a top-notch sleep tracker, and that continues to be true with the Oura Ring 4. The lighter build makes it even easier to wear while sleeping without feeling burdened.

Like other wearables from Samsung and Google, Oura provides a score that assesses the quality of your sleep based on factors like sleep duration and time spent in specific sleep stages, a key offering that in my opinion puts it above the Apple Watch as a sleep monitor. You can also see how individual factors like restfulness and sleep latency contributed to your score, and view a ton of other metrics such as your average heart-rate variability, lowest heart rate and oxygen saturation.

The Oura Ring 4 next to an iPhone on a park bench

I slept wearing the Oura Ring 4, Apple Watch Series 10 and Samsung Galaxy Ring for a few nights to see how they compare, and they each generally captured the same overall sleep duration. But the stages of sleep varied between them, with the Oura Ring 4 and Apple Watch Series 10 logging roughly the same amount of deep sleep, while the Galaxy Ring captured more deep sleep data.

My Oura sleep score was also usually lower than Samsung's, although it's difficult to make a direct comparison since the sleep score contributors likely vary. Samsung rated my sleep as "excellent" on certain nights that my Oura Ring 4 labeled as being "good" or "optimal." It's hard to know which is more accurate, but since Samsung believes I got more deep sleep than the Oura Ring did, it's not too surprising that it gave me a higher score.

The Oura Ring 4 performs adequately as a workout companion, but it really shines as a wellness device more than a fitness tracker. Unlike a smartwatch, the Oura Ring 4 and other competing smart rings lack a screen, so it can be difficult to keep track of metrics like heart rate in real time.

I also found that automatic activity detection didn't always work for indoor cycling, which is a shame because that's one of my go-to daily cardio workouts. But since automatic activity detection works by observing hand motion, activities with low hand motion like indoor cycling and yoga are more challenging for the ring to detect, according to Oura.

But when it does work, Oura's automatic activity detection can now provide heart rate and heart-rate zone data on both the Oura Ring 4 and Oura Ring Gen 3, meaning you don't have to start a workout manually to get that data. That's good news for anyone who runs with the Oura Ring, since you'll be able to get a better sense of how intense your workout was without having to fiddle with the app beforehand. In general, I found that automatic activity detection worked well for walking and running, although the ring was better at picking up my brisk walks to the subway during my morning commute rather than my casual coffee strolls.

Similarly, I found that heart rate accuracy compared to a Polar chest strap heart rate monitor was much better when running than with cycling. Oura more closely matched my chest strap during a treadmill workout, with both estimating the same calorie burn. There was a discrepancy of about 10 beats per minute (bpm) between the average heart rate measured by Oura versus Polar, although it's normal for wearables worn on the finger or wrist to stray from a chest strap in terms of accuracy.

Screenshots from the Oura and Polar apps on a colored background

But the difference between the Oura Ring 4's readings during my indoor cycling session compared to the data my chest strap gathered was much more significant, with Oura making it seem like my workout was far less intense. Polar estimated that I burned nearly 70 more calories and clocked my average heart rate at 149 bpm versus Oura's 131 average bpm. Polar also said I spent about equal amounts of time in heart rate zone 3 and zone 4 (roughly 13 minutes in each), whereas Oura logged barely any time in zone 4 (three minutes).

Overall, I'd recommend the Oura Ring 4 if running and walking are your primary forms for cardio exercise and you care about measuring activity for wellness purposes rather than training for a competitive sport.

Oura Ring 4 battery life and connectivity features

A close up shot of a woman's hand with rings on it

The Oura Ring 4 should be able to last up to eight days on a single charge, according to Oura's claims. That's an additional day compared to the Oura Ring Gen 3 and larger sizes of the Samsung Galaxy Ring. But like the Galaxy Ring, the Oura Ring 4's battery life can vary based on a number of factors, including the ring size, settings and activity among other things. I've been wearing a size 6 and have been getting about six days of battery life out of the ring.

That's way longer than I'd typically get out of smartwatches like the Apple Watch Series 10 and Pixel Watch 3, which I can wear for up to two days depending on how I'm using them. But I do wish the eight-day battery life claim applied more universally across various sizes.

The Oura Ring 4 comes with a sleek gray charger that looks almost like an accessory Apple would make, and it feels more at home on my nightstand compared to the previous generation's black puck-shaped charger. Still, it doesn't compare to the Galaxy Ring's neat little charging case, which has a transparent, glowing design that can power up your ring on the go.

Like many smart rings, the Oura Ring 4 is meant to be a discrete, distraction-free wellness tracker. That means no constant buzzing from incoming notifications, which can be ideal for those who really just want to track their health without getting sucked into another screen. You can, however, locate your ring on a map in the Oura app should you happen to misplace it.

I like that the Oura Ring isn't yet another notification machine in my life, but there is one phone-like feature I wish it had: an alarm. A vibrating alarm system that could wake you up at the optimal time would be such a useful addition given Oura's emphasis on sleep and the Oura Ring 4's long battery life. I'm sure getting that benefit would mean making some tradeoffs when it comes to design and battery life, but depending on the execution, it could be worth it.

Oura Ring 4: Final thoughts

A woman's hand with rings on it in front of a wall

Overall, the Oura Ring 4's personal and actionable health metrics are what make it stand out amongst other fitness trackers. I love opening the app and getting a read on how my day is going, both physically and mentally, versus just scrolling through a stream of statistics. Oura has been ahead of the curve when it comes to how health data is presented and incorporated into new and useful software features, and the Oura Ring 4 sets it up well to continue doing that.

But there are a few things to keep in mind before buying. First, while Oura has made changes to the sensing system and design, there really isn't anything new here that you can't get on the Oura Ring Gen 3. So if you have a Gen 3, don't feel incentivized to upgrade just yet. Second, you'll have to pay for a $6 monthly Oura membership to really get the ring's benefits, which can be pricey when combined with the $349 cost of the ring itself.

While there are things I like more about the Galaxy Ring compared to the Oura Ring 4, such as Samsung's nifty charging case, subscription-free health metrics and gestures for controlling your phone, I do find Oura's app to be more informative and personal.

If you care more about training and fitness rather than overall wellness, the Oura Ring 4 might not be for you. Automatic activity detection doesn't work as well for exercises that don't involve a lot of brisk arm movement, so if you love spinning and yoga you may find yourself logging a lot of activities manually. Smartwatches also provide more features geared at runners that those training for races will find useful, such as the ability to build custom routes.

But what the Oura Ring is excellent at is helping you balance and monitor activity, sleep and stress, with the goal of painting a picture of your overall wellness and how to improve it. And of all the wearables I've tested, it may be the very best at doing those things.

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