When Oura tapped me on the shoulder to see if I was interested in trying out the Oura Ring 4, I was quick to say yes to it. I have contemplated the usefulness of smart rings for a while, and it was a no brainer to accept the challenge.
TL;DR: The Oura Ring 4 Review
The Verdict: The Oura Ring 4 is the most refined smart ring on the market, trading the “bumps” of the Gen 3 for a sleek, flush interior. It is a masterful passive health coach, though the mandatory A$9.99/month subscription remains a bitter pill to swallow.
Design: Available in Titanium and a new Ceramic range. It is incredibly light (3.3g–5.2g), making it the perfect wearable for those who find smartwatches too bulky or irritative to the wrist.
Key Discovery: Moisture management is critical. To avoid skin sensitivity, the ring and finger must be dried thoroughly after handwashing or exercise.
Standout Feature: Beyond sleep and readiness, the Oura Ring 4 offers impressive smart home potential via Home Assistant integration for automated “wind-down” routines.
Price: Starting at A$569 (Titanium) up to A$799 (Gold/Ceramic).
The Oura Ring 4 Sizing Kit: Why You Can’t Skip This Step
Unlike other gear where the review unit lands on my desk and I get started, reviewing a smart ring is a two step process.
First you have to get the sizing kit, which is a set of plastic replica of the real Oura Ring 4 ring from Size 4 to 15.
Oura suggests wearing it for a few days, through all kinds of conditions, so that you can work out the correct size for your finger. The recommendation is for the fore finger, realistically you could also use any other finger that is your preference. A thing to bear in mind is that the battery life will vary depending on the size of the ring.
I tried the mule on for about a week based on the recommendation, but eventually settled on a size that works for my middle and ring finger – weather dependent. Ring finger for summer, middle for winter.
Also of note, if you have the sizing kit for the older generation of Oura, don’t be tempted to run with it. The design has changed, the previous sensor bumps are gone from the inside of the band. Plus the sizing kit is free so no point skipping this step. Unlike traditional jewellery, there is no walking into a shop and asking them to resize it afterwards.
Once you locked in the size, you can proceed to order the real ring.
Titanium vs. Ceramic: Exploring Oura Ring 4 Finishes
Oura has made the Oura Ring 4 a design statement, rather than just a functional ring. There are options of the titanium design – in Silver, Black, Stealth, Brushed Silver, Gold and Rose Gold colourways.
More recently they launched the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic range. It is the Oura Ring 4, but crafted in zirconia ceramic and available in Midnight, Cloud, Tie and Petal. Lis is already eyeing the Cloud, and she has already tried out the size and awaiting my verdict.
The Oura App: Seamless Setup and Health Profiling
Yes you will need to download the Oura app to set up your Oura Ring 4 and to record your health data.
The app will guide you through the process, which was fairly painless. You do need to pop your ring onto the charger and have Bluetooth enabled on your device.
The setup wizard will ask you for your date of birth, height, weight, sex assigned at birth and unit preference. If I recall correctly, all the other personal health devices I have used all require this information. This is so that it can be more specific at analysing the data from the ring to suit you,
Other information it asks for during the setup process are:
Focus area: what is important to you out of six options available.
- Be more present and focused
- Be productive and energetic
- Improve my athletic performance
- Develope my learning skils and creativity
- Manage stress levels
- Improve my health
It also ask you how you are sleeping at the moment, with options from good to terrible.
Diving in deeper, the app asks what factors are affecting your sleep.
Lastly it asks what your most common activity is.
Once the motion sensor sync is completed, your Oura Ring 4 ring is ready to roll.
The Skin Sensitivity Warning: Tips for Wearing Smart Rings Daily
I haven’t worn a ring since I separated from my ex. It kind of feels a little odd to be putting one back on, especially on the ring finger but it is where it feels natural. I tried the fore finger position for a few days with the sizing ring and I just couldn’t get used to it.
I am going to put this one up front, rather than bury it in the details later. Wearing a smart ring is not the same as wearing a piece of traditional jewellery. There are sensors on the inside of the band, and they do things. There is an electrical impedance that goes on.
So unlike a piece of metal that is … mindless, you do have to be mindful when wearing a smart ring.
This is my experience and your mileage may vary. When I first started wearing the Oura Ring 4, I treated it like I would with a normal ring. Wear it all the time, wash my hands, dry my hands, sweat, do stuff, get dirty. Rinse it off, soap my hands. Carry on. After a little while of this, I notice weeping sores on my skin. Two on the finger that I wear the Oura Ring 4 on at the time – spaced exactly the distance of the sensors apart.
The first time it happened, I stopped wearing the ring and let it heal. I did the same thing again because I am a recidivist, and got the same result. I reached out to the Oura team and was told to take more care – dry the inside of the ring and my finger after getting it wet.
So I took a few weeks off from the testing, let everything settle and heal, and followed the instructions from Oura. Well bugger me, that seems to have done the trick. And I am now acutely aware how often I wet or wash my hands too. Because every single time, I will take the Oura Ring off and dry it fully.
One thing I have to say, compared to a smart watch or an activity tracker, wearing the Oura Ring 4 really just fades into the background. It weighs between 3.3 to 5.2 grams, depending on the size. The larger the size, the more battery they can fit in. By mobile device standard, the battery capacity is absolutely miniscule, but Oura claims up to eight days of usage.
Why is the weight important? If you are like me and suffers from De Quervain’s, you would avoid anything that puts weight and pressure on the tendon that runs along the thumb side of the wrist to the base of your thumb. Unless you decided to wear the Oura Ring 4 on your thumb, you neatly sidestep the triggers to De Quervain’s.
On the other hand, this one is totally on me. I take it off before I do anything involving lots of water – washing dishes, shower. For the latter I will put the Oura Ring 4 on charge and to keep my Bengal from playing with it. Because it is so light weight, I often forget to put it back on after.
Daily Performance: Sleep, Stress, and Readiness Tracking
The correct position to wear the Oura Ring 4 is to have the sensors on the inside of your finger, rather than the outside.
If you look at the ring, there is an indentation on the band – if that is sitting on the inside then you are wearing it in the preferred position. That marking also serves to tell you how to align it to the charger as well.
It should be flagged early that the Oura Ring 4 is not an activity tracker in the sense of an Apple Watch, or Withings, Samsung. It is designed as a “passive” health companion with a focus for holistic recovery and long-term wellness. If you are wanting something for real-time performance then this is not it.
The metrics that it tracks by default are:
- Readiness
- Sleep
- Activity
- Heart Rate
- Stress
Optionally you can also add resilience to the list.
As a passive health companion, the Oura Ring 4 needs to work with data and trends – so it will take a little bit of time to become useful.
For example, the first few days I was using it, it helpfully suggested to me to get ready for bed … at 9pm. I don’t think I have been to bed at that hour since I was 14. It is off by a good four or five hours for my current routine. Cute but misguided, but it is early days.
Honestly I was quite curious as to what the Oura Ring 4 would say about my metrics. By all accounts I have a hectic life – a full time day job, leading the team at DRN, kids, pets, and all the chores and activities associated with that.
My sleep deficit chart could be mistaken as a dive graph for an expedition to the Challenger Deep. On face value you could say my lack of sleep is at chronic levels, but when the Oura measures it against the restorative levels of my actual rest, it calculates my readiness score to be generally good.
Similarly I had expected a less than optimal score for stress, considering my workload for the past few weeks, but it seems I manage stress internally well. Or as a manager once described it, paddling like a one legged duck – all serene above water but going like mad under water.
For each of the metrics, the Oura app will give a blurb and analysis of your state. Giving you a bit of commentary such as when it thought my sleep had been interrupted, but my recovery is good.
However the real value is when it dives further into the analysis. For example last night’s sleep was just fair at 64, with a note that my sleep timing was late and suggested trying to go to bed earlier tonight. It tracked that the midpoint of my sleep was 50 minutes behind my chronotype.
What that translates to is that it tracked that my body wants to be in deep sleep almost an hour earlier than I really was. Is it the end of the world? Hardly, but I have been feeling out of sync lately with the feeling of extreme fatigue during the day that I have to push through. This is the first time a wellness app has given me a potential cause for it. It also tracked some variations in my breathing regularity during my sleep.
Overall Oura is telling me that I am running low on reserves and should pay better attention to my rest periods. Given enough regular usage and data, it will create detailed analysis of the other metrics as well.
I initially thought by passive, Oura has skipped the step count but I found it buried in the information eventually.
Durability Test: How the Stealth Finish Handles Daily Life
Like everyone else, I do care about maintaining the look and finish of my gadgets – to a degree. I don’t feel particularly attached to needing something to remain pristine. A bit of patina adds character and uniqueness to everything.
I have worn my Oura Ring 4 through most tasks during the review period. Overall the finish has held up well with some light wear and scratching showing up. Similar to wearing a normal ring. My review unit is in the Stealth colourway, which is like a dark gunmetal and personally I think the wear has improved the look.
The Learning Curve: Maintenance and Skin Sensitivity
I feel that the issues I had with the Oura Ring 4 was a me problem. Possibly sensitive skin which isn’t a huge surprise. The regime of taking the ring off to thoroughly dry it might be annoying when I am constantly getting it wet – washing, cleaning, making bread, kneading the dough. Even I was surprised at just how often my hands get wet.
Smart Home Integration: Using Oura Ring 4 with Home Assistant
For users with a smart home automation system such as Home Assistant, the Oura Ring 4 can easily be integrated into the views. For me I have Dashboards set up in my Home Assistant environment, and glance cards for everyone.
Although it is not an official support, it was simple to create the necessary OAuth details to integrate into HA. There are forty-eight entities that are exposed via the integration which can lend to some useful automations.
Your Oura telling you to get ready for sleep? Trigger a wind down routine thirty minutes before the recommended bed time, fade your lights to a warm amber glow, play soothing wind down music.
Or if your readiness score is below a threshold, have HA automatically delay your wake up routine and trigger something gentler to ease you into the day.
For the caffeine fiends like myself, the sensor for the sleep score can be used to trigger a turn on command to my coffee machine.
Oura Ring 4 Australia: Price, Subscription, and Final Verdict
I sat on this review for a little while. Mainly to resolve the issue with the sores it was causing on my finger. However I was also getting used to what the Oura Ring 4 is for, given that my previous experiences are all with smart watches and activity trackers.
In my initial setup I chose “Improve My Health” as my goal. I feel that the feedback from Oura based on my habits are genuinely insightful. There is a thoughtfulness to the information that covers the spectrum of key points, with a suggestion on how to start getting on a track to improve.
As I said earlier, it is not a real time activity tracker. Consider it more like a coach that watches the replay of your championship game at the Australian Open, and pointing out all the key points on where you did good, and where you can improve.,
The Oura Ring 4 is priced starting at A$569 at the bottom of the titanium design range and going up to A$799 in the Gold and Rose Gold finishes. The Ceramic range is priced at A$799 and is available from the Oura website directly, or from JB Hi-Fi.
The bad news is? All the best stuff are locked behind a monthly subscription fee of A$9.99, after your free trial month. You can opt for the annual subscription at A$109.99. Without the subscription you will only be able to access daily scores for Sleep, Readiness and Activity.
If you are on a journey to improve your overall health, the details the subscription provide is very useful. On top of that, Oura Ring 4 offers the most choice of colours in the market at this point in time. So your ring and your data can be the perfect match for the unique you. Despite the initial teething issue I encountered, I think I will be pretty happy to stay on the journey.
DRN would like to thank Oura for providing the review unit and health membership.
