Is the Brand New Oura Ring 4 Worth the Upgrade?

Around the Esquire office, I'm the wearables guy. Just the other week, you coulda seen me wearing both my Oura Ring 4 and Whoop MG band in order to determine the winner of a fitness face-off. While the Whoop may have won that head-to-head challenge, the Oura Ring is actually what I wear day-to-day. That has to count for something.

A year ago, I wrote an in-depth review of the Oura Ring 3 with my thoughts as a first-timer. Pretty much every positive and negative (but mostly positive) thing I had to say is still true. Looking at the prospect of the Ring 4, the real question is: If you are an owner of an Oura Ring already, is it worth the upgrade? And, if you're looking to jump into the Oura-verse for the first time, should you get the most up to date, or save a few bucks on last gen?

I've done the testing—over a year of it at this point—and can definitively answer both those questions. After months with the Oura Ring 4, here's whether or not I found it worth the upgrade.

Oura Ring 4 - Silver

Pros

• Still my favorite sleep tracker
• More accurate temperature, heart rate, and HRV sensing than gen 3
• Subtle improvement on already great battery life
• No more inner bump for improved comfort
• The app keeps getting better—a rare occurance

Cons

• Requires a subscription fee to access the main features
• The app's workout tracking is hit and miss

Sizes	4-15
Battery Life	Up to 8 days
Weight	3.3- 5.2 grams
Material	Titanium

Every single thing I loved about my Oura Ring 3 is present in the new model. There's only improvements and lateral movements in the transition to the Ring 4. Before judging how integral (or marginal) they are, let me remind you exactly what I love about the Oura Ring.

As a lifestyle piece, the Oura blows all other wearables out of the water. It's stylish, comfortable, and passes for a non-tech piece of jewelry on the regular. Mainly, I use it for sleep tracking. It's one of the only wearables I find genuinely comfortable to sleep in. Checking the Oura app has become a part of my morning routine and its Readiness and Sleep scores consistently reflect how I feel. I'm not going deep enough to chat with Oura's AI advisor every day (or ever), but I love having easy access to data about how I'm sleeping.

In terms of what's new, let's start with some much-appreciated superficial changes. The charger is now gray and square shaped, equipped with a USB-C to USB-C cable. The ring is now fully titanium—Gen 3 was still partially plastic. This time around, the detector bump on the inside of the ring has finally been flattened, making for a smoother time taking it on and off.

The sizing has changed ever so subtly as well. I wore an 11 in the gen 3 and I still wear the same size in the 4. The fit is slightly different. I find it generally fits, but sometimes is a little more snug when my hands might be swelling or a tad looser as I sweat and my body temperature regulates.

On the tech side, I'm already finding the sleep tracking to have improved, detecting movements and micro-waking sessions it wasn't before. There's been improvements made to body temperature and heart rate monitoring too. Importantly, the ring can now monitor your stress in real time and give you notifications when your body's experiencing extended periods of high stress.

Over the year since I started using it, the Oura app has made noticeable improvements as well. Much of them for the sake of streamlining. Case and point, what used to be split up into five sections is now three: Today (an overview of the current day's sleep, daily activity and stress), Vitals (where the nitty gritty stats for all your days live), and My Health which is where you can find your longterm resilience and cardiovascular age. The Today page has become more dynamic, bringing your sleep and readiness at the top of the app in the AM, and surfacing your stress and activity levels in the PM. The app also now has a customizable shortcuts bar at the top for easy access to your favorite stats.

As I mentioned up top, I've spent time with the competitors in this space too. If I'm being honest, I prefer other forms of wearables as fitness trackers. The lack of a screen is a downside when I want real-time heart rate and calorie burn data but don't want to look at my phone. Smart watches are still the king for me, because of the simplicity of the wrist-screen that has all you need.

I've also tried the Whoop band, which is interesting because it also suffers from the lack of a screen, but I still prefer it to the Oura for workout tracking. The Whoop app is designed around real-time workouts and gives you more in-workout data and a larger database of exercises to choose from when logging. The Oura app provides less information and is more tailed around retroactively logging your activity later, whenever you happen to open the app next.

There is of course the final elephant in the room, the fees. Oura charges a $5.99 per month or $69.99 annual subscription fee to use what most would consider its main features. All the good tracking is locked behind the paywall. It's not a huge price to pay, but it’s money that could be spent elsewhere, especially if you already have access to your phone's native apps like Apple or Samsung Health.

Compared to other smart rings, the Oura still earns its top dog status. I love my Oura Ring 4, and there's no doubt in my mind it's an improvement over the gen 3 ring. These are small, iterative improvements to both the design and fit of the ring but also the tech inside. For $349, plus the subscription fee, it's still an easy product to recommend.

If you're asking me if you should stick with your Oura Ring 3, though, I'd probably say yes—especially if you've got the updated Horizon model. And for newcomers, the 4 will be the future-proof decision, but right now you can get the Gen 3 ring directly from Oura starting from $199. That's a pretty rad deal, and it's hard to say with a straight face that the Gen 4 is $150 better.

Oura Ring 4 - Silver

Pros

• Still my favorite sleep tracker
• More accurate temperature, heart rate, and HRV sensing than gen 3
• Subtle improvement on already great battery life
• No more inner bump for improved comfort
• The app keeps getting better—a rare occurance

Cons

• Requires a subscription fee to access the main features
• The app's workout tracking is hit and miss

Sizes	4-15
Battery Life	Up to 8 days
Weight	3.3- 5.2 grams
Material	Titanium