The Oura Ring 5 is the most refined smart ring you can buy right now, bridging the gap between smartwatches and smart rings. It’s 40% smaller than the Ring 4, light enough to forget about on your hand, and has all the learnings of a smart tracker brand that’s been around for a decade. If you want health tracking without another screen on your wrist, this is the obvious place to start – and after weeks with mine, I still think it’s best in class. It’s also a product with a few important elements that are worth understanding before spending $399, especially since a few of them only surface after the ring has been on your finger for a while.
I’ve been wearing an Oura for years – the first one I wore was the Oura Ring Gen 3 – and the Oura 5 barely leaves my hand. It’s on when I sleep, when I work, and when I cook – and most of the time I forget it’s there, which is exactly the point of a chime on a watch. I like it a lot. But loving a product and blindly recommending it are two different things, and there are five things I’d like to know before buying one, from the actual cost of ownership to the work the ring still won’t do.
1. The ring is only half the price
The $399 retail price is where the Oura Ring 5’s price starts, but not where it ends. The Oura 5 opens at this price for Silver and Black finishes, and Oura charges $100 more for Gold, Stealth, Brushed Silver, and Deep Rose. I have the Brushed Silver option, which I think looks great. But as Woozad pointed out, “you’re paying $100 for the paint.” Besides the hardware, most of what makes the ring useful is behind the Oura subscription, at $5.99 per month or $69.99 per year after a free first month. Without it, the app shows three daily scores and nothing else, so data on deeper sleep, heart rate, temperature, and stress all remain locked.
However, compared to its competitors, this subscription seems fairer than it appears at first glance. Whoop doesn’t have a hardware cost, but the group doesn’t work without a plan that starts at $199 per year and tops out at $359 at the high end. Google’s Fitbit Air undercuts the price of the Whoop and all other alternatives to $99, with no subscription required to use the product, although there is one to access additional features. Oura lies between the two. Its $70 per year subscription is much cheaper than Whoop’s and allows you to purchase a more powerful application than Fitbit’s. But this is a recurring cost that you cannot avoid and must plan for up front.
2. Your old Oura size will not be retained
A ring is a fitted device, so size matters much more than a watch that you can loosen. Two details deserve special attention on the Oura 5. First, the sizing has changed compared to the Ring 4, so the size you already wear is not a safe bet. I had to size up from my previous Oura ring, which is now a size larger than my usual ring size for my index finger. This has always been something to know before purchasing an Oura ring, but it seems more important with the Oura 5 than other generations.
Second, Oura reduced the range to sizes 6 through 13, going from 4 to 15 for the Ring 4. Anyone with particularly small or large fingers unfortunately has fewer options than before. To ensure you get the right size, order the free sizing kit before purchasing your ring and live with the plastic sizer for a full day, including a workout and a night’s sleep, as fingers swell and shrink with heat, activity and temperature. I would wear the sizer to the gym – if you plan to wear the Oura ring there – before committing, as a snug fit during the day can become tight mid-session.
Get it right and you’ll have the best Oura Ring 5 experience possible. A properly sized Oura 5 disappears on your finger and reads your heart rate in the background. Oura recommends wearing the smart ring on your index, middle, or ring finger. Get it wrong and you’ll lose data due to a loose fit or spend all day noticing a pinching ring. It’s an extra step that slightly delays getting your ring, but it decides how long you’ll actually wear it.
3. It’s a sleep tracker, not really a workout tracker
Oura has made a name for itself when it comes to sleep, and the Oura 5 is still one of the best sleep and recovery trackers you can wear. This is not an ideal workout device. DC Rainmaker, who tested it on running, cycling, swimming, and strength work, called it “woefully behind even the most basic wearables when it comes to sports tracking,” and my own experience is exactly that. I wear my Oura constantly, with one exception: workouts. When I’m working out, I switch to an Apple Watch Ultra 2 for live heart rate, GPS, and the kind of real-time data that the ring just can’t display right now. When I lift weights, I find the ring becomes uncomfortable, so I prefer to wear a watch. Some users report that activity detection during lifting workouts is poor because your hand doesn’t move much.
The Oura 5 can’t show live heart rate on its lock screen widget mid-workout, has limited Strava syncing, and relies on your phone’s GPS for the new live activity tracking feature. None of this bothers me, because I’m not asking for this to be my training tool. For sleep staging, resting heart rate, HRV, temperature, and recovery, it’s excellent, and it does all of that in something I forget I’m wearing rather than a watch I have to charge every night.
4. If you have a Ring 3 or Ring 4, you may not need it
If you already own an Oura Ring 3 or 4, you may want to wait a while before purchasing the new device. Flagship software features launching alongside Oura 5, including Health Radar, Enhanced Activity Detection, GLP-1 Insights, and Live Activity Tracking, will also roll out to Gen 3 rings and newer. The coolest new features aren’t exclusive to the new hardware, so they’re not in themselves a reason to upgrade.
What the Oura 5 really improves on is the physical design. The ring is lighter, 2 to 2.69 grams compared to 3.3 to 5.2 grams, and 40% smaller than the Oura 4, making it noticeably more comfortable and easier to wear during the night. Oura’s claimed accuracy gains, around 12% for HRV and 19% for training heart rate, are difficult to feel in everyday life, and T3 found the Ring 5 to be no more accurate for sleep in practice than the already accurate Ring 4. Coming from a Gen 3, or no ring at all, the Oura 5 is an easy recommendation and the most comfortable Oura yet. Coming from an Oura 4 that fits and works, the smaller size is a real wish, but it’s a want, not a need.
5. Scratch resistance is not scratch-proof
The Oura Ring 5 is more durable, according to the brand, and it is, to a point. A new physical vapor deposition coating on titanium makes it more durable than the Oura 4, which marked easily. Don’t read “scratch resistant” as “scratch resistant”. These are still pieces of jewelry you wear everywhere, and one reviewer noted visible marks after 18 days of near-daily strength training. I haven’t experienced this with my Oura 5, although I imagine the Brushed Silver finish naturally hides some small scratches. If you lift or work with your hands, expect some cosmetic wear over time and be aware that more expensive finishes do not wear any differently than standard finishes.
Don’t let this discourage you from wearing the Oura 5 24 hours a day, because that’s where the ring earns its endorsements. It disappears on your hand in a way that a Whoop or Fitbit Air on your wrist never manages. It’s the most comfortable of the bunch to wear overnight, lasts six to nine days between charges, and applying it turns raw numbers into advice you’ll act on.
