I tracked my daily stats, sleep and exercise and compared the fit and feel of the Oura Ring 4 to other smart rings on the market. It’s not for athletes like marathoners or long-distance cyclists — it cannot compete with the live stats and exercise accuracy of smartwatches from Apple and Garmin. It automatically detected and logged outdoor runs, but GPS data was sometimes inaccurate. I hadn’t used the Oura Ring app in about five months when I synced the Oura Ring 4 for the first time. Rest mode paused my daily fitness and health goals (including notifications). I don’t even wear my wedding ring, so at first I was constantly tucking the Oura safely away, grumbling hypocritically about white-collar workers who sit and type all day. I’ve worn a watch for too long now; I made it through three days before I put my Apple Watch back on. The Oura is a ring, so unlike any of the other fitness trackers I’ve tested, you’ll need to check your stats on a smartphone. There are two infrared LED sensors, two negative thermal coefficient body temperature sensors, a 3D accelerometer, and a gyroscope—that's a lot of sensitive sensors for such a tiny package. Oura sends a sizing kit and asks you to wear a fake ring on your finger of choice for 24 hours, because your fingers swell when you work out or sleep. Like Garmin’s Body Battery, it takes into account factors like resting heart rate, respiratory rate, activity levels, and sleep to tell you just how, er, ready you are to tackle your day. After all, if I wanted to micromanage my data and track my heart rate zones as I exercised, I would wear a smartwatch, not a smart ring. Still, you should know that it’s not an effective replacement for a fitness tracker or smartwatch for tracking exercise. Because the app keeps track of data over a stretch of time, you can also view trend reports to see things like your sleep score across weeks, months or years. Oura redesigned the app from the previous Oura Ring Gen 3, with a more intuitive home screen that shows your scores for readiness, sleep, activity and stress at a glance. During a week when I felt a small cold coming on, the Oura Ring flagged elevated body temperature, disrupted sleep, and decreased HRV—before I even recognized symptoms. Your stress levels will also affect your readiness score, which I have noticed is always lower after I have a particularly stressful day prior. You can log sessions manually, but the Oura Ring lacks the seamless start/stop controls of a smartwatch—you have to start and stop from the app on your phone. My resting heart rate is higher than normal and my sleep is restless. This sleep tracker tracks stats like your REM sleep, light sleep, deep sleep, latency, restfulness, and resting heart rate. You can find all of these metrics on the Oura app, which offers clear charts and personalized details/recommendations like "Take it easy today" or "Your body is primed for performance." In a sea of fitness trackers and smartwatches, the Oura Ring 4 stands out for its minimalist design and science-backed wellness features. For someone who has made running her fitness goal for 2024, Oura’s partnership with running and cycling app Strava is perfect. The ring also sets me different challenges to try to improve my sleep and rest, such as steering clear of coffee for a few weeks or doing a guided meditation session before bed. My accurate temperature readings are pulled through every morning into the Natural Cycles app, which has been a game-changer for me in terms of managing my contraception easily and allowing me to go hormone-free. After wearing my Oura ring every day, I quickly discovered that it offers so much more than I originally expected. All of the wearables I tested, including the Oura Ring 4, were confused by the early morning hours I spent with my baby, though. The Galaxy Ring would also log no data at all for the hour or so I was awake in the middle of the night to take care of my baby, throwing the whole evening’s data out of whack. For example, I toss and turn a lot while I sleep, and the Samsung Galaxy Ring often logged those movements as tiny wake windows throughout the night. The Oura Ring 4’s hardware and software improvements help cement it as the best smart ring you can buy right now. The Oura Ring Gen 3 was already my favorite smart ring on the market. NBC Select updates editor Mili Godio coincidentally bought the Oura Ring 4 for herself, and has also been wearing hers on-and-off for over a year. Improvements over the Oura Ring Gen 3 include a longer eight-day battery life (up from seven), a wider range of sizes and a fully titanium build (the Oura Ring Gen 3 was partially made of plastic). I’ve always enjoyed moving my body, but Oura has definitely made me fall in love with exercise even more; as someone who likes keeping their workouts varied, I like that my Oura ring logs all of my exercise – from outdoor swimming to spin classes, yoga and pilates. It also works as a period predictor, detects when you’re getting ill before you feel it, and warns you when you appear to be heading towards burnout. Here, see my honest review of the Oura after wearing it studiously for over a year. While the pill certainly works for some – I took it myself for over a decade, without noticing any side effects – I eventually began to feel that my body was starting to reject it. The Oura Ring Gen 3 (slash the newer Oura Ring 4) is the most mainstream smart ring, packing an array of health sensors into a discreet design. The UCSF study (in which I participated while wearing the ring) also combines the results with a daily self-reported symptom questionnaire. The NBA and WNBA aren’t relying on the data but are instead combining those results with daily swab testing. Unlike Fitbit, Oura doesn’t charge you extra for a subscription for extra insights or features in the app. For example, I went on a 4-mile run the other day and my Oura Ring said I only burned around 200 calories, while my Apple Watch was much closer to the mark around 350 calories. I’ll wear both my Apple Watch and Oura Ring to compare calories burned, and Oura always lists around half the calories burned as my Apple Watch. The highest score I’ve received is 92, and when I hit 95, I’m signing up for a marathon. Experts, including our Fitness and Commerce Editor Charles Thorp, NASM, put countless smart rings through the gauntlet and evaluated models on accuracy, design, durability, and price. For the past eight years, our fitness and gear editors have been testing all the top fitness trackers as they release.
