Latest news with #Oura
NBC News
2 days ago
- Health
- NBC News
Oura Ring vs Apple Watch: I've tested both for months — here's what you should know
If you told me to pick my favorite wearable, I would have a hard time choosing between the Oura Ring and Apple Watch (and Garmin, to be fair). What's interesting is that the two wearables are wildly different from each other. The Apple Watch is a tiny computer on my wrist I can use instead of pulling my phone out of my pocket every two seconds. The Oura Ring is a stylish ring I forget about until I open the app and start diving into my health, sleep and fitness data. I've been wearing both for most of 2025 — here's what you need to know. Oura and Apple sell a few different wearables and I've tested all of them. The two that are most similar from the brands are the Oura Ring 4 ($349) and Apple Watch Series 10 ($399). They are the brand's latest wearables, and are priced similarly. That said, they are very different products with very different users in mind. But when people ask me what wearable or fitness tracker to buy, Apple Watch and Oura Ring are the two they mention first and most often. I've worn both at the same time for nearly all of 2025, comparing them to each other and other wearables I've tested throughout the year. Want more from NBC Select? Sign up for our newsletter, The Selection, and shop smarter. My experience using the Oura Ring and Apple Watch The Oura Ring 4 and Apple Watch Series 10 are both excellent wearables. Both are comfortable, easy to use, and provide accurate and easy to understand information about your health, sleep and fitness activity. Below, I outline some key differences between each wearable. Design Oura Ring The latest Oura Ring 4 is the best looking and most comfortable Oura Ring yet. It is made of titanium, comes in six finishes and is available in sizes four to 15. While it is a bit big compared to a non-smart ring, I got used to wearing it on my ring finger after a few days. What helps is the long battery life: the Oura Ring 4 lasts up to eight days on a single charge, longer than most of its competitors. Unlike the Oura Ring Gen 3, which had three round sensor bumps on the inner side of the ring, the Oura Ring 4 is basically smooth all around, inside and out. This makes it much more comfortable than the previous version, and in-line with my experience wearing other smart rings like the Ultrahuman Ring Air and Samsung Galaxy Ring. Apple Watch The latest Apple Watch Series 10 is similarly the most comfortable Apple Watch I've worn, and I've tested a lot of them over the years. It's thinner and lighter than the Apple Watch Series 9, but has a bigger screen that reaches further into the edges of the case. The screen is also brighter and easier to see at off-angles, meaning I can check the time or a notification at a glance much easier than before. The Series 10 also charges faster — it can get up to 80% battery in 30 minutes of fast charging, up from 45 minutes on the Series 9. Battery life is still a bit lackluster though at up to 18 hours. I end up charging mine every night before bedtime to make sure it doesn't die overnight. My take: This is a toss up that largely comes down to personal preference. Aside from battery life, where the Oura Ring is a clear winner, the deciding factor is whether you find rings or watches more comfortable. Generally, I prefer watches over rings, and the Oura Ring is bulkier than the usual non-smart ring sizes I gravitate towards. But I know many folks can't stand the look and feel of the square, shiny Apple Watch, and you might be one of them. Day-to-day Oura Using the Oura Ring daily is a comfortable and largely passive experience. Most days, I forget that I am wearing it, which makes checking the Oura app feel fun instead of like a chore. It tracks most health and fitness basics for you — think steps, walks, sleep, readiness and stress. But not everything works automatically. Oura doesn't always automatically detect and track lower intensity workouts such as strength training and yoga, in my experience. For cycling tracking, you need to be diligent and consistent about manually inputting each day of your cycle to get the most accurate information, says NBC Select updates editor Mili Godio, who has worn her Oura Ring 4 for over 5 months. Apple You can do as much or as little as you want with the Apple Watch. It can act almost like a smartphone — you can check all your notifications, send texts, use contactless payments, take calls, store your favorite podcasts and music, navigate with a maps app, the list goes on. You can also turn off all notifications and do none of the things I just listed and turn the Apple Watch into a more passive fitness tracker and digital wristwatch. It has such robust settings and options that it can really be whatever you want it to be, especially when you consider all the watch face and watch band options. My take: This one is all about taste. Do you want something you can wear and forget about? That's the Oura Ring. Do you want easy access to a ton of information, right on your wrist? That's the Apple Watch. Tracking and metrics Oura Ring The Oura Ring's greatest strength is its health and sleep tracking. It offers detailed and accurate graphs, charts and trends for tons of different metrics like sleep stages, bedtime and wake-up time, heart rate variability, respiratory rate and body temperature. All of these put together, combined with the Oura app's intuitive and friendly design, means I get a good understanding of my health at a glance and a deeper understanding of my trends if I feel like diving a little deeper. The Oura Ring has also accurately assessed when I am sick. I have been sick a few times so far this year, and each time the Oura app notifies me of health metrics being out of their typical range, and suggests entering rest mode. I appreciate this approach much more than some fitness trackers that focus exclusively on consistently hitting streaks and goals. Apple Watch The Apple Watch shows metrics across two apps: the Apple Health and Apple Fitness app. The health app shows similar stats to the Oura Ring, with a focus on health, fitness and sleep trends over time, while the Fitness app shows all your individual workouts. It can similarly predict or tell me when I am sick through the Vitals feature, and has largely caught my illnesses as they have happened. Fitness is where the Apple Watch has more to offer than the Oura Ring. The Apple Watch has built-in GPS, making it more accurate for outdoor exercises like running and cycling compared to the Oura Ring. With outdoor running in particular, the Apple Watch shows more detailed stats like average cadence, stride length and more. It also has the Training Load feature, which can help track your weekly and monthly fitness. My take: Another tossup. Both Oura Ring and Apple Watch do a great job tracking and showcasing health, sleep and exercise metrics. Oura is a little more accurate when it comes to sleep data and predicting when I am sick, but the Apple Watch is always a close second, in my experience. The Apple Watch is better for fitness, as it has built-in GPS, more detailed stats in certain workouts and a screen that can show you live stats as you exercise. Oura vs Apple Watch: The final verdict The Apple Watch Series 10 and Oura Ring 4 are arguably the best smartwatch and best smart ring you can buy. One isn't better than the other, but one might make more sense for you personally. The Apple Watch is a smartwatch. It's like having a tiny phone on your wrist. It's a wearable you check all the time: you check the time, incoming texts, the weather, your pace during a run, etc. The Oura Ring is a passive smart ring. You check the Oura app usually during downtime, when you aren't too busy. Unless you are manually starting and stopping a workout, it's meant to work in the background, and be available when you feel like checking in on your stats and trends. If you want a tiny phone on your wrist that can do a little bit of everything, you want a smartwatch, and the Apple Watch is one of the best. It's better than the Oura Ring for checking live exercise stats while running and biking. It's also a better value than the Oura Ring, as it does almost everything the Oura Ring does (and more) without a subscription fee If you want to track your health, fitness and sleep but don't want something on your wrist peppering you with information, you want a smart ring, and the Oura Ring is the best on the market right now. It's got much better battery life than the Apple Watch, and is a little more accurate for sleep and illness tracking, in my experience. Why trust NBC Select? I am a reporter at NBC Select who covers technology and fitness including recent stories on smartwatches, running shoes, workout earbuds and more. I've tested the Oura Ring Gen 3 and Oura Ring 4 for over a year, and have tested various Apple Watch models, including the latest Series 10, for years.
CNBC
2 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Oura, Maven Clinic team up to bring biometric data into clinical care
Women's and family health platform Maven Clinic is partnering with smart ring maker Oura, a step forward in the integration of the increasing amount of data being collected by wearable devices and clinical care. As part of the partnership, eligible Maven members will be able to sync the data that their Oura Ring collects with the Maven platform, allowing members of the Maven care team to comb over the Oura-collected data like sleep, stress and activity to provide enhanced health guidance. Maven Clinic, a three-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company, is the largest virtual clinic for women's and family health with more than 2,000 employers and health plans using its platform. The company, which raised a $125 million funding round valuing it at $1.7 billion in October 2024, offers programs that range from fertility and family building to maternity and newborn care to menopause and midlife health. Kate Ryder, CEO and founder of Maven Clinic, said that we're in a "reinvigorated era of consumer health," a period that is being defined by the amount of data being collected via wearables and the desire of people to use those diagnostics to seek treatment and advice. Ryder said that a recent survey of Maven Clinic members found that nearly three out of four members are tracking their health regularly with some sort of device, and consumers are asking, "How do I take my health into my own hands with all these tools and areas of wellness at my fingertips to try to live a healthier life?" That shift prompted Maven's new partnership with Oura, also a three-time Disruptor 50 company, which was ranked No. 23 on the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 list and has been on its own path of wellness and preventive health via its eponymous Ring in recent years. While Oura's initial focus centered on tracking sleep and recovery metrics, its scope has widened significantly in recent years to broader healthcare and personal health issues. As Oura CEO Tom Hale said in a recent CNBC interview, "the vision for the future of Oura has to do with the doctor in your pocket." That includes a wide variety of metrics, features and health indicators tracked by the Oura Ring and parsed by the company's AI and analytics to offer wearers' health insights, including a variety of female-focused features around menstrual, period and pregnancy cycles. "One of our key theses is that women have been overlooked in science, and in health understudied and overlooked, but we believe that they expect the same level of personalization, transparency and immediacy from their healthcare," said Oura chief commercial officer Dorothy Kilroy. "This is what they want, and traditional healthcare hasn't really kept up with that for women and their families." Kilroy said that the partnership between the two companies aims to deliver that, offering "smart, connected personalized care that'll fit into their lives and not the other way around, which is kind of what the old healthcare systems have provided." The ultimate goal is to improve health outcomes through the utilization of the data collected by the Oura Ring, allowing for more personalized recommendations, the ability to catch issues sooner and be more proactive, and layering in expert medical care at critical points. "Tracking is the first step, but really it's not just about surfacing health data," Ryder said, noting that Maven Clinic is the first virtual care platform to turn Oura's health signals into expert care. "We really want to act on it to actually drive better outcomes." One example of how the data could be utilized would be in the case of a pregnant Maven member diagnosed with gestational diabetes. That person could work with a Maven nutritionist or support coach to help regulate their glucose levels, while using Oura's physical activity tracking and meals and glucose features to monitor their progress. Oura is increasingly working with a variety of partners in the healthcare sector to use the biometric data collected by its Rings, Kilroy said, allowing it to be "paired with clinical care and creating that kind of seamless experience where the members can both understand what's going on in their body but they can actually use that to get expert care all in one place." Ryder said that she sees the convergence of this sort of biometric tracking and the clinical side as leading towards much more effective preventative care, leading to "much better outcomes," especially among high-risk patients where this sort of reporting and engagement can result in significant improvements in health. Maven Clinic will start to integrate the Oura data into its platform starting later this summer, with a goal of having it reach all members who want to opt in by the winter. Maven members will also receive exclusive pricing on the purchase of an Oura Ring. "We have to shift our healthcare system into prevention and invest more in wellness and wellbeing," Ryder said. "There's a lot of exciting stuff that this partnership can do to take the step forward, be innovative and show the outcomes on the back end."
Tom's Guide
3 days ago
- Health
- Tom's Guide
Don't fall for the Oura Ring 4 upgrade — the Ring 3 has the same sleep tracking tech and is $150 cheaper
From Oura to Garmin, Eight Sleep and Apple I've tested my fair share of sleep trackers over the past few months, but the one I always recommend to friends looking to optimize and learn more about their ZZZs for a reasonable price? It's the Oura Ring. While no sleep tracker is 100% accurate every night, in my experience the Eight Sleep Pod 4, aka our best smart bed of the year, and Oura Ring provide the most reliable data. I began tracking my sleep with the Oura Ring 3 at the start of this year and have recently upgraded to the Oura Ring 4. While there are noticeable improvement (like the Ring 4's more durable finish), if you're using the ring purely as a sleep tracker, I recommend saving your pennies and opting for the previous generation while stocks last. Here's why... While the underlying sleep tracking tech remains the same, the key updates Oura has introduced with the fourth generation ring revolve around improved battery life and sensor accuracy, and a redesign focused on comfort and better durability. The Ring 4 also introduces "Smart Sensing" technology and a wider size range. Oura Ring's "Smart Sensing" is powered by an advanced algorithm that works alongside the research-grade sensors within Oura Ring 4 to respond to each member's unique finger physiology, including the structure and distinct features of your finger (i.e. skin tone, BMI, and age). Battery life has also been improved with the Oura Ring 4. Oura Ring 3 claimed to last up to seven days between charges, though in my experience and that of our other reviewers, four to five days is a more accurate battery life window. However, I have used the Oura Ring 4 for four days and it has 48% charge remaining, suggesting it will power through eight days. Finally, the Oura Ring 4 has a more robust titanium design. I noticed the Oura Ring 3 start to scratch within the first few days of wearing it, so this is certainly a welcome upgrade. Oura Ring 3: was from $299 now from $199 at OuraThe Oura Ring 3 was released in 2021. It comes in two styles — heritage (a plateau design) and horizon (sleek circular design). In current sleep sales, there's $100 off the Oura Ring 3 while stocks last. Oura Ring 4: from $349 at Oura The Oura Ring 4 replaced the Ring 3 as of October 2024. This new-and-improved smart ring is available in six different smooth metal finishes including (in ascending price order) silver, black, brushed silver, stealth, gold and rose gold and additional ring sizes from 4 to 15 rather than 6 to 13. Prices start from $349 and reach $499. If you're looking for a comprehensive sleep tracker but don't want to splash more than $300, here's why I recommend you shop the Oura Ring 3 over the Oura Ring 4, after testing both myself... With $100 off all sizes now, you can get the Oura Ring 3 for between $199 and $349 (was $299 to $449). The Heritage style Oura Ring 3 is $199 in silver and black and $279 in stealth, and the Horizon design is $249 in black, $279 in stealth and brushed titanium and $349 in gold. Meanwhile the Oura Ring 4 sits at MSRP of $349 in silver and black, $399 in brushed silver and stealth, and $499 in gold and rose gold. No matter the model or color you're going for, you'll end up paying at least $150 more for the Ring 4. Add on top Oura's subscription fee ($5.99 per month or $69.99 per year) and this sleep tracker becomes a significant financial commitment. For me, the difference in sleep tracking functionality between Gen 3 and Gen 4 doesn't quite justify the $150 price difference. So, to save cents where you can I recommend shopping the Ring 3 while stocks last. While it is now a popular all-round health tracker worn by wellness enthusiasts, the Oura Ring has its roots in the sleep tracking market and has proved itself as a comprehensive snooze gadget. The Oura Ring 3 might not be the newest, most advanced sleep tracker on the market after being around for the best part of four years, but it still gives a reliable picture of how well you sleep each night. It keeps tabs on how long it takes for you to fall asleep, how long you spend in each sleep stage, how long you sleep overall and how 'efficient' your sleep has been. The Oura Ring 4 is said to be built with more accurate sensors, but there are no new metrics covered in your nightly sleep report. I've observed similar discrepancies in time spent asleep when comparing data given by the Eight Sleep Pod 4 smart mattress cover with that from both the Oura Ring 3 and Oura Ring 4. Between the Ring 3 and the Eight Sleep Pod I observed a discrepancy of between 16 and 44 minutes in time spent asleep. With the Ring 4 and Eight Sleep Pod, the discrepancy was between 11 and 36 minutes. Even with the latest wellness tech, measuring exact sleep time at home is a difficult task as you're literally in an unconscious state. Considering the differences in sleep time mentioned above are only a matter of minutes, I recommend the more affordable Ring 3. While one of the key upgrades between the two rings is focused on comfort, I haven't noticed a major difference between the two rings. Both are comfortable overnight. Sitting on your finger rather than your wrist, I find the Oura Ring more comfortable overnight compared with wrist-worn trackers that can feel claustrophobic in bed. In fact, the Oura Ring 3 is slimmer than the Ring 4 in the size I wear (size 9). The Ring 3 measures 2.57mm thick on the sides and 2.97mm thick on the "top" compared to 2.88mm all the way around with the Ring 4, so it feels less clumpy on your finger. In terms of durability, if you're wearing the ring purely as a sleep tracker, the Oura Ring 3 won't tarnish in bed. It is only likely to scratch if you're wearing it as an all-day health tracker. Having tested both the Oura Ring 3 and Ring 4, it's clear to see the Ring 4 is an upgraded, more durable product with longer battery life and more accurate biometric sensors. However, if you want an excellent smart ring for sleep tracking, you're in capable hands with the Oura Ring 3, which you can buy right now for $150 less.
Tom's Guide
3 days ago
- Health
- Tom's Guide
I've used the Oura ring to track my sleep for 6 months — here's how I'm now getting a full 8 hours
I've had my Oura Ring Gen 3 for six months now, and in that time, my daily sleep and readiness scores have come to dictate what I get up to from day to day. Do I need to take it easy and rest up or can I go hell for leather and role play as Wonder Woman? Oura lets me know as soon as I wake up. The Oura Ring Gen 3 had helped me to regulate my irregular sleep patterns by giving daily feedback on metrics. the ring also tracks workouts and daily activity, all bundled into actionable insights to help you feel your best. I get far more out of Oura than any other fitness tracker I've tried, like the Apple Watch Series 10 and the AmazFit Bip 6. I find the feedback you get from Oura to be fully actionable, and I can build on the feedback. And that's exactly what I've done. The key to getting actionable feedback from Oura is adding tags in the app. It gives the app insights into my daily life, and tells me what I am doing that's impacting my sleep scores. Pretty cool, right? I don't add tags for absolutely everything because that would be a lot of work! But if I'm feeling slightly under the weather, go for a long run, drink alcohol or do anything out of the ordinary, I'll make sure to note it. The app also lets you know what sort of things have effected other users. So if you have a rough night, it will prompt you to add a tag that may have contributed to the tossing and turning. For me, this meant I can actively avoid activities I know are going to keep me up at night, but also keep doing things that have given me high sleep scores. So let's get into what I've found out. This is one I never would have thought about before using the Oura Ring. If I eat a meal or even a small, carby snack less than three hours before I head to sleep, I can be sure to have a disrupted night. Eating late can disrupt the sleep-wake cycle of the body, and Oura flags this in the app as a main cause for a restless night. I have always been one for an evening run rather than an early morning gym class, but that's all changed since using the Oura Ring. Exercising late at night can mean your body takes longer to wind down before drifting off to sleep, giving you fewer hours than you need. Oura says that even exercising one to two hours earlier can help you to see positive changes. So I took this advice on board and started doing my exercise in the morning and doing gentle yoga in the evening, so I was still getting some movement but at a lower intensity. Alcohol at social gatherings is the norm for many people so it will come as no surprise that Oura says it is the tag most used by its members. Alcohol increases your resting heart rate, putting stress on the body. So after a few beers you're probably going to be waking up every few hours, therefore massively disrupting your sleep stages. As part of the Community discoveries feature on the Oura app, I can see that a tag of 'No alcohol' decreases resting heart rate scores by an average of 3%. Adversely, tagging 'Party' increases heart rate by an average of 6%. This seemingly small increase is enough to disrupt sleep and offset you for the next day. Everyone knows that in the height of summer it is pretty much impossible to get to sleep. Especially between trying to kick off your sheets and finding the perfect balance of cozy and cool. But I had this confirmed to me by my ring as on nights where I had the air conditioning in my room set to around 67°F I had restful, deep sleep and woke up with high sleep scores. On the other end of that, as the weather has become warmer on the way to summer and I don't have the air conditioning on I wake up in the middle of the night and struggle to get back to sleep. The Oura Ring measures your temperature while you sleep to give cycle predictions. During different phases of your cycle HRV (heart rate variation) and core body temperature are affected. These can have a direct impact on your sleep and readiness. Through feedback from what many would call the best smart ring, I have been able to recognize when in my cycle I need to take it easy to ensure my HRV is impacted as little as possible, making for a restful sleep. This is also true for finding where I can put a little more effort into my workouts without it impacting my readiness scores. By looking at my own metrics, and the metrics from community discoveries, I have been able to get consistent sleep and readiness scores. Of course, there are days when lower scores can't be helped, but my feedback is far less erratic and the prompts from the ring have helped me to build a successful routine. By exercising and eating my evening meals earlier, staying cool at night, being mindful of alcohol consumption and of where I am in my cycle, I am getting my eight hours regularly… and I feel so much better for it.
Hypebeast
7 days ago
- Health
- Hypebeast
From Grails to Glucose, Oura's Smart Ring Turns Health Into the New Drop
Oura, the health tech company behind the minimalist smart ring (and yes, the same one thatteamed up with Guccifor a luxe limited-edition drop), brought together a crowd of culturally attuned guests in NYC to have a conversation many still avoid: the uncomfortable reality of men's health—and what the future might look like when wellness becomes as personal as your sneaker rotation. And while the ring itself might be discreet, the cultural shift it represents is anything but. It starts with a wake-up call: men are living, on average, 5.4 years fewer than women. They're also facing higher rates of chronic illness, sleep disorders, and mental health challenges. The crisis isn't new—but the response is. For years, toxic norms told men to 'walk it off.' Now, they're asking different questions:Am I doing enough to maintain my health? Will I be healthy enough to enjoy the future I'm building? Oura's approach reframes the answer. It's not about reacting when things go wrong. It's about tuning into the body early, learning its signals, and acting before issues escalate. 'Men are increasingly taking ownership of their health—not just reacting to illness, but working to optimize how they feel, perform, and age,' the brand points out. That kind of framing hits different for an audience raised on performance—from the gym to the creative office. Oura's real innovation isn't just wearable tech. It's translating hard data into daily insights—like how last night's sleep might impact today's focus, or whether your body's truly recovered from yesterday's push. Using over 20 biometric signals, the ring delivers a Readiness Score, guiding wearers on when to go hard and when to step back. For the Hypebeast reader balancing the pace of grail hunts, sneaker meetups and queueing in drop lines weekly, all while trying to maintain a healthy routine, it's the kind of intel that matters more than just steps or streaks. But the company isn't stopping at sleep and recovery. Metabolic health is the next frontier—and it's one that desperately needs attention. '88% of U.S. adults are metabolically unhealthy, with men disproportionately affected,' Oura also notes. Instead of focusing on calories or restrictive routines, Oura's system encourages balance through behavior tracking, glucose insights, and non-judgmental guidance. With the help of Stelo—a sleek, over-the-counter glucose sensor developed in partnership with Dexcom—users get real-time feedback on how food, stress, and even workout timing impact energy and insulin sensitivity. It's less about restriction, more about rhythm. Less punishment, more pattern recognition. What makes Oura's approach resonate is its respect for individuality. Early adulthood? The ring tracks movement, energy, and sleep. Midlife? It leans into stress, metabolism, and glucose trends. Later life? Long-term heart health and cardiovascular aging take center stage. 'Health isn't one-size-fits-all—and it doesn't stand still,' the brand explains. That message lands particularly well in a world where personalization drives everything from playlists to probiotics. And with optional integrations—like syncing with an Apple Watch or logging meals with a quick photo—Oura fits into your life without taking it over. No buzz, no feed, no follower count. Just feedback. Ultimately, what Oura is selling isn't just health data—it's agency. A chance to be proactive rather than reactive. A future where you know what's happening inside your body the same way you know what's trending next week. It's wellness, but in a tailored silhouette. A smart ring, yes—but also a cultural nudge toward redefining strength, ambition, and longevity. As the brand puts it plainly: 'The future of health is proactive, personal, and human.' And for the men who once measured success in grails and gallery invites, there may be no flex more valuable than feeling good for the long run.
