Recenzja Oura Ring 4: przez cały czas na topie — na razie

For the greater part of this past summer, I wore six smart rings at once. I wanted to see which was best, and the Oura ringing Gen 3 was the clear winner. Well, it’s been about 2 weeks since my experimentation ended, and there’s now a fresh winner: the Oura ringing 4.

Oura has been the top dog in smart rings for the past decade. Sure, there’s been a smart ringing renaissance this year, but its rivals are mostly either just getting into the game or launching a second version. This is the fourth Oura Ring. Oura has spent years collaborating with researchers and conducting its own studies. It’s the most readily available at third-party retail stores in the US; it’s the 1 wellness influencers keep flaunting in TikToks; and it’s seen on the fingers of A-list celebrities. In consequence to increased competition, Oura has launched half a twelve fresh features in the past 12 months. And now, Oura is closing out 2024 with respective hardware and software refinements.

The Oura ringing 4 extends the company’s lead over the competition. The question is how long Oura can keep it erstwhile its rivals cost less, eschew subscriptions, and have started innovating in fresh directions.

Wearing the Oura ringing 4 is better than the Gen 3. Just not by much.

The Oura Gen 2 and Gen 3 rings had resin interiors with domed sensor bumps. The fourth-gen ringing is made entirely of titanium, and the inside is flatter, with recessed sensors. It might not seem like it, but this is awesome engineering for a device so small. Compared to titanium, the resin in older rings diffused light from the sensors in a little precise way. Since rings naturally rotate during the day, it’s besides easy for those sensors to decision out of appropriate alignment. That’s partially why the erstwhile Oura Rings had raised sensor bumps — they ensured good skin contact to mitigate those factors.

This time around, Oura’s introduced a fresh Smart Sensing algorithm that increases the number of sensor signal pathways from 8 to 18. The sensors are placed asymmetrically to let for a variety of distances and measurements. Basically, it now matters little if your ringing rotates and better accounts for the fact that everyone’s fingers are different. This besides means you don’t request those sensor bumps anymore.

My brain appreciates all the engineering sweat and tears that went into making this possible. Technologically speaking, Oura is flexing on its rivals. But practically speaking, it means close to diddly squat for the average wearer. Ninety-nine percent of the time, wearing the Oura ringing 4 felt the same as the Oura ringing Gen 3 and the Gen 2 before that. The only time I noticed a difference was erstwhile I felt bloated. I have knobby knuckles, and the sensor bumps on older Oura Rings could be painful erstwhile trying to take the ringing off. It was a relief to not have that problem this time around.

Design-wise, this all-titanium ringing is good but not dramatically different from another premium options like the Samsung Galaxy Ring or the Ultrahuman ringing Air. You’ll announcement more of a difference if you’re coming from older Oura models with flat or angled tops. All of the fourth-gen rings are full round. This isn’t fresh — Oura introduced full circular versions of the Gen 3 in 2022 — but I’ve found it to be more comfortable. If you are mulling an upgrade, I highly urge trying the fresh sizing kit first. I was a size 8 in the old rings, and now I’m a size 9. Plus, Oura’s size scope has 4 fresh options, spanning sizes 4 to 15. If you were previously a size 6 or 13, you may find 1 of the newer sizes fits you better.

Another improvement: battery life. You can now get up to 7 or 8 days on a single charge. I’ve been able to get about 6.5 days, even with the power-guzzling blood oxygen sensing feature enabled. With a Gen 3, I got 3 to 4 days. Again, your mileage will vary depending on ringing size. (Larger size, larger battery.) This is simply a crucial bump, though I did get longer with the first-gen RingConn and from the Samsung Galaxy ringing erstwhile it was paired with a smartwatch.

Speaking of battery, Oura’s updated the charging dock. It’s larger, metal, and looks sleeker than erstwhile docks. Unfortunately, my hangry cat had no problems knocking it off my nightstand. I want Oura had opted for a more convenient charging case like many of its rivals, but alas. possibly next time.

Oura’s hardware isn’t that much better than the competition. I keep the Galaxy Ring’s concave form is more comfortable, and its charging case more convenient. The Evie Ring’s open-gap plan is besides fetching and clever for those of us prone to bloating. But where Oura trounces everyone else is software and its commitment to science, both in conducting and communicating it.

Let’s start with software. The app has had a much-needed redesign. Oura released respective fresh features and metrics in the past year, turning the dashboard into a cluttered mess. Now everything’s been streamlined into 3 tabs: Today, Vitals, and My Health.

The present tab contains shortcuts to circumstantial metrics, a timeline of all your regular activity, and cards that item different things (e.g., sleep score, readiness, etc) depending on the time of day. Vitals is where you’ll find all your metrics, albeit in a more digestible format. My wellness is where you’ll find longer-term wellness trends and reports. All redesigns take a hot second to adjust to, but overall, I’ve found this to be a helpful reorganization.

Another needed improvement: automatic activity detection has been expanded to 40 activities. (Oura lists about 30 of them here.) This makes the ringing a much better standalone activity tracker, especially since enabling location permissions will besides make automatic GPS way maps. It’s flexible for smartwatch users, too. I typically don’t track walks on my smartwatch, but Oura picked them up easily. Start and end times, as well as the way maps, were besides accurate. Conversely, I much like to evidence my runs and strength sessions with a smartwatch. For those instances, Oura prioritizes manually tracked or imported activities so I didn’t gotta worry about duplicate activity records.

For tracking, Oura cites an external study saying the fresh Smart Sensing algorithm supports a crucial bump in accuracy for signal quality, blood oxygen, and breathing disturbance detection. It besides claims users should see less occurrences of heart rate data gaps both during the day and at night.

It’s impossible for a single reviewer to definitively test these claims. The general consensus is that consumer-grade wearable sleep tracking is broadly accurate at the basics but should be taken with a dense grain of salt. All I can tell you is what I experienced in my own testing. The Oura ringing 4’s sleep and wake times align with my own manual investigating logs. I inactive saw occasional gaps in nighttime heart rate, though it’s hard to say after only 2 weeks whether there were less or greater than before. My heart rate metrics, however, were all on par with my smartwatches — which is simply a good thing. Step counts and calorie estimates can be inflated compared to smartwatches, but that’s been actual of all smart ringing I’ve tested. What I can say for Oura, however, is its measurements are consistent and its margin of mistake is on the smaller side. After years of investigating wearables, I trust the Oura Ring’s measurements for sleep and recovery tracking — in fact, I usage it as a control for evaluating the sleep tracking features of another devices.

A large reason for that is this is simply a heavy studied device. For example, a late 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. Not all studies or meta reviews are created equal, and 1 of the researchers here is simply a associate of Oura’s medical advisory board. That said, Oura has besides consistently made an effort to partner with outside researchers to validate its results for years. It besides has a evidence of publishing these weeds-y findings, even if the results are not the most exciting. You see this from large companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google, but it’s much rarer from smaller companies in niche wearable spaces.

All these things together give Oura the edge among smart rings. The app is polished, I never gotta 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 uncertainty Oura’s competitors will start catching up here. Samsung and Ultrahuman aren’t besides far off. But for now, Oura is the 1 to beat.

The weird thing about the Oura ringing 4 is it’s the best smart ringing you can get right now. I besides think most people don’t request to upgrade.

The hardware experience isn’t drastically different. Oura besides won’t gatekeep any of these fresh software updates or the app redesign to the newest ring. That’s great! But it means there’s small 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, but that’s it.) Really, the Oura ringing 4 is best for fresh users or people who previously couldn’t find a size that fit them.

For those folks, it’s a substance of whether you can tummy the Oura Ring’s single biggest con: the $6 monthly / $70 yearly subscription. I don’t see a point in trying to justify its subscription. You’ll either think everything Oura’s brought to the table is worth it, or you won’t. If you’re the latter, fair enough. My take is that the Oura ringing is worth it if sleep tracking and recovery are your top priorities. Otherwise, a smartwatch is simply a better investment.

This is and will proceed to be Oura’s top obstacle. It’s got a crucial lead in this space, but its rivals have made a point of eschewing subscriptions. Samsung, in particular, has large coffers and interesting ideas about how smart rings should interact with another gadgets like phones and smartwatches. For instance, the Galaxy Ring has motion controls for the Galaxy phone’s camera and gets longer battery life erstwhile utilized with a Galaxy Watch. 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.

Oura is betting that the best is worth paying for. It’s a gambit that will most likely hold so long as everyone else is playing catch-up. But ask anyone who races: it’s hard to keep a lead forever.