Oura Ring 5 – Logs life at a luxury price

Using just one ring for the purpose of measuring health obviously has both advantages and disadvantages. The obvious advantage is of course that the ring does not make a fuss. It is hardly the case that you feel it or think that it is there, which means that it is, above all, for measuring sleep, much more convenient than a smart watch. There are also advantages in measurement data, because Oura themselves are quick to point out that pulse measurement is much easier to do well with a finger-based measurement than with a watch around the wrist.

Smaller and more comfortable

With Oura Ring 5, the manufacturer has made the ring smaller and improved the sensors. This means that the ring is a little more comfortable than previous models, but the difference is still not as noticeable as the figure 40 percent less suggests. At the same time, the battery life has improved somewhat.

When you buy an Ouraring, you first need to know what size you should have. It is measured by testing to find the right size with test rings. The test pack of rings that feel like they are made of heavy cardboard is included in your order and does not cost anything extra, but it will be an extra step in the ordering process. Oura points out that the sizes have changed between each new model. For example, the Oura Ring 4 came in sizes 4-15 while this Oura Ring 5 comes in sizes 6-13. However, I have had size 11 on Oura Ring 3 as well as 4 and 5.

One week of battery life

When I used the ring during the test period of a couple of weeks, I usually had to charge pretty much exactly once a week. The app on the phone starts warning when there is around 20 percent battery left, so that you have a little margin and don’t risk running out of battery while you sleep. When I charge for the first time, the battery level is at 15 percent and it takes about an hour and a half to fully charge.

When you buy Oura Ring, it comes with a charger. It is a plate with a small holder on it and it connects to a wall socket or other power source with usb-c. As a supplement, there is also now a charging case. It’s a small round box, like a piece of jewelry, and it stores power so you can keep the ring charged for a month, without having to depend on a wall outlet for that. In the app on your phone, you can continuously see the battery level in the ring and also in the charging case if you bought one, because it is sold separately.

The app shows conclusions and data

In the associated app, you get a timeline of what you did during the day. There you can see automatically registered activities, such as walking, if you ran and the like. In addition, you see when you fell asleep and when you woke up. Oura Ring should be able to automatically recognize about forty different forms of exercise, such as walking, running, cycling, swimming, weight training and a number of others. However, it is not completely flawless. For one thing, it takes a while of continuous activity before anything is registered at all. This means that my shorter walks, from home to the subway or the bus, for example, are rarely registered as walks, even if the steps themselves are registered.

The same applies to a shorter swim on a hot day in Lake Mälaren. It was probably too short to register.

You have to manually approve automatically registered training sessions in Oura’s app, before they are actually saved, so it says something that Oura themselves are not 100 percent sure of their automatic function for movement identification. A couple of times during the test period it also happens that it goes wrong. A longer walk of just over a mile, for example, is recorded as just two shorter walks of just over a kilometer each. In the app afterwards, in addition to approving automatic registrations, it is also possible to edit what has been registered if you know it is wrong. In the mornings I sometimes get prompts to approve yesterday’s activities and then it happens that I don’t remember exactly where and when I went. Then I usually trust the ring’s information. For walking, running, cycling and other outdoor activities, the ring relies on GPS from your phone if you have it with you. Here, the precision varies a lot. Some walks have very precise position step by step, while others are only recorded with a position now and then.

Active training, usually reliable measurements

A novelty in the Oura app is in any case that you can manually start a workout and then have facts such as distance and heart rate displayed directly on the mobile screen while you exercise. It gets around the disadvantage smart rings have that they cannot provide any direct feedback because they themselves lack a screen.

Overall, I find the ring provides reliable data for the most part, but in activities as well as sleep tracking, I do occasionally spot mistakes. The sleep measurement at some point continued until 10.30am even though I got up at 7.30am and was clearly moving around so it couldn’t possibly be registered as rest.

For either Iphone or Android

The Oura app on the phone was updated in the spring in connection with the release of Oura Ring 5, but some of the news, the new Health Radar, are not available in Sweden, and the news that is actually available to us also comes to the older rings from Ring 3 and later. For example, the real-time activity I already told you about.

Oura can sync its information when you use an iPhone with Apple Health and when you use an Android with Health Connect as well as with Strava, regardless of whether you run an iPhone or Android. This allows you to use other gadgets in parallel with the ring, such as a smart watch or heart rate monitor without the risk of activities being saved as duplicates.

Expensive and still requires a subscription with a monthly fee

In order for you to benefit from your Oura ring, a monthly subscription is required, which costs 5.99 euros, approximately SEK 70. When you get a ring for the first time, you get the first month for free, but then you have to pay and if you don’t, you only get to see very general numbers and can’t even see how much you slept. Without paying the fee, the ring is therefore completely meaningless.

That Oura Ring 5 is significantly more expensive than its predecessors while still requiring a subscription to benefit from it is the ring’s main weakness. The one who pays gets quite detailed advice and conclusions anyway. The app is good at putting the numbers that are collected into context and in the app you always have up-to-date conclusions about your daily form. There you can see whether you should invest in activity or concentrate on rest and recovery, how your sleep affects your conditions and about important key values.