My New Oura Ring

I recently bought the latest Oura Ring, and so far I’m really happy with it.

I like the updated design and the slightly more refined feel compared to my previous one. It feels comfortable to wear every day, and overall the experience has been smooth and familiar.

That said, coming from the Gen 3, I haven’t noticed any major difference in day-to-day use so far.

The decision to upgrade wasn’t entirely rational. The Gen 3 was still working fine — battery was holding a few days, the band was comfortable, the data was the data. But I’d been watching the Gen 4 reviews for a while and was curious how the new finish and the thinner profile would feel day-to-day.

The design is definitely nicer. The Gen 4 sits a little flatter, the shape rounds off the edges inside the ring, and it feels less like a piece of tech and more like something you’d wear without thinking. Hand-washing, typing, grabbing gym equipment — none of it catches the way the Gen 3 sometimes did. The titanium finish also feels more solid than the previous version.

Battery life seems similar in practice. I’m getting about the same four to five days between charges, with no real pattern-breaking. Whether that holds up once the battery has been through a year of cycles is another question, but early on it’s fine.

Where I genuinely can’t see much difference yet is the data.

Sleep score, readiness, HRV, body temperature — all the metrics I actually look at are roughly where they were. The new sensor array is supposedly better, but whatever gains are there are inside the margin of day-to-day variation. If you track the main four numbers most mornings, you probably won’t see a noticeable shift.

Gen 4 also ships with some newer software features — Advisor, meal logging, heart health scoring — but most of these feel more like iterations on what Oura already did than new capabilities. I haven’t felt pulled into using them more than occasionally.

The sleep and recovery tracking feel very similar at this stage, so for now it seems more like a refined upgrade rather than a dramatic change. If a friend asked me today whether to upgrade from Gen 3, I’d probably say: only if you want the new design. If you’re buying your first Oura, get the Gen 4. If you already have a Gen 3 and it’s working, there’s no rush.

Still, I’m very pleased with it and curious to see whether the differences become more noticeable over time.