Is This Quiet Luxury Health Tracker Worth It?

The Oura Ring 4 starts at $349. Is it worth it?

Earlier this week, I took my dog, Phoebe, on her lunchtime walk. As usual, our first stop was the dog-friendly dive bar across the street, where they prioritize stocking Pupperoni as much as they prioritize stocking Coors Light. As Phoebe scoured the floor for discarded bacon bits, I chatted with our favorite bartender, pausing mid-conversation to point at her left hand and exclaim, “Hannah! Is that what I think it is?”

Hannah blushed and looked down. “Yeah, I got one,” she said sheepishly. “Same,” I said, as I held out my left hand in a Power-Rangers style symbol of solidarity.

Engagement rings? Please. Hannah and I had joined a much more exclusive (at least, in my mind) club: Oura Ring wearers.

The Oura Ring occupies a unique space in the health wearables industry. It’s a fitness tracker, but it doesn’t just count steps. It’s a wearable, but it’s not a watch. It’s incredibly intuitive and packed full of data, but it doesn’t have a screen. So at $349 for the latest model (plus subscription), is it worth it?

What is the Oura Ring?

The Oura Ring is a health wearable in the form of a smart ring. A variety of sensors, LEDs, and an accelerometer track your health metrics, like blood oxygen levels, heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, and movement. It’s water-resistant and designed to be worn 24/7, the better to get a holistic view of your health. Its battery life is up to eight days, depending on how often you use certain features, and it recharges in about an hour. It’s about the width of a traditional wedding band, and Gen 4 comes in six classic finishes.

Since a ring is, by definition, screenless, the Oura App is your go-to for actually diving into your data. Every morning, your app opens to a “Today” tab, where it delivers your Sleep Score, your Readiness Score, and your Activity Goal (which is based on the previous two). You’ll also see an ongoing timeline of your day, which accounts for sleep, naps, activities, and any other data you log.

Another tab shows your Vitals, which is like the TLDR of your most basic stats (Readiness, Sleep, Activity Goal, Cycle Day if you menstruate, Heart Rate, and your Daytime Stress levels). Finally, the third tab, called My Health, zooms out even further to offer insights on your resilience, heart health, and sleep health, among other reports.

Receipts, Proof, Timeline, Screenshots

Editor’s note: This is the section of every IIWI where I’ll share the details about how much I have or have not paid for the product, my scientific and anecdotal testing methods, how long I’ve tested it, and any relevant screenshots.

Receipts

I received my Oura Ring 4 in early December courtesy of their PR team. I was supposed to review it for a freelance gig that later fell through. My subscription is currently comped, although that may change soon.

Proof

In addition to my own testing and research, I talked to a few friends who have the Oura Ring 3 to get a comparison. I also interviewed one of the Oura product managers who worked on the Gen 4 ring to get a few deeper insights into its capabilities.

Timeline

I began testing the Oura Ring 4 on December 8 and haven’t missed a day of wearing it.

Screenshots

Screenshots from the Oura App showing Readiness, Sleep Score, and Timeline

I’ll cut to the chase: I love the Oura Ring 4 and see tremendous potential for it to be used in a way more practical manner than most other health wearables. Here are the highlights I’ve been wowed by in nearly two months of testing:

Let’s Start With the Obvious. It Looks Good.

In order to actually learn from your health wearable, you have to, ya know, wear it. But wrist-based trackers aren’t traditionally very aesthetic (even the screenless WHOOP looks kind of like a house arrest wrist monitor), and I’ve been shamed by too many wedding photographers to believe my hot pink silicone Apple Watch band looks “fine” in formal photos. I went with the gold Oura Ring 4, which blends in well with the rest of my jewelry so I can easily dress it up if I need to.

In fact, I recently wore the Oura Ring 4 (but not my Apple Watch Ultra) while officiating my sister’s wedding, and no one was the wiser!

Can you spot it?

To me, the classic jewelry finishes give the Oura Ring a sense of “if you know, you know,” or even quiet luxury—which makes the price tag easier to stomach right off the bat.

The Fitness Tracking Is Wildly Intuitive

I have been awed by the Oura Ring’s sensitivity (and accuracy) when it comes to auto-detecting fitness activities. Keep in mind, without a screen and buttons, you can’t “start” a workout like you can with the Apple Watch (you can, however, connect the Oura App to your various Health Kits and Peloton Apps to automatically cross-load workouts). In the past week, the Oura Ring has successfully detected and tracked every single walk I’ve taken with Phoebe, a tennis class, strength training, gentle stretching, and even “housework” during the ten minutes it took me to make the bed today. Plus, the sheer range of activities available to log in the Oura App is incredibly comprehensive—niche activities like Nordic walking, orienteering (???), yardwork, and even virtual reality are all available.

Women’s Health Finally Gets a Spotlight

While other fitness trackers and their apps let you log your periods, the Oura Ring takes it a step further by tracking your nightly body temperature to better help users understand their menstrual cycles. It takes about 60 days for the ring to tailor its predictions to your health data, so you do need to manually log your periods at first. Moreover, the app creates a Cycle Insights report that synthesizes your data into a readable report you can share with a trusted medical professional.

In full transparency, I take a low estrogen birth control pill and have for years, so my period is largely absent from my life (and irregular to boot). As I write this, I’m still in the 60 day window, so I can’t fully speak to its predictive abilities quite yet. But! I’m thrilled that the functionality is there and Oura seems to be prioritizing this huge aspect of women’s health (never forget that menstruating women are often excluded from important medical research because it’s “inconvenient”).

Getting Sick Is a Feature, Not a Bug

Have you too, been shamed by your Apple Watch during the throes of a life-changing hangover bout of the flu? Not only does the Oura App have a Symptom Radar that detects signs of strain on your body, but you can also change your ring to Rest Mode, which will pause your activity goal while highlighting your recovery metrics in the next few days. Heads up that the Oura App does love to send notifications if it thinks you’ve been sedentary for too long, but you can toggle those off (you can toggle off calorie counts too, which I love).

No Haptic Notifications

An informal poll among my friends reveals we’re all feeling a little bit overstimulated right now (I wonder why…?). More and more of my pals are deleting social media from their phones (a phenomenon wonderfully explained by Anne Helen Petersen here) and spending more time on Do Not Disturb mode, or treating their phones as landlines. To that end, the Oura Ring is absolutely made for 2025, when we want to be less available, less online, and less buzzed-at.

My (Very Minor) Complaints About the Oura Ring

My quibbles with the Oura Ring are incredibly minor, but here’s what I have noticed:

The Battery Life Doesn’t Quite Live Up to the Hype

While the marketing copy boasts “up to eight days,” the Oura product manager I spoke to went into slightly more detail about battery life variables. Your Oura’s battery life may be affected by the size of your ring, how active you are, and what features are turned on. Pro tip: If you want the longest battery life possible, you can turn off the blood oxygen sensing and location services in Settings.

The Ring Feels Easily Scratched

To be fair, I’m probably pretty tough on my Oura Ring. I’ve worn it basically nonstop, including while playing with my dog, doing mobility work on the floor, moving boxes, and lifting weights (although apparently I’m not supposed to do that—more on that in a sec). After a couple of months, I can definitely see some minor scratches on the surface of the ring. Oura recommends wearing the ring on your non-dominant hand to reduce the amount of contact with everyday items, and they also suggest not wearing it while handling objects made of ceramic, metal, or stone (like when cooking). The Rose Gold finish, specifically, will develop a patina over time.

You’re Not Advised to Wear the Oura Ring While Weight Lifting

This was news to me, but Oura’s product manager kindly told me I wasn’t supposed to wear my ring while strength training or lifting weights—which sort of defeats the purpose of tracking workouts with the ring. The Oura FAQ page says this is because the ring may get scratched, and after a tiny bit of research, I’ve now learned that it can be a really dangerous injury risk to wear rings while working out! Instead, you can manually log your strength training workout or use a wrist-based wearable.

But will I keep wearing my ring while doing my silly little Peloton classes? Probably, tbh.

Is the Oura Ring 4 Worth It?

The Oura Ring 4 is my favorite health tracker I’ve ever tried. The Oura Ring 4 starts at $349 (depending on your chosen finish), and the app subscriptions costs $5.99 USD/month or $69.99 USD/year. It’s HSA- and FSA-eligible. In most cases, I think this smart ring is incredibly worth the cost.

Who would get their money’s worth from the Oura Ring 4?

• Someone looking for an all-in-one health tracker, with more sophisticated sleep, menstruation, and recovery data than other wearables

• Anyone with a period looking to understand more about their body’s natural rhythms, whether that means trying to conceive, trying NOT to conceive, or just deciding whether to pack tampons for that weekend trip

• Style icons who’d rather wear an actual watch or bracelets on their wrists—but still want to know whether they logged a solid 8 hours or met their step goals for the day

If my Oura Ring 4 broke today, would I pay to replace it tomorrow?

I would, one hundred percent. I’ve been so impressed by the data available and I think the insights are only going to get more tailored and more personalized from here.

Verdict: The Oura Ring 4 is WORTH IT.

Got specific questions about the Oura Ring 4? Ask them in the comments!