Summary: ŌURA has launched Oura Ring 4, a next-generation smart ring featuring improved accuracy through its new Smart Sensing platform, which more than doubles the signal pathways from the previous generation. The ring offers a sleeker design for better comfort, enhanced health tracking, and a redesigned app experience for all Oura Members. With increased sensor precision and a lightweight titanium build, the Oura Ring 4 is designed to provide a more personalized, continuous health monitoring experience, available for pre-order now.
Key Takeaways:
- Enhanced Accuracy with Smart Sensing: Oura Ring 4’s new Smart Sensing platform increases signal pathways from eight to 18, providing more accurate health data compared to Gen3, according to a study in which 60 participants wore both Oura Ring Gen3 and Oura Ring 4 overnight in a sleep clinic.
- Improved Comfort and Design: The Oura Ring 4 features a thinner, recessed sensor design and lightweight titanium build for better comfort during 24/7 wear.
- Revamped Oura App: A redesigned app offers Oura Members a streamlined interface to easily track and understand both daily and long-term health metrics.
ŌURA has launched Oura Ring 4, a next-generation smart ring with enhanced accuracy, comfort, and personalization, featuring a new Smart Sensing platform and a redesigned app for improved health tracking.
Oura Ring 4 is built around a new sensing technology, Smart Sensing, which is powered by an algorithm that works with research-grade sensors to dynamically adapt to the finger and deliver accurate and continuous data, day and night. The lightweight, all-titanium design of Oura Ring 4 features recessed sensors for a smooth interior shape and thinner profile, making it more comfortable for 24/7 wear.
By combining Smart Sensing and the sleek new design, Oura Ring 4 is able to achieve both exceptional accuracy and improved comfort without having to sacrifice one for the other.
Oura Ring 4 will be available in an expanded range of twelve sizes (4-15) and in six colors: brushed silver, gold, rose gold, silver, stealth, and an updated black finish that features a glossy, tungsten PVD coating for improved durability and a deeper black look.
Oura Ring 4 is available for pre-order today and will start shipping on Oct 15, 2024.
Alongside the next generation of Oura Ring, a redesigned Oura App—available on both iOS and Android—provides all Oura Members with a more streamlined, at-a-glance view into both daily and long-term health metrics. The new Oura App helps connect the dots between short-term behaviors and long-term impacts, making health and wellness easier to prioritize—and more personal—than ever before.
“Oura Ring is designed to be a personal health companion, giving our members a holistic view of their health by pairing personal data with meaningful, actionable insights to facilitate long-term changes,” says Tom Hale, ŌURA CEO, in a release. “The next-generation Oura Ring 4, reimagined Oura App, and the development of the Smart Sensing platform represent significant steps forward for wearables across accuracy, comfort, personalization, and design. We’re committed to continuing our relentless pace of innovation, delivering exceptional value to Oura Members.”
Smart Sensing, Available Exclusively on Oura Ring 4
Oura Ring 4 provides a new degree of accuracy, comfort, and personalization through its Smart Sensing technology. Smart Sensing is powered by an algorithm that works alongside the research-grade sensors within Oura Ring 4 to respond to each member’s unique finger physiology.
The sensors, which more than double the number of available signal pathways from eight to 18 as compared to Oura Ring Gen3, automatically adapt to find the best signal path, ensuring continuous, accurate data in any situation, all while optimizing the battery to achieve up to eight days of battery life. Smart Sensing also makes it possible for the sensors, which were previously housed in raised domes on Oura Ring Gen3, to be recessed for more comfort.
Smart Sensing helps make Oura Ring 4 the most accurate iteration of Oura Ring yet. To determine exactly how much better, Oura conducted an external research study in August 2024 in which 60 participants—with diversity across gender, age and skin tone—wore both Oura Ring Gen3 and Oura Ring 4 overnight in a sleep clinic.
The findings showed that Smart Sensing enabled:
- 120% improvement in signal quality for blood oxygen sensing (SpO2), translating to a 30% increase in accuracy in average overnight SpO2 measurement
- 15% more accurate breathing disturbance index (BDI) thanks to the higher signal fidelity
- 7% fewer gaps in the daytime heart rate
- 31% fewer gaps in the nighttime heart rate
“Years in the making, Smart Sensing is the future of health sensing, setting a new accuracy standard,” says Holly Shelton, chief product officer at ŌURA, in a release. “We designed Oura Ring 4 to be life-proof—it’s easy to create technology that works under optimal conditions, but that doesn’t reflect real life. With Smart Sensing, Oura Ring 4 accounts for ring rotation that naturally occurs with daily activities, as well as differences in finger anatomy, shape, BMI, and skin tone.”
Oura App Redesign
Over the past 18 months, ŌURA has expanded into new categories, including Stress & Resilience, Women’s Health, and Heart Health, and recently announced plans to move into metabolic health. The Oura App redesign makes it simpler and faster for Oura Members to navigate the bigger picture of their health while also making it easy to dive into the details when they’re ready.
The updated Oura App is available for all Oura Members, regardless of ring generation, and is now organized into three sections—Today, Vitals, and My Health—accessible via tabs across the bottom of the home screen.
The Today tab is dynamic, surfacing relevant information depending on the time of day and the member’s unique biometrics and health goals. Across the top of the Today tab, Score Shortcuts allow members to easily see their latest Readiness, Sleep, Activity, [Menstrual] Cycle Day, Daytime Heart Rate, and Stress scores at a glance. Vitals allows members to go into more depth on each of their scores, focusing on the ones that are most important to them, while the My Health tab highlights long-term, slower-moving metrics like Cardiovascular Age, Cardio Capacity, Stress Resilience, and Sleep Trends.
“We regularly engage with Oura Members to understand how we can improve the overall Oura experience, and we heard that, with all the new features and capabilities that we’ve introduced in the last 12 months, it had become harder to navigate the Oura App,” says Shelton in a release. “With this redesign, the Oura App connects the dots to help Oura Members understand how their habits and behaviors today—like aerobic activity and sleep hygiene—impact their health as they age, and also helps them understand how they can make changes that will pay off later in life.”
The new app experience begins rolling out Oct 3 and will be available for all Oura Members in the coming weeks.
Enhancing the Value of Oura Membership with New Features
The value of Oura Membership continues to increase over time with ongoing investments in scientific research, product development, and artificial intelligence (AI). Alongside the new Oura Ring and Oura App, ŌURA is adding the following new capabilities:
- Activity
- ŌURA’s approach to activity is unique, championing a belief that all movement counts and putting equal emphasis on outputs and rest and recovery. Automatic Activity Detection (AAD) gives Oura Members a holistic view of their daily movements, from dancing to gardening to dedicated workouts. Previously, Oura Members could manually track their heart rate for five activity types. Now, across more than 40 different activities, AAD provides an even more comprehensive view of activity with the addition of automatic heart rate detection and heart rate zones; members no longer need to log heart rate manually. Tracking heart rate zones during exercise can help members regulate cardiac output, increase VO2 max, and improve overall fitness.
- Stress
- ŌURA launched its first stress feature, Daytime Stress, to empower members to learn how to better handle periods of physiological stress, benefitting their health and resilience in the long term. With the latest update to the feature, members can see daily movement, activities, and tags in the context of their Daytime Stress so they can better understand the physiological impact of different habits and behaviors.
- Women’s Health
- Women in their 20s are ŌURA’s fastest-growing member segment, according to a release from the company, with Oura Member demographics shifting in the past year from primarily male to majority identifying as female. This is due in large part to the company’s substantial investments and developments in women’s health offerings, including the introduction of Pregnancy Insights, Cycle Insights, and Cycle Insights Report.
- The latest update to ŌURA’s reproductive health feature set, Fertile Window, will offer all Oura Members using Cycle Insights a view of their estimated fertile days, chance of conception at that time, and detected day of ovulation, giving them more information about their chances of getting pregnant throughout their cycle. This feature has been designed and developed specifically as an aid in conceiving a pregnancy and not as a tool to help prevent pregnancy. For members interested in contraception, Oura recommends its partner, Natural Cycles, which is an FDA-cleared, hormone-free contraception powered by temperature trends. Fertile Window will be rolling out over the coming months, and members can join the waitlist for early access.
Oura Labs on Android
Initially available on iOS, Oura Labs is now available on Android. Oura Labs allows members to test experimental features like Symptom Radar and Meals, and provide feedback to the ŌURA team. Symptom Radar can suggest if members might be getting sick, while Meals helps members track meal timing and map it to their chronotype to better understand how when they eat can impact health metrics like sleep, stress, and recovery.
Oura Advisor, available in Oura Labs, is the first Oura feature that uses generative AI in concert with Oura health data and expertise to build a unique and personalized conversation with Members to further their health goals and understanding of their data.
Pricing and Availability
- Available in an expanded range of twelve sizes (4-15) and in six colors (Brushed Silver, Gold, Rose Gold, Silver, Stealth, and Black).
- Oura Ring 4 starts at $349. Both Oura Ring and Oura Membership are HSA- and FSA-eligible.
- Oura Ring 4 is available for pre-order today and will start shipping on October 15, 2024. One month of membership is included with purchase. After that period, membership is $5.99/month or $69.99/year (annual subscription available exclusively on ouraring.com).
- Pre-order today at ouraring.com or from select retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, John Lewis in the UK, and Elkjøp, Gigantti, and Elgiganten across the Nordics.
- Oura recommends that all Oura Ring 4 customers size their fingers using the Oura Ring 4 Sizing Kit, including those who have a previous generation ring, as sizing may vary from one generation to the next. Oura Ring 4 Sizing Kits are available online and in store, and in-store sizing is available at select retailers, including Best Buy, Target, John Lewis in the UK, and Elkjøp, Gigantti and Elgiganten across the Nordics.
- Oura Ring Gen3 will continue to be available while inventory lasts.
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