The Oura Ring Is a $300 Sleep Tracker That Provides Tons of Data. But Is It Worth It? | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Ayanna Redwood-Crawford

Ayanna Redwood-Crawford is a writer focused on sleep. She has tested body pillows, mattresses, and other sleep technology.

We’re currently testing the recently released Oura Ring 4, and will update this guide soon with our impressions.

If you haven’t heard of the Oura Ring yet, you’ve probably seen it on someone’s finger. The tiny health- and sleep-tracking device has been a favorite of fitness enthusiasts and celebrities since it debuted in 2015.

I tested the Oura Ring Gen3, which tracks and analyzes a host of metrics, including your heart-rate variability (HRV), blood oxygen rate, body temperature, and sleep duration. It uses this data to give you three daily scores, tallying the quality of your sleep, activity, and “readiness.” It can also determine your chronotype (your body’s natural preferences for sleep or wakefulness), give insight into hormonal factors that can affect your sleep, and (theoretically) alert you when you’re getting sick.

Oura recently released the Oura Ring 4, which we're currently testing.

I wore the Oura Ring Gen3 continuously for six months; it gave me tons of data about myself and helped me pinpoint areas in my sleep and health that I could improve. It’s also more comfortable and discreet to wear than most wristband wearable trackers.

However, the ring costs about $300 or more, depending on the style and finish, and Oura’s app now requires a roughly $72 yearly subscription to access most of the data and reports.

If you just want to track your sleep cycles and get tips, a free (or modestly priced) sleep-tracking app may do the trick. And despite some improvements, the Oura Ring struggles to track workouts, so if that’s important to you, a dedicated fitness tracker might be a better choice.

The Oura Ring provides highly accurate heart-rate monitoring and solid information on your sleep cycles. But it’s more expensive than many sleep and fitness trackers, and it struggles to log exercise.

As a staff writer on Wirecutter’s sleep team, I test mattresses and gear related to getting a better night’s sleep, including wearable sleep trackers and body pillows.

For this guide:

Before the Oura Ring, most health- and fitness-tracking wearables were bulky wristwatches like the Fitbit or Apple Watch. The titanium, wedding-band-like Oura Ring is sleek and discreet. It’s worn by NBA stars to perfect their game (and, during the height of the pandemic, to attempt to detect COVID-19 outbreaks in the league).

Oura released the third-generation ring in 2021. The device shines light beams (infrared and red and green LED) through your skin and uses sensors to measure your respiratory rate, heart rate, HRV, blood oxygen levels, and body temperature. An accelerometer logs your activity and movement. The accompanying app uses the data collected during the previous day to generate three daily scores when you wake: Sleep, Activity, and Readiness.

Oura calculates your Sleep Score by looking at your total sleep time (including naps), your sleep efficiency (time asleep versus time awake), and time spent in REM sleep and deep sleep (the most restorative type of sleep). It also considers your sleep latency (how long it takes you to fall asleep versus when you go to bed) and how often you wake up and move during the night. Though not part of your Sleep Score, the Oura app also determines your chronotype (effectively, whether you’re a morning person or a night owl) and body clock (your optimal sleep schedule) after 90 days of using the device.

The Activity Score is based on how much you moved around the previous day. It includes how well you’ve heeded the app’s reminders to move (if it deems you’ve been sitting for too long), how frequently you engage in medium-to-high-intensity activity, and how often you meet your fitness goals.

Your Readiness Score combines elements of your Sleep and Activity Scores to calculate your readiness for the day. In addition to sleep and activity data, this score considers your HRV (comparing your current week’s trend against your three-month average), skin temperature (unexplained temperature changes could indicate illness), and your recovery index (how long it takes your heart rate to stabilize during the night).

Each of these scores is rated on a scale of 0 to 100. Scoring 85 or higher is considered optimal; anything lower means Oura thinks you have room for improvement. You can share and compare your scores with friends via Oura’s Circles feature.

Oura has improved its sleep-tracking accuracy. Oura improved the accuracy of its sleep-tracking data with the third-generation ring. In a 2016 validation study (PDF) of the first-generation ring, Oura found that the ring’s sleep staging agreed with polysomnography—the gold-standard sleep test you’d receive at a sleep lab—only about 66% of the time. A 2021 validation study of the third-generation Oura Ring indicated that the ring agreed with polysomnography 79% of the time. Company-led validation studies need to be taken with a grain of salt, and assessing the accuracy of nonmedical sleep-tracking technology is complex. But Oura’s improved validation results suggest that their sleep data has become more reliable as the device has evolved. A 2024 study, conducted by independent researchers with funding from Oura, concluded that the Oura Ring “did not significantly differ from PSG for the measures time in bed, total sleep time, sleep onset latency, sleep period time, wake after sleep onset, time spent in light sleep, and time spent in deep sleep.”

The data is easy to read and digest. The Oura Ring, like many fitness wearables, throws a lot of data at you in the form of color-coded charts and graphs. It can seem overwhelming at first, but the weekly, monthly and quarterly reports synthesize all of your information into easy-to-understand language. I could typically interpret my data and the app’s recommendations at a glance.

It’s stylish, lightweight, and comfortable. The Oura Ring looks and feels like a piece of jewelry. It comes in two styles (smooth or faceted) and multiple finishes (silver, black, matte black, gold, and rose gold), so it’s easier to coordinate with your clothing and accessories than most wristband-style trackers. I primarily wear gold jewelry, and the smooth-finish ring in gold blended in with my other accessories. And although I typically dislike sleeping with jewelry on, the ring was lightweight enough that it didn’t bother me.

It has a longer battery life than most trackers. I tested the Oura Ring Gen3 alongside several other wearable trackers, including the FitBit Inspire 3 and the Garmin Venu Sq 2. The Oura Ring lasted between five to six days on a single charge, while those devices had to be recharged every two to four days. (Note: The Oura’s blood oxygen monitoring causes the battery to drain significantly faster, but it can be turned off.)

Its HRV tracking is accurate and surprisingly interesting. The Oura Ring was one of the first trackers to measure HRV, or the regularity (or irregularity) of the time between pulses. High HRV is generally good; it suggests you’re relaxed and well. Low HRV (when your heart beats in sync with a metronome) may be associated with physical or emotional stress.

Oura’s validation study (PDF) shows that its HRV measurements are 98.4% accurate when compared against an electrocardiogram. Anecdotally, the Oura Ring’s measurements of my HRV matched my physical and emotional state in revealing ways. For example, my HRV was very low for several days over the summer after I experienced a death in my family. It was affirming to have the Oura Ring validate how much stress and emotions affected my physical well-being.

Its recommendations are personalized, without being pushy. The Oura app gives suggestions for steps you can take to be more active, rest more, or sleep better (and thus, improve your three scores). I found the Oura Ring’s recommendations were more personalized and more achievable than those of some other sleep trackers I tested. For example, instead of repeatedly telling me to be in bed by 10 p.m. (something that was never going to happen), the app adapted to my sleep habits and made a new, more realistic bedtime goal.

If I woke up feeling groggy, the app might suggest I enter Rest Mode. Caroline Kryder, product manager and women’s health lead at Oura, explained that the app will encourage Rest Mode if your temperature is elevated, your heart rate looks off, or your body is showing signs of strain. I took it as a delightful cue to head back to Wordle, or, even better, take a nap. Then, when the app had logged that I had taken some downtime, it would nudge me to put my newfound energy into action—aka, to take a walk. After a while, I started feeling like I had better habits with these bits of gentle encouragement, rather than scolding.

It’s still not a great fitness tracker. The third-generation Oura has improved its fitness-tracking capabilities compared with earlier models, which couldn’t collect much data at all during exercise. But in our testing, it still struggled to categorize certain types of exercise accurately. For example, when I worked out on a stationary bike, the Oura Ring clocked it as a brisk walk. It also failed to accurately log weight lifting, cycling, and running, whether I was outside or on a treadmill. (Other reviewers have reported similar issues.) You can edit miscategorized exercises in the app, but it’s a hassle. (The Oura Ring also integrates with Strava, a fitness-tracking app and social media platform, but it's not seamless: you have to be signed into the Strava app and select the activity you want to track.)

If accurate workout logs are important to you, consider a dedicated fitness tracker.

You can lose your data. During testing, I experienced a firmware issue that caused me to lose a lot of valuable data. Hot tip: Whenever you’re updating the ring’s firmware, keep your phone in your hand while wearing the ring. I made the mistake of moving my phone a few feet away while the ring was on its charging station, causing the update to crash. This prevented my Oura Ring from connecting to Bluetooth and basically made it obsolete. It took several weeks of troubleshooting until I was able to successfully update the firmware and track my data again.

It’s expensive and requires a monthly subscription. The Oura Ring costs between $300 to $550, depending on the design and finish (the technology and features are the same in all models). And though the app used to be free, it now requires an annual subscription for about $72 to access most of Oura’s data and analysis. (The cost of the ring and subscription are eligible for reimbursement through a flexible spending account [FSA] or health spending account [HSA].)

And it’s easy to lose. The Oura’s high price tag could sting even more if you lose your ring, which I almost did several times. Though the ring is water resistant and can withstand temperatures from 14 °F to 129 °F, I prefer not to wear rings when I’m cooking, handling cleaning products, or washing my face. This made for a lot of panicking when I set the ring down and couldn’t find it. The Oura app for iOS has a Find My Ring feature, which will show the last location that your Oura Ring connected to your phone. But keep in mind that that might not be where you left it.

We’re currently testing the Oura Ring 4. The new ring, which costs $350 for the basic finish, has a sleeker design and comes in four more sizes than the third-generation Oura Ring. It also has updated features and hardware, including more sensors, longer battery life, and a thinner, more comfortable design.

Oura says the fourth-generation ring’s “Smart Sensing” technology has upgraded sensors, improving the device’s ability to continuously track vitals like blood-oxygen saturation, breathing disturbances, and heart rate. The company has also improved the device’s accuracy when tracking activities, like whether you’re walking or cycling (a feature we found lacking in the third-generation Oura).

Lastly, Oura has also redesigned the app so the data from its new features is easier to parse. For example, the new “Score Shortcuts” tab on the app’s homepage allows Oura users to see a snapshot of their daily “sleep,” “readiness”, and “activity” scores, plus their daytime heart rate and where they are in their menstrual cycle. This, and other handy tabs, should make navigating the app’s plethora of information easier.

We will update this article soon with our findings.

Justin Redman wrote a previous version of this guide, first published in 2020. This article was edited by Christina Colizza and Courtney Schley.

Seema Khosla, MD, medical director at North Dakota Center for Sleep, phone interview, July 26, 2023

Caroline Kryder, product manager and women’s health lead at Oura, phone interview, June 7, 2023

Ayanna Redwood-Crawford

Ayanna Redwood-Crawford is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York, covering sleep topics. Previously she worked with Sad Girls Club as a managing editor and was a copywriter and editor predominantly for female-led businesses. When she isn’t writing and sleeping (for research), you can usually find her baking (a lot!).

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