Review: The Oura Ring 4 finally addresses my biggest pain point with smart rings

15 Oct 2024, 10:00 by Taylor Kerns · Android Police

The Oura Ring 4 is the kind of iterative hardware update I like to see. For the same $349 starting price as the Gen 3 Horizon, Oura's latest smart ring is a bit better than its last in a bunch of ways: it's thinner, more comfortable, lasts longer on a charge, and tracks certain metrics a little more accurately. It also comes in more sizes.

Its best new features — including, finally, automatic activity tracking — are coming to the last-gen Oura Ring, too, via software updates. But that Oura Ring Gen 3 owners won't feel pressured to upgrade hardly seems like a downside to me. For anyone who doesn't already have a smart ring, the Oura Ring 4 is the one to get — so long as you can stomach the monthly subscription, anyway.

Editor's Choice

Oura Ring 4

8.5 / 10

The Oura Ring 4 offers an expanded size range, more comfortable and premium build, and more accurate tracking of certain metrics than Oura Ring Gen 3 did. The new ring's software-based features like improved automatic activity detection are also coming to Oura's previous smart ring, but if you don't have a Gen 3 already, the Oura Ring 4 should be on your radar.

Pros

Better automatic activity detection
Comes in 12 sizes (4-15)
Week-long battery life
No big bumps on the inside
Great app

Cons

Requires a subscription (and only comes with one free month)
Doesn't come with a charging case
Galaxy Ring is thinner

$349 at Oura $349 at Amazon $349 at Best Buy

Price, availability, and specs

The Oura Ring 4 is available now. Price varies by finish: Silver and Black are $349; Brushed Silver and Stealth are $399; Gold (reviewed here) and Rose Gold are $499. All finishes are available in sizes 4 through 15. While the Oura Ring Gen 3 came in two styles — Heritage, which had a flat top side to house the battery, and Horizon, which was perfectly circular — the Oura Ring 4 is available only in the round Horizon-like style.

You can grab the Oura Ring 4 directly from Oura or from retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. Sizing kits are available for $10 and include credit toward the purchase of a ring, making them effectively free. Oura recommends wearing the plastic sizers for a day or two to get a better idea of which size you need, and I can second that. I decided on a size for my review ring too quickly and had to exchange it; the size 13 pictured in this review is a little loose on my index finger. If the same thing happens to you, Oura takes returns and exchanges for 30 days after your ring is delivered.

Oura requires a subscription that costs $6 per month or $60 per year. Purchases come with a one-month membership included. Competitors like Samsung don't charge a subscription fee.

Specifications

Heart rate monitor
Yes
Notification support
No
Battery life
Up to 8 days
Sensors
Heart rate/HRV; blood oxygen; skin temperature; accelerometer
Water Resistance
Water-resistant to 100 m
Ring sizing
4 – 15
Color
Silver; Black; Brushed Silver; Stealth; Gold; Rose Gold
Price
From $349
Mobile Payments
No
Workout detection
Yes
Exercise modes
40+
Weight
3.3 – 5.2 g
Built material
Coated titanium
Expand

Design and build

There aren't many ways to style a plain band-style ring, but Oura's latest differentiates itself from the competition subtly. The inner surface of the Oura Ring 4 is made of titanium rather than the plastic you'll find on other options, including Oura's previous-generation ring. It's not a difference I think about day to day, but Oura says the opaque material helps prevent light from leaking in or out, allowing for more accurate tracking.

The inside of the Oura Ring 4 is also remarkably smooth compared to other smart rings. All smart rings of this kind have LEDs on their inner surfaces that emit different types of light to measure things like your heart rate. On most rings, including the Oura Ring Gen 3 and the Samsung Galaxy Ring, these LEDs are housed under pretty sizable protrusions that press into the underside of your finger. On the Oura Ring 4, these LED nubs are absolutely tiny. I've never found the bigger nubs uncomfortable, but shrinking them seems like a win for people with thinner fingers.

The Oura Ring 4 is marginally thinner than the Oura Ring Gen 3 Horizon at 2.88 mm (to the third-gen's 2.9 mm) and has a sharper edge than the rounded Gen 3. It's lighter, too. All that adds up to Oura's sleekest ring yet, though it's still thicker than the 2.6 mm Galaxy Ring.

Oura Ring Gen 3 in size 11 (top left) and Oura Ring 4 in size 13 (bottom right).

Although it's a touch thinner than the comparable Gen 3, the Oura Ring 4 is still thicker than most normal rings, so it can get in the way when you're doing anything that requires a firm grip, like working with your hands or lifting weights. I find this is less of an issue if you wear the ring on your middle or ring finger, though that's not always comfortable, either. Oura recommends sizing it to your index finger to get the most accurate data.

Whichever finger you want to wear the Oura Ring on, you'll have an easier time getting a good fit: Oura's expanded its size offerings for this generation, which is available from size 4 all the way up to 15. (When I mentioned to Oura's Jason Russel that I'm from Ohio, he joked that the company finally offers a ring to fit Akron native LeBron James.) That's a greater size range than the competition offers — the Samsung Galaxy Ring comes in 5–13, and the RingConn Gen 2 is available in 6–14.

I worry that the ring's more defined edge will get scuffed and chipped more easily than the rounded Gen 3 did, and I'm not a fan of how the plastic layer between the inner and outer titanium surfaces looks. But overall, the Oura Ring 4's build is among the best you'll find in a smart ring today, even if it's not the thinnest.

Health and fitness

The Oura Ring Gen 4's hallmark new feature is what Oura is calling Smart Sensing, a combination of new sensor hardware and accompanying algorithms that Oura says makes its newest ring a more accurate health tracker. Oura cites a 60-person study that shows the Ring 4 tracks nighttime blood oxygen 30 percent more accurately than the Gen 3 does, and collects heart rate data with seven percent fewer gaps during the day and 31 percent fewer gaps at night.

That's a pretty small sample size, and the gains Oura's claiming here hardly revolutionize the smart ring experience. Comparing info collected by the new Oura Ring 4 to that from the Gen 3 I'd been wearing, I don't see a difference in the quality or completeness of heart rate data. My blood oxygen scores are also in the same narrow range in the high 90s with the Ring 4 as they were using the Gen 3. I'm willing to take Oura's word that tracking has improved around the margins, but I haven't noticed a pronounced difference.

Oura rolled out a major app update with the Ring 4, though, and that's where the lion's share of exciting new features are found. First and foremost, automatic activity detection has become n much more robust, an improvement that does fundamentally change the smart ring experience.

Previously, Oura offered manual tracking of just five activities: walking, outdoor running, indoor running, outdoor cycling, and indoor cycling. The Oura Ring Gen 3 could automatically detect certain activities, but you'd have to subjectively rate the activity's intensity after the fact to update your daily activity score and get an estimate of calories burned during your workout. Now, when Oura detects one of about 40 different activities, it'll log your average heart rate and provide a breakdown of your time spent in different heart rate zones after the fact.

In my time with the Ring 4, it's consistently been able to pick up on when I started and stopped exercise well enough that I don't need to think about it — a major improvement over having to remember to manually start run tracking before I head out the door and stop it when I get back. Automatically tracked runs show start and stop times in line with manual tracking from my Pixel Watch 3, and similar heart rate data, though Fitbit tends to estimate my calorie burn much higher than Oura does. I've seen the ring accurately track running, rowing, and even yardwork on its own, though I can't speak to how well it can clock other activity types.

Sleep tracking's as big a focus as ever, and the updated Oura app presents all the same info it did before. Every night's sleep is broken down in minute detail, with scores grading your deep sleep, REM sleep, restfulness, and even timing, recommending an ideal bedtime each day based on your learned schedule. You can tap on any of these metrics to get more info about why it's tracked and what your score means.

The Oura app puts a lot of emphasis on showing your data over time and pointing out trends, which I find to be motivating. After you wear the ring long enough, you might see cards in the app's Today tab spelling out how your activity and sleep scores have trended over the past few weeks, offering a birds-eye view of your recent health habits. An upward trend is a good reminder to keep doing what you're doing; a downward one is a sign to take stock.

That Today tab is one of three main views in the redesigned app, meant to serve as a kind of dashboard for your day that changes depending on the time and your recent activity. There's a new Vitals tab that shows your various scores at a glance, and you can drill down into any of them to get more detailed info. The third tab, My Health, shows your longer-term metrics, like your rated cardiovascular age and cardio capacity. The sheer volume of data available to review is a little overwhelming at first, but it's organized well and presented in a digestible way.

It's not available as of writing, but the Oura app will soon have opt-in fertility features that will try to estimate how likely the wearer is to conceive each day based on the metrics it tracks and provide insight into menstrual cycle and ovulation timing. (Oura cautions that this feature will be estimated, and so it is strictly meant to help conceive pregnancy, not to prevent it.)

It's crucial to note that, aside from Smart Sensing, all of these features — automatic activity tracking, the updated app, fertility info — will also be available on Oura Ring Gen 3. If you've got a last-generation Oura Ring already, you'll also get most of what's on offer in the new Oura Ring 4. That's remarkably consumer-friendly; tech firms arbitrarily restrict software features to newer hardware generations all the time, and I appreciate that Oura didn't take that tack here, especially given the mandatory subscription.

Battery and charging

Oura says that its Ring 4 can last up to eight days on a charge. The larger sizes have larger batteries that last longer than the smaller batteries in the smaller rings, though, so that estimate only applies to the higher end of the sizing range. I've been wearing a size 13, and a full charge lasted me seven days and a few hours. With fewer tracked workouts, it's reasonable to assume it might have made it to eight full days, but don't expect week-plus battery life from a size 4 or 5.

A little disappointingly, Oura still hasn't hopped on the smart ring charging case bandwagon, instead shipping the Ring 4 with another small, puck-like charger. It gets the job done — charging my size 13 from zero to 100 takes about an hour and 20 minutes — but similar rings from Samsung and RingConn come with charging cases like the ones you get with wireless earbuds. Plugging in once a week isn't too bad, but competitors have Oura beat here on convenience.

Competition

The Samsung Galaxy Ring.

Oura has long defined the smart ring space, but competition has been heating up over the past few years. At $399, the Samsung Galaxy Ring costs $50 more than the Oura Ring 4's $349 starting price, but Samsung doesn't charge a subscription fee — Oura's is $6 per month. The Galaxy Ring is thinner and more comfortable than the Oura Ring 4, too, and it comes with a charging case. But I prefer the way Oura presents health data, and Oura now has Samsung beat on automatic activity tracking (the Galaxy Ring will only automatically track walking and running).

Samsung's Galaxy Ring is the best smart ring, for whatever that's worth

For health nuts, but not fitness freaks

Then there's the RingConn Gen 2 , which is also $299. It's got longer battery life than Oura at 10 or more days, comes with a charging case, and doesn't require a subscription. But RingConn doesn't offer automatic activity tracking of any kind, and again, I prefer Oura's companion app.

The Oura Ring 4's biggest competition might just be the Oura Ring Gen 3. The Ring 4 is the better smart ring, no question: it's thinner, more comfortable, lasts longer on a charge, and tracks heart rate more reliably. But now that the Ring 4 is available, the previous model is often available at a discount, with the black and silver Horizon models going for $299. Given it's getting all of the new Oura Ring 4's software features through updates, it might be an appealing option if you're looking to save a buck.

Oura Ring Generation 3 review: Luxury health tracking on your finger

The third-gen Oura Ring is good at what it does, but it starts at $300

Should you buy it?

Oura Ring 4 on my index finger, Gen 3 on my thumb.

The Oura Ring 4 is my favorite smart ring right now. If you don't own an Oura Ring Gen 3 and you don't mind spending $350 (or more, depending on finish), it's a great entry point into smart ring-based health tracking.

If you already have a Gen 3, though, I don't think the Oura Ring 4 will be worth the upgrade. Sure, it's a little more comfortable and its tracking is nominally more accurate than the last model's, but the Oura Ring Gen 3 was already very good. It's getting the updated Oura app and automatic activity tracking, too. You're really not missing out on many new features by skipping the upgrade.

And really, I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm as tired of everything being a subscription as you are, but Oura has continued to add new features over time: Oura Ring Gen 3 picked up stress monitoring last year, now supports automatic activity tracking, and it's getting new fertility features soon. This is an experience I don't mind paying $6 a month for.

The Oura Ring 4 is a successful iterative update: it's a little better than the last one in a lot of ways. If you happen to have a Gen 3, you can probably skip it. If you're buying your first smart ring or still rocking a first- or second-generation Oura, though, the Oura Ring 4 is a great pick.

Editor's Choice

Oura Ring 4

8.5 / 10

$349 at Oura $349 at Amazon $349 at Best Buy

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