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Nov 06, 2024

Oura Ring 4 Review 2024 - Forbes Vetted

Since experiencing a heart attack a few years ago, I’ve worn a slew of wearables that promise to track every health metric that matters to me and my personal wellbeing. Smartwatches are a good choice,

Since experiencing a heart attack a few years ago, I’ve worn a slew of wearables that promise to track every health metric that matters to me and my personal wellbeing. Smartwatches are a good choice, but they either offer excellent battery and limited health tracking, or excellent health tracking and limited battery life. Smart rings, like the new Oura Ring 4, can give you the best of both worlds—and this particular ring is aiming to be crowned king of the smart rings market.

The new Oura Ring 4 smart ring promises a plethora of health tracking features—but is it worth the ... [+] $349 price tag? I rigorously tested the wearable to find out.

This is Oura’s fourth smart ring, and it launches as every company is making a smart ring: Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Ring earlier this year and the RingConn Gen 2 Smart Ring ships in November. All of these rings aim to take Oura’s crown, but Oura has an answer. While redesigned to be slimmer and lighter, is it enough to keep the Oura Ring 4 at the top of the pile? Read on for my Oura Ring 4 review and my thoughts on its design, performance and more.

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Our score: 9 | Operating system: iOS / Android | Battery life: Up to 8 days | Charge time: 80 minutes | Sizes available: 4 through 15

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I’ve worn an Oura Ring for nearly five years, most recently the Oura Ring Gen 3. Recently, I’d swapped for the Samsung Galaxy Ring after discovering it didn’t hurt as much as the Oura Ring when my fingers swelled. Much of this was down to the sensors on the inside of the previous Oura Ring, which were housed in 1.3mm raised domes that would apply pressure to the swollen parts of my finger. All this has changed with the Oura Ring 4, with Oura showcasing for a dome-less, flush design.

The Oura Ring 4 removes the raised domes for flush tracking sensors.

The Oura Ring Gen 3 was available in two different styles, but the Oura Ring 4 comes in one style with several choices of finish: Black, Brushed Silver, Gold, Silver and Rose Gold. There’s less choice, but it’s simpler to understand and easier to find the right fit for you. It now also comes in more sizes than before, ranging from size 4 to size 15.

The recessed sensors on the Oura Ring 4 are a huge step up from the raised dome sensors of its ... [+] predecessor.

Another change is in the use of titanium throughout the Oura Ring 4, whereas the Oura Ring Gen3 featured a titanium exterior with an epoxy interior. This subtle change brings the Oura Ring 4 in line with its competition. It’s up to 0.8 grams lighter at between 3.3 and 5.2 grams, depending on your ring size. Although it’s not the lightest smart ring—that moniker goes to both the RingConn Gen 2 and the Ultrahuman Ring Air—it feels significantly lighter than the previous generation.

The differences between the sensor designs on Oura Ring Gen 3 (front) and Oura Ring 4 (back) are ... [+] pretty impressive.

Like most smart rings, there’s a small notch that indicates the proper placement of the ring on your finger to ensure the most accuracy from the sensors. I’ve found that the Oura Ring 4 will often rotate around my finger, and I highly recommend getting the sizing kit, even if you have previously had another smart ring. I’m the same size as the previous Oura Ring, but I could have easily gone with a smaller size for a tighter fit.

During my briefing, Oura hyped the battery life of the Oura Ring 4, promising it would offer an extra day of battery life over the previous generation. In my two weeks of testing, it delivered seven and a half days of battery life on average, with a full charge taking 80 minutes in the case.

The Oura Ring 4 next to the Samsung Galaxy Ring shows the raised domes for tracking your health.

The battery life has improved over the previous generation, but it still falls short of most smart rings that I’ve tried. The Samsung Galaxy Ring lasts up to nine days depending on the ring size, while the RingConn Gen 2 lasts the longest, at up to 12 days. Both of those rings offer a portable charging case that can extend the battery life a few weeks for the Galaxy Ring or up to 150 days for the RingConn Gen 2.

The Oura Ring 4 has no portable charging solution; I found myself missing the boxy charging case on my Samsung Galaxy Ring. For context, I travel internationally frequently. When I forget my Oura Ring 4 charging dock and my ring’s battery dies, the ring gets relegated to my bag for a few days. If you travel a lot, you’ll likely need to pick up a second charging cradle or charge it to full just before departure.

Whereas the Galaxy Ring has a fairly limited suite of health metrics, the Oura Ring 4 does everything you could ask for—and more. And as a bonus, you’re not locked into an iOS or Android ecosystem as the app is designed to work across both platforms. The biggest change with the Oura Ring 4 is the way it measures your health data. Instead of dome sensors, the Oura Ring 4 uses a new technology called Smart Sensing, which forms beams between the different sensors to collect accurate data however you’re wearing the ring.

The difference in thickness between the Galaxy Ring (left) and Oura Ring 4 (right).

This solves one of the biggest issues with previous generations, and means that it shouldn’t matter if the ring isn’t perfectly positioned on your finger. In my testing, the Oura Ring 4 delivers on this promise. Despite waking up to my ring halfway around my finger, the it still tracked my sleep as if I had been wearing it properly.

There’s a range of recessed sensors that measure core health metrics, too. It uses red and infrared LEDs that measure blood oxygen while you sleep, green and infrared PPG sensors that measure vital heart metrics and a digital temperature sensor that measures variations in your core body temperature. These are just some of the metrics you can track in the Oura app.

The vitals tab on the Oura app has an in-depth look to your health data measurements.

The redesigned Oura app simplifies the entire experience into three tabs. The default tab, Today, displays the information that matters to you now, including cards for your daily readiness, previous night’s sleep and recent activities.

The My Health tab offers a holistic overview of your health and allows you to access reports showing the change in your health metrics by week. Other tabs highlight key information including Readiness, Sleep, Activity Goals, Daytime Heart Rate and Daytime Stress. In a nutshell: It tracks a lot of data, and the previous app design was quite overwhelming, but the new app design has made it easier to understand your health at a glance. But don’t think this is just for the Oura Ring 4: These new features are also available for the Oura Ring Gen 3.

The new Daytime Summary and daytime stress breakdowns on the Oura Ring 4

The daily summary focuses on your stress, which is a key cause of major health conditions, and having the data presented to you in this simple way makes it easy to learn the underlying cause of your stress. In particular, I find the daily summary graph useful to understand when I’m stressed and what activities could be causing it.

But it’s not a catch-all device for your health. It’s important to note that when we spoke with Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, director of The Charles Bronfman Institute of Personalized Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, about the Samsung Galaxy Ring’s health tracking, these health tracking metrics are a good way to learn base lines for your health. In other words, you’ll still need to see a doctor to get more in-depth, medically validated insight. “A lot of these scores are not calibrated or validated against anything clinical,” cautions Nadkarni. “Before clinical decisions start being made, various studies need to be done on these wearable technologies, and they need to be benchmarked and calibrated against the FDA technologies.”

New for the Oura Ring 4 is the addition of a timeline, where you can track additional qualitative information to help you understand how those are affecting your overall health. There are over 50 metrics to choose from, and you can also create additional custom tags. It does require you to add tags manually and the algorithm doesn’t learn from the tags you create, but it helps round out a holistic overview of your health.

In the three years since Oura made the Oura Ring Gen 3, more than a dozen smart rings have been launched, all designed to challenge the best smart ring on the market. In response, Oura listened to feedback from its customers and built a redesigned Ring that delivers an excellent all-around experience.

If you want an advanced fitness tracker without the distractions of notifications or apps, the Oura Ring 4 is nearly perfect. However, two things detract from the overall experience. First, there’s the lack of a portable charger which has become common amongst the competition—and that’s a big problem for travelers.

Second, there’s a necessary subscription to access advanced metrics. As a long-time Oura customer, I’ve been grandfathered into the lifetime plan so I don’t have to pay for the subscription. But you’re new to Oura, it’ll cost you $70 for a year, and the purchase of a Ring 4 comes with one month free. That’s a lot to stomach when this smart ring already costs $349.

The Oura Ring 4

Oura’s biggest competitor is arguably the Samsung Galaxy Ring, which is an upfront cost—no subscription needed or offered. But that lack of subscription actually gives me pause. There’s a lot of value to Oura’s membership, and although the Oura Ring 4 will work without it, you’ll want to be a member to take advantage of all the features. If you can commit to spending $70 per year as well as between $349 and $499 on the ring itself, the Oura Ring 4 is a great smart ring for aiming to be very cognizant of their health. But if the subscription causes you to bristle, the Samsung Galaxy Ring and RingConn Gen 2 are great alternatives.

I used the Oura Ring 4 for nine days, wearing it 24/7, to get a sense of the health metrics the device tracked as well as its battery life. During my testing, it used just over one full charge of the battery. I used a size 12 ring in silver, paired with my iPhone 16 Pro.

Over the nine days, I used it to track all my health vitals during sleep, daily activities and multiple workouts. I checked the app multiple times a day and dove into many of the smaller tabs to understand what kinds of health metrics it could track.

To test against its competition, I wore more than one device and cross-checked health tracking metrics as well as my workouts. In addition to the Oura Ring 4, I also wore the Oura Ring Gen 3, RingConn Gen 2 and Samsung Galaxy Ring for part of the nine-day period to test how it held up against its main competition.

I’m a veteran technology journalist turned analyst, who has reviewed technology around the world for over 17 years. Alongside Forbes Vetted, I contribute to some of the biggest tech websites including Digital Trends, Tom’s Guide and Android Police, I also previously managed some of the biggest Android websites including XDA Developers and Android Authority.

When I’m not testing the best smart rings on the market, I’m an Apple expert who has shared insights on the best iPads and best monitors for MacBook Pro. I’ve also used every flagship iPhone released in the past eight years, and every iPad released since the original iPad. In addition to testing a variety of tablets and other portable devices, I currently uses the iPad Pro M4 13-inch daily. Before I jumped into tech journalism full-time, I previously worked in retail, which gave me an understanding of which tablets are right for different customers.