Oura Ring 4 Review: still on top — for now (with a hint from the Hangry Cat, not the Gyroscope)
Oura updated the charging dock. It is larger, thicker and looks more sleek than previous docks. Unfortunately, my hangry cat had no problems knocking it off my nightstand. I wish Oura had opted for a more convenient charging case like many of its rivals, but alas. Maybe next time.
Source: Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now
Oura Ring 4 Review: still on top — for now [https://www.theverge.com/24268024/oura-ring-4-review-smart-rings-wearables
The things that are together give Oura an edge. The app is polished, I never have to think twice about syncing, the company puts immense effort into continually improving accuracy, and it’s had frequent feature updates in the past year. I’ve no doubt Oura’s competitors will start catching up here. Samsung and Ultrahuman aren’t too far off. For now, Oura is the one to beat.
The Today tab contains a timeline of your activities and cards that highlight different things depending on time of day. Vitals is where you’ll find all your metrics, albeit in a more digestible format. My Health is where you’ll find longer-term health trends and reports. All redesigns take a hot second to adjust to, but overall, I’ve found this to be a helpful reorganization.
Source: Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now
The Oura ring for smart watches and other gadgets: What do we have to learn from the years of Oura’s success?
The hardware experience isn’t drastically different. Oura won’t keep new software or changes to the app away from them. That’s great! But it means there’s little incentive for folks with a Gen 3 to upgrade unless their battery is toast, especially since the starting price has increased to $350, and there doesn’t seem to be a trade-in program. Current Oura members can get a 10 percent discount. The Oura Ring 4 is best for new users because they can find a size that fits them.
Another needed improvement: automatic activity detection has been expanded to 40 activities. Oura has a list of roughly 30 of them. Since location permissions are enabled, the ring is even better since it will be able to create automatic gps route maps. It’s flexible for smartwatch users, too. Wea picked out the walks easily, I usually don’t track walks on my watch. The start and end time were also accurate. I like to record my workouts with a watch. The manual tracking or imported activities were prioritized so that I didn’t have to worry about duplicate activity records.
A big reason for that is this is a heavily studied device. For example, a recently published peer-reviewed study compared the accuracy of its sleep algorithm to the Apple Watch Series 8 and Fitbit Sense 2. Oura’s algorithm was found to be 5 percent more accurate than the Apple Watch and 10 percent more than Fitbit at detecting sleep stages. You should take all studies, including this one, with a healthy dose of skepticism. The researcher here is a member of Oura’s medical advisory board, which means that some studies and meta reviews are better than others. That said, Oura has also consistently made an effort to partner with outside researchers to validate its results for years. Even if the results aren’t exciting, it still has a record of publishing them. It can be seen from big companies like Apple, but it is rare from smaller companies.
This is and will continue to be Oura’s greatest obstacle. Its rivals have made a point of not subscriptions. For example,samsung has large coffers and interesting ideas about how smart rings should interact with other gadgets. When used with a GALAXY WATCH, the GALAXY ring can have gesture controls for the camera and has longer battery life. If Apple comes out with a smart ring, it’ll be a dark day at Oura headquarters. Meanwhile, smaller rivals like RingConn can undercut Oura’s price, even if the tracking is more basic.
Source: Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now
How many times do you have to agree to use smart devices? Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now (and for now)
Oura believes that the best is worth paying for. It’s a gambit that will probably hold so long as everyone else is playing catch-up. It’s hard to keep a lead forever for anyone who races.
Every smart device requires you to agree to a series of terms and condition before you are able to use it. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. Most people can’t negotiate, and so we started counting how many times you have to agree to use devices when we review them.
To use an Oura Ring, you must pair it with an iOS / Android smartphone. The phone’s privacy policy and terms of service are included. Permissions for location data, etc. may also be shared with you.
Source: Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now
How Many Do I Need? The New Aperiodic Rings and Their Impact on Women’s Health in the Era of Personalized Health Monitoring
There’s an improvement in battery life. Up to seven or eight days can be had on a single charge. I have been able to get about six days with the power-guzzling blood oxygen sensor enabled. I have three to four days with a Gen 3. Again, your mileage will vary depending on ring size. The large battery and the larger size. It’s a big deal, I’m not sure if I ever got longer with the first-gen RingConn and the same thing with theSamsung Ring when it was coupled with a wristwatch.
Design-wise, this all-titanium ring is nice but not dramatically different from other premium options like the Samsung Galaxy Ring or the Ultrahuman Ring Air. Older Oura models have flat or slanted tops that will show more of a difference. All of the fourth-gen rings are fully round. The Gen 3 has been around for some time, but Oura made it fully round in 2022, which I found more comfortable. If you’re looking to upgrade, I highly recommend you try the new kit first. I was a size 8 in the old rings, and now I’m a size 9. There are four new sizes in Oura’s size range. If you were previously a size 6 or 13, you may find one of the newer sizes fits you better.
For the summer, I wore six smart rings at once. I wanted to see which was best, and the Oura Ring Gen 3 was the clear winner. The Oura Ring 4 is now a new winner after two weeks since my experiment ended.
The Oura Ring 4 extends the company’s lead over the competition. The question is how long Oura can maintain it when its rivals cost less, eschew subscriptions, and have started innovating in new directions.
This year, more women than men wear the Oura ring—yes, that chunky finger nugget that is, or was, the health tracking tool for every Huberman-listening, MMA-fighting, raw-meat-eating tech bro. Women in their twenties are more likely to buy rings than any other group. Fifty-nine percent of Oura ring wearers are women, compared to the rate of other groups.
I’m a woman, and I’ve worn an Oura ring consistently for several years now because it’s the only tool that can reliably predict my period. Many fitness trackers now have a temperature sensing feature that purportedly allows you to track that drop in basal body temperature (BBT) that accurately predicts your period, and that you used to only be able to measure with a thermometer under your tongue right when you get out of bed. However, in my testing, smart rings like the Oura are the only devices that that have consistently caught it.
The new ring doesn’t have any bumps. The sensors—which include red and infrared LEDs for blood oxygen; green and red LEDs for heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep respiration; a digital temperature sensor; and an accelerometer—are recessed inside the body of the ring to make it thinner and more wearable. It also comes in a much bigger size range, with sizes from 4 to 15, although I again sized into my ring size 8.