Oura Ring 4: Specs, Price, Features, Availability

Oura’s update to its category-defining smart ring will be smaller, smarter, and add even more women’s health features.

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To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED In the years since Oura launched its first smart ring, the category has exploded. There is a huge appetite for a fitness tracker that is sensitive and accurate, doesn’t have a screen, and also lets you wear your inherited grandfather’s watch on your wrist, instead of something that will bang you in the schnoz while you sleep. Still, even though companies as large as Samsung got in on the smart ring game, Oura has remained accurate and useful. And unlike many popular fitness trackers, you’re not locked into your iPhone, Samsung phone, or Google Pixel to use it. This year’s update, the Oura Ring 4, promises a lot of great upgrades, as well as some surprises. For the first time, more women wear an Oura ring than men. Personally, I have never found the Oura Gen3 to be uncomfortable to wear, but my experience with Samsung’s smart ring shows that it’s possible to make an accurate ring that’s lighter and smaller. Perhaps it should be no surprise then that the Oura Ring 4 has a slimmer, all-titanium redesign. The sensors are now recessed, which means the interior is smooth, and you will no longer find yourself fiddling with the little bumps when you should be doing your work. It is now available in an expanded size range, too, up from eight available sizes to 12, and in an expanded range of colors, which includes an updated black that has a more durable coating to address customer complaints. (I have the original Heritage Black that I have worn for several years now without any nicks, but my experience might be unusual.) The more inclusive size range now includes a size 4 to accommodate more of Oura’s female customer base (more on this later). The ring now weighs between 3.3 and 5.2 grams, depending on the size. The charging base also has a cover, which will help me keep it on the charger and prevent me from carelessly knocking it off my desk. Probably the most important upgrade is the new Smart Sensing platform. An algorithm works with the new sensors to adapt and find the best signal path, which is up from eight pathways to 18 in the new ring. What this means in practice is that you don’t have to have the ring perfectly placed on your finger at all times to collect continuous, accurate data. That’s great news for those of us who, you know, use our hands during the day, and whose fingers can swell or change with what we’re doing, the time of day, or the time of the month. It also increases the battery life to eight days, which, if it works, is astounding. I consistently get around three days with the Gen3. Oura did conduct a very small external research study this past summer with just 60 participants, comparing results from the Gen3 to the Oura Ring 4, and found increases in accuracy and fewer gaps. Increased battery life also means fewer chances for gapping when the ring is charging. When the Gen3 debuted, Oura took around a year to roll out most of its new features, and it was impossible to counsel people to buy a subscription when you didn’t even know if it would be useful or not. Several years later, Oura has now unrolled a new app design that will be available to all Oura members in the coming weeks, not months. Over the past few years, Oura has expanded its offerings to measure many different metrics, including stress, resilience, and cardio health. Today’s app redesign divides the data into three sections, putting daily metrics, like Readiness and Sleep, in the Today tab; showing more in-depth information in the Vitals tab; and moving long-term metrics like Cardiovascular Age and Stress Resilience to a tab called My Health. The app improvements are significant. These include a new feature called Timeline, which is a running log of your day that includes meals, meditations, and workouts, among other things. Automatic activity detection now includes more than 40 different activities, with automatic heart rate detection and heart rate zones. Daily Stress, which lets members see more context when it comes to their daily movement and activities. You will also be able to overlay tags and activities on your day to see, for example, if alcohol really does spike your stress. Oura Labs—the tab in the app where you could opt into trying features that were still in development and provide feedback—was previously only available in iOS. But now Android users can check out features that might be useful, such as Meals, which uses computer vision to break down pictures of what you ate to see if you consumed enough fiber or protein. Android users can now also try Oura Advisor, which is Oura’s generative AI chatbot. I have only begun testing this, but so far I have found it to be about as useful as other AI-enabled health coaching services—which is to say, not so useful. Most importantly (to me), the app has a significant expansion of Oura’s women’s health features. If you’re a woman, one of the primary reasons to get a smart ring is cycle tracking. In the past few years, many fitness trackers—including the Apple Watch—have added skin temperature sensing to the metrics that they collect. Ideally, wrist wearables would be sensitive enough to capture the temperature drop that usually occurs the day before you get your period, and is the only foolproof warning that your period is coming. However, in my testing, only smart rings have been sensitive enough to catch that temperature drop in your basal body temperature (BBT) accurately. “One of the disadvantages to a wrist-worn device is that you’re often charging it overnight,” said Oura VP of product Jason Russell. “With temperature data, we’re able to get a really strong signal during the night time. [The finger] is also a better place to capture temperature signal on your body as well.” That probably accounts for the fact that Oura’s largest-growing member demographic is women in their twenties. In the past year, Oura’s membership shifted from primarily male to primarily female. The company partnered with Natural Cycles, the menstrual cycle-tracking app that uses your BBT drop to track your period. It also introduced Pregnancy Insights, Cycle Insights, and the Cycle Insights Report, and now its latest feature is the Fertile Window. It’s important to note here that Oura conceives of this feature as an aid to help you get pregnant, and not to prevent a pregnancy. Still, even those of us whose children are now thinking about soccer teams and driving cars would find this information useful, especially as we’re entering perimenopausal and menopausal years. When I first started wearing the Oura Gen3, I did not expect that, in the coming years, this little ring would be the tracker that I’d continue wearing, and against which I would compare almost every other fitness tracker that I tested. The Oura Ring 4 looks to make a number of significant improvements to a category-defining wearable, and for an underserved population. (It’s really hard and annoying to keep track of your period!) All current Oura members will be able to see the app developments, and the Gen3 will remain on sale as long as supplies last. The Oura Ring 4 is available in sizes 4-15, and in six colors, Brushed Silver, Gold, Rose Gold, Silver, Stealth, and Black. One month of membership is included in purchase, and you can subscribe monthly for $6/month or $70/year. You can preorder today; it starts shipping on October 15, 2024. Politics Lab: Get the newsletter and listen to the podcast The American who waged a tech war on China High-end fashion dupes are soaring where knock-offs never could Anyone can turn you into an AI chatbot. There’s little you can do to stop them Event: Join us for The Big Interview on December 3 in San Francisco Dyson Airwrap deal: Free $60 Case + $40 Gift Get Up To An Extra 45% Off October Sale VistaPrint Coupon 30% off any 3+ items Newegg Promo Code – 50% off Select Products Peacock Student Discount For $1.99/Mo For 12 Months Get The New DJI Mini 4 Pro From $759 For A Limited Time More From WIRED Reviews and Guides © 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. 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