The Short Answer: Great Smart Ring, Tricky Upgrade
The Oura Ring 5 upgrade is a slimmer, more comfortable health-tracking ring that refines sleep and wellness monitoring rather than radically reinventing it, making it an appealing first smart ring but a more nuanced decision for current Oura Ring 4 owners weighing comfort improvements against cost and only modest functional gains.
If you are choosing between Ring 5 vs Ring 4 today, the headline is simple: Ring 5 is the better product, but not a no‑brainer upgrade. It is 40% smaller than the Oura Ring 4, and that size reduction has a noticeable impact on daily comfort and how natural it feels on your hand. Battery life creeps up by about a day, and the software platform continues to expand, keeping Oura at the front of smart ring health tracking. However, sensor accuracy is not dramatically better, and most new software features roll out to older rings too. In other words, Oura Ring 5 is the smart ring to beat in a smart ring comparison—but whether you should upgrade depends less on features and more on how much you value comfort and design.
Design and Comfort: The First Oura That Feels Like a Real Ring
The biggest reason to consider an Oura Ring 5 upgrade is the redesigned body. The ring is 40% smaller than the Oura Ring 4, and reviewers report that this reduction makes a tangible difference in daily wear and comfort. One tester noted that with Ring 5 they could finally keep their fingers together naturally, something that was not possible with Ring 4’s chunkier profile. That matters more than spec sheets: a health tracker works only if you forget you are wearing it.
In practice, Ring 5 starts to feel like regular jewelry rather than a tech gadget, which makes continuous smart ring health tracking more realistic. Its lightweight titanium build, discreet appearance, and slightly longer 6–9 day battery life all support all‑day, all‑night wear. For anyone who bounced off earlier, bulkier smart rings, this generation directly addresses that pain point. If design and comfort are your top priorities in a smart ring comparison, Ring 5 pulls clearly ahead of Ring 4 and many rivals.
Health Tracking and Software: Still the Strongest Experience
On the health side, both generations share the same core strength: sleep and recovery tracking. Oura measures heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen, body temperature, and breathing rate to understand how you sleep and recover. Over weeks and months, it builds a personal baseline, then flags meaningful deviations. The Symptom Radar feature has been shown to alert users to major or minor signs of strain at least a day before they feel sick with a fever or cough.
This is where Oura still outclasses most competitors: plenty of wearables collect numbers, but Oura’s software does the best job of influencing how people train, sleep, and recover. The platform has added tools like GLP‑1 tracking for logging injections or oral medications, monitoring side effects, and viewing weight changes, along with reminders and progress recaps in the Today tab. Privacy controls have improved too, with time‑based data deletion and more granular control over sharing. Crucially, most of these software gains arrive on older generations as well—including Ring 4—so you do not need Ring 5 hardware to benefit.
Price, Subscription, and the Ring 4 Upgrade Dilemma
Cost is where the Oura Ring 5 upgrade becomes a harder sell for existing owners. The Oura Ring 5 starts at USD 399 (approx. RM1,840), which is USD 50 (approx. RM230) more than the Oura Ring 4. Select finishes like Deep Rose, Gold, and Brushed Silver reach USD 499 (approx. RM2,300). On top of that, you need a subscription to see all your data: an annual USD 70 (approx. RM320) plan or USD 6 (approx. RM30) per month, otherwise you are limited to viewing only your Readiness, Activity, and Sleep Scores. Both Ring 4 and Ring 5 share this ongoing cost, so the subscription is a common drawback rather than a reason to choose one over the other.
One thoughtful improvement is multi‑ring support: you can pair both Ring 4 and Ring 5 to a single account and switch between them without paying for another membership. That lets you alternate styles or keep your older ring as a backup without losing health history. Even so, for Ring 4 owners the upgrade case is mixed. Reviewers did not see dramatic gains in sensor accuracy, and most software additions arrive on Ring 4 too. Unless you place high value on the slimmer design and comfort, the honest advice is to wait another generation.
How Ring 5 Fits Among Top Smart Rings—and Who Should Buy It
In a broader smart ring comparison, the gap between Oura and its rivals has narrowed. Competing rings offer clear advantages: one integrates tightly with certain smartphones, another avoids subscription fees, and RingConn still delivers some of the best battery life in the category. There are also more affordable, subscription‑free options that undercut Oura on price alone. Yet despite these pressures, experts still call Oura Ring 5 the smart ring they would recommend to most people because of its polished software and meaningful impact on daily habits.
So, should you go for an Oura Ring 5 upgrade? If this is your first smart ring—or you are moving from a Ring 2 or Ring 3—the answer is yes: Ring 5 is an easy recommendation thanks to its smaller design, improved comfort, and mature health platform. If you already own a Ring 4, the smarter move is restraint. The upgrade buys you better ergonomics, not a new health experience. Until Oura delivers a generation with clearly better sensors or more exclusive capabilities, Ring 4 owners are better off waiting while enjoying a still‑excellent smart ring health tracking device.
