While I may be a beauty editor who tests new beauty products for a living, I also have a keen interest in all things health and wellness (in fact, I used to be a health writer earlier on in my career). And if your TikTok For You Page is anything like mine, you might be inundated with Oura Ring reviews right now, and wondering if it’s worth buying one for yourself.
I’ve always been interested in wearable health trackers, but, to be honest with you, I find a lot of the health and smart watches pretty ugly-looking. So when I came across the sleek Oura Ring, with its minimalistic and discreet design, I knew this was one health tracker that I wanted to wear. So, I decided to put it to the test over the past three months, and I have a lot of thoughts about it—both good and bad.
If you’re wondering whether to invest in the new Oura Ring 4 yourself, scroll ahead for my honest review, and find out if the Oura Ring is right for you and worth the investment.
Oura Ring 4, Reviewed
Pros
- Tracks sleep, activity, stress, heart health and menstrual cycle alongside several other health metrics
- Discreet, comfortable and sleek design, with the option to choose between colours and finishes
- Syncs with Oura’s app to see both detailed insights and a general overview of your health
- Gives you practical advice to improve your help
Cons
- It’s an investment, and some colours are more expensive than others
- You need to pay £6 for a monthly subscription to access all features of the Oura app
- Can be tricky to work out the size if you’re in between sizes, as there are no half sizes
What’s included:
– Oura Ring 4
– Charging dock
– USB-C cable
What Is the Oura Ring And How Does It Work?
Beauty editor Eleanor Vousden wearing the Oura Ring 4 in Gold in Size 7.
The Oura Ring is a wearable health tracker, which tracks and monitors lots of different health markers, such as sleep, activity, stress, heart health and menstrual cycle. It measures your vitals using a range of sensors to track biometrics such as heart rate, blood oxygen, and body temperature, amongst others.
It pairs with the Oura app, which can give you a snapshot of your general health while allowing you to take a closer look at more detailed metrics if you want to get into the really nitty gritty of your health data.
My Experience of the Oura Ring 4
I’ve been wearing my Oura Ring 4 for three months now, so I’ve really put the health tracker through its paces. If you’re considering an Oura Ring, I’d highly recommend ordering the sizing kit, which allows you to try the sizes on for size before ordering your ring. For the most accuracy, it’s recommended to wear your ring on your index, middle or ring finger.
I was in between sizes 7 and 8, and if you find yourself in between sizes, Oura recommends sizing down. It’s better for the ring to have a tighter fit to ensure it accurately measures your vitals, and prevents your ring from flying off your hand (and when it’s a sizeable investment, you want to avoid that!) I opted for Size 7, which comfortably fits both my middle and index fingers.
Readiness
When you wake up and check the Oura app, you’ll be given a ‘Readiness’ score. This takes into account how well you slept, the previous day’s activity and other biometric data (such as heart rate, body temperature, and heart rate variability (HRV)) to formulate a score out of 100, which gives you an indication of how ready your body is on any given day. It’s a helpful snapshot to see how much you should push yourself. A high readiness score means you might be able to go harder with your workouts, whereas a lower readiness score encourages you to prioritise rest when you can.
It gives you a top-line overview, as well as more detailed metrics, giving you the option to go more in-depth if you want. It will flag any areas that may need attention. In my case above, my heart rate variability—one of the markers that measures recovery—needs attention. Lots of things can affect it, including stress, illness or intense exercise. In my case above, I’d been unwell, so I was prioritising rest to bounce back.
Sleep Tracking
A core part of forming your daily readiness score is how well you slept, and the Oura Ring tracks an incredible amount while you snooze. It’s able to measure not just how much sleep you had, but the percentage of different sleep stages, including REM (often associated with dreaming), deep sleep and light sleep. It can also detect naps during the day.
Additionally, it will tell you at what times your ring detected movement during the night, as well as any incidents where your breathing is affected. It will also tell you if you have any ‘sleep debt’, which can be helpful with keeping you accountable for getting enough shut-eye each night. After 90 days of wearing your Oura Ring, it will also gather data to work out your sleep chronotype, which can determine whether you’re a night owl or a morning person.
I like that you can add tags to each evening to help log patterns or see what may be affecting your sleep, such as eating a later meal, drinking a coffee late in the day or experiencing illness, which can all negatively affect your sleep. On the flipside, you can add in behaviours that positively affect your sleep (like pre-bed yoga or having a warm bath). It really helps to give a good overview of what works—and doesn’t work—for you.
I’ve been working hard to prioritise sleep, and it’s showing up in my sleep scores, which are consistently around the 80/100 mark, so it’s motivating to see the efforts pay off. Although I definitely noticed how illness and stress also affected my quality of sleep on days when it wasn’t so high.
Activity
The Oura Ring also tracks your activity, but you don’t have to be a regular gym-goer to benefit from it. It captures daily activity from doing chores around the house (turns out that even vacuuming counts) or walking. But it’s also good at detecting other types of exercise like running, dancing and a whole other bunch of exercises (it can even pick up if you’re skiing, doing martial arts or playing basketball.) It’s also waterproof, so you can wear it while swimming.
It will also tell you the calories burned, your step count and what heart rate zones you’re reaching when exercising, from Zone 0 (the lowest heart rate) all the way through to Zone 5 (full-throttle exercise that pushes you to your absolute limits). I found this insight helpful, as while I do a lot of walking and reformer Pilates, my heart rate wasn’t reaching Zones 3, 4 or 5 quite so often, so it’s encouraged me to incorporate more cardio into my weekly routine.
One thing I will say is that I noticed that my Oura Ring never picked up my reformer Pilates workouts (mostly because the movements are slower and less noticeable than, say, running, where your body is moving more regularly). As this is my primary form of exercise, this was annoying. But you can manually add your workouts if something hasn’t been tracked by the ring automatically. Amusingly, when I was drying my hair with a hot brush one evening, the Oura Ring detected it as a workout.
I also like that the Oura app encourages me to stretch my legs if I’ve been sitting down at my desk for too long (guilty), so it helps me to stay active in even small ways, which all add up over time.
Stress and Resilience
(Image credit: Stress)
Tracking my stress levels has been the most eye-opening part of wearing my Oura Ring. Measuring your heart metrics, it can detect when you’re feeling calm and zen (in the Relaxed and Restored modes) as well as when you’re feeling more switched or stressed (during Engaged and Stressed modes).
It’s interesting to see how they can fluctuate during different days and what activities bring on stress or restoration. Not all stress time is bad (Oura says activities that bring about excitement or enjoyment can also be logged as stressful; equally, a stressful work day or a bad commute can also be stressful), but it can be helpful to see the amount of stress versus rest you’re experiencing day-to-day, and see in real-time how well your body bounces back.
My ring had detected some moderate cumulative stress, and while my body was showing signs of solid resilience, it’s been needing more attention lately, so I’ve been looking at working to reduce my cortisol levels. The app helps to give you suggestions on ways to relax and unwind. You can access in-app meditations, and you see in real time how it helps to bring your body back to a more relaxed state of mind. It’s helped me to prioritise both mental and physical rest and make active steps to improve my resilience. We all know that behaviours like meditation and yoga are good for the mind and body, but it’s another thing being able to see its effects in personalised data—I’m much more likely to actually do it when I can see positive results.
Cycle Tracking
Another feature of the Oura Ring is being able to track your menstrual cycle. It does so by measuring your body temperature, helping to predict not only when your period is due, but when you’re ovulating as well. It’s been extremely accurate in predicting the start of my period, and it’s helpful to know where I’m at in my cycle each month, when I may need to rest more during the luteal phase, or when I might have more energy for activities in the follicular phase. If you want to help conceive, it will also predict your optimum window for conception.
Out of all of the features, I found this one to be the most underwhelming, to be honest. While you can log how heavy your period is, there is no way to tag other symptoms (as of yet) that you might have during your cycle that other period-tracking apps have. So I favour apps like Stardust (which can be connected to the Oura Ring) to log and track other symptoms for my menstrual cycle health.
Heart Health
You can also see data on your heart health, and this goes hand-in-hand with the stress tab to see how much restorative time you get versus stress, as well as your current heart rate, sleeping range and activity range, which give you a picture of your cardiovascular health. I was delighted to see that my heart health age was lower than my actual age, and it motivates me to keep up with exercise and manage my stress.
Symptom Radar
(Image credit: @eleanorvousden for Who What Wear UK)
A great feature is the Symptom Radar. Measuring your biometrics, it can detect if something is straining your body or if you’re coming down with something. It flagged when I was unwell; however, it took a couple of days into my illness for the ring to register it. That being said, it helped me to prioritise rest until I was better. When the symptom radar detects something, you can turn on ‘Rest Mode’, which will pause your activity goal. You can also turn on rest mode for jet lag, illness or injuries to help you prioritise rest and recovery. It’s helped me to be kinder to myself on days when rest is needed.
Other Features
There are lots of other nice features of the Oura Ring. It includes the Advisor, which is an AI-style chat where you can ask it just about anything about your health metrics, or ask for advice on how to create a good bedtime routine, ways to manage stress and more. You can always refer back to older conversations, too.
The Oura app can also be linked with other health apps, including period-tracking apps like Natural Cycles and Stardust, fitness apps like Strava and The Sculpt Society, nutrition apps such as Cronometer and Zero, as well as apps like Headspace and Open to support meditation and breathwork.
Another cool feature is being able to take a photo of your meal, and the Oura app can identify foods and tell you how nutritious they are. I haven’t used it all that often, perhaps because I was testing during the festive season, where I didn’t need an app to tell me that cheese and biscuits aren’t a highly nutritious meal. But it’s nice to have.
Lastly, you can also consolidate your data into trends and reports. This can be helpful for looking back on previous weeks or months, or supplying data such as your cycle or sleep to medical professionals. Plus, if you happen to lose your ring, you can trace it on the Oura app.
The Verdict
Having worn my Oura Ring over the past few months, I can honestly say that I can’t imagine being without it now. There is so much I love about it, and the more I wear the ring, the more insights I get about my health. But there are also a few things I dislike.
The Pros: I have a much better understanding of my health, particularly with my sleep and stress levels, and I like that the Oura app provides actionable tips to improve them. You can get down into the really nitty-gritty with the data if you want to, but it’s not forced upon you. Upon opening up the app, you can see at a glance how your sleep, stress and activity fare to help inform how you want to approach your day.
A nice surprise of reviewing it has been that my activity levels are much higher than I thought (even housework all adds up!), and it’s helping me to manage my stress better and prioritise a good sleep routine.
The design is also sleek and comfortable to wear, and is much more discreet than other wearable health trackers. Plus, the range of colours means you’ll find one to match your jewellery or style. There really is a wealth of information at your fingertips, and it gets better and more accurate the longer you wear your ring.
Whilst some reviews have noted dwindling battery life, this isn’t something I’ve experienced yet. I only need to charge it once every 5-6 days, and a full charge takes 30 mins.
The Cons: The main con is the initial investment, which, depending on the colour you buy, can set you back nearly £500. On top of that, you’ll also need to commit to a £6 monthly fee to access all the features on the Oura app. Personally, I think this ought to be included as standard. However, it does mean that any updates or new features will be available to you without having to buy a new Oura Ring.
I should also mention that my ring has become quite scratched, so I’d recommend buying a cover for it and wearing the ring on your non-dominant hand to reduce damage, or removing it for activities like weight-lifting. Lastly, I wish that the ring would pick up workouts like Pilates better; however, it had no trouble identifying other exercises, so I’m willing to see past this.
The Final Verdict: If you’re someone who is really into tracking your health and wellness, you’ll love the Oura Ring—especially if, like me, you’re really nerdy about tracking all your health vitals.
Of course, this type of investment is a nice-to-have purchase, and there’s definitely an argument that you don’t need a tracker to tell you slept badly when your body knows you’ve had a bad night’s sleep. It’s sensible not to obsess over the data too much and stay in tune with your body, but I do feel the Oura Ring has made a positive difference in my health habits.
However, with all the details and insights the Oura Ring has provided me over the past few months, it’s become a valuable part of my daily routine and has actively helped me to improve many areas of my health. And for that, I think it’s a worthwhile investment.
Shop Oura Rings:
Oura
Ring 4 Brushed Silver
Oura
Ring 4 Ceramic Petal
Oura
Ring 4 Ceramic Cloud
Oura
Ring 4 Ceramic Midnight
How We Tested
I’ve been wearing my Oura Ring 4 every day for three months, tracking my vitals every single day and overnight to track my sleep. I put the ring to the test through exercise, during restful and stressful days, and during times of illness to see how the ring fared at capturing my health data. I’ve tested all features of the app and noted how well the ring tracked my sleep, activity, menstrual cycle, stress and other health vitals.
Why Trust Us
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