The Oura Ring isn’t the first smart ring, but it’s certainly the one that best demonstrated how to bring fitness and health monitoring features to our fingers.
It’s not the only smart ring that can do this anymore, but with competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Ring emerging, there’s no doubt Oura will take steps or has already taken steps to fend off new competition.
So, have there been any rumors about a new Oura that could be known as the Oura Ring 4? Will it launch soon? Here’s what we think we know so far about Oura’s upcoming smart ring.
When will the Oura Ring Gen 4 be released?
Oura hasn’t revealed that a new smart ring is coming, although as we’ll see later, there are some indications that one is in the works.
The current version, the Oura Ring Gen 3, was launched in October 2021 and since then, Oura has focused on offering its sensors and intelligence in new designs as well as adding additional features to its companion app to expand the capabilities of its smart ring.
The Oura Ring Gen 2 launched in 2018 and shipped worldwide in April of that year, so we’ve seen launches earlier and later in the year. The interval between launches is roughly the same, so it seems like we could be getting a new ring, but given the work Oura has done to improve the features of the Gen 3 in recent months, it’s unclear whether a new ring is on the horizon.
Samsung’s Galaxy Ring beats Oura on these 4 key points, but loses on 1
How much will the Oura Ring Gen 4 cost?
Much like the launch date of a new Oura ring, we have no idea what the price will be when or if it will hit the market.
We can see how much the Oura Ring currently costs and whether Oura might decide to respond to the arrival of cheaper smart rings from the likes of Ultrahuman, Ringconn, and Circular.
The latest Oura ring price starts at £299/$299 for the Heritage model and goes up to £349/$399 for the fully round Horizon model. If you opt for the Stealth or Gold finish, the price jumps to £549/$599.
While it’s not the cheapest smart ring available, it’s still cheaper to buy than the Samsung Galaxy Ring (£399/$399), although unlike Samsung’s ring you have to pay the extra subscription to get the most out of it.
It seems unlikely that Oura will abandon this subscription model and will likely be paying for both hardware and software next time, although we’re glad to be proven wrong.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
What specifications and features will the Oura Ring 4 have?
Design
One of the main reasons Oura stands out from all the other smart rings is that it simply looks like a comfortable ring to wear. You have the choice between two designs and a range of different finishes.
I bet when the new Oura comes out it will be more of the same.
Especially based on the first evidence of its existence that surfaced and was spied by Android Authority through a certification listing, which might have given us our first look at the new Oura Ring.
The series of images assigned the model number OA11 shows a ring that looks a lot like Oura’s Horizon Ring, with sensors that appear to be more flush with the inner casing than previous versions.
In addition to noting an additional OA12 model number, which could well relate to the Heritage version of the smart ring, the listing also mentions the name Oura Ring 4 as well as a potential color option with gold included on the product label.
In terms of ring sizes, the documents suggest that the ring pictured is tested on ring sizes 7, 9, 13 and 15. The Oura Ring Gen 3 is available in sizes 6 to 13, so this would be a clear way to spread the testing across a good range of sizes to ensure consistent performance across all rings.
Features
Since the launch of the Gen 3, Oura has been busy adding new features to its smartphone app to better track your habits and activities. It seems like another area where it could look to improve is how Oura factors in what you eat.
While it won’t necessarily go as far as being able to detect what you ate for lunch, a teardown of the Oura Android smartphone app suggests that Oura will add the ability to log meals and meal times to get a more complete picture of your day.
This is of course something that many fitness tracking apps already allow you to do, and the app’s coding string suggests that there will be a manual logging option as well as the ability to take photos of food. Oura will then look to use AI to analyze the items to make the job of logging meals easier.
Screenshots of the meal logging UI indicate that Oura aims to use this information to help users better understand how when and what you eat can impact sleep and your circadian rhythm.
This is the 24-hour cycle during which the body performs essential functions. Various factors can impact maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm, including getting good quality sleep.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
While these early images suggest that Oura will be looking to tweak the design of its sensor array, it could also tweak things to improve the accuracy and tracking performance of its sensors. A patent filing spotted by Wareable suggests that Oura could be looking to improve accuracy when monitoring different skin tones.
The filing refers to the different levels of noise that can be produced by different skin tones, which can lead to decreased accuracy of monitoring data such as blood oxygen levels. To address the difference in accuracy across skin tones, Oura wants to use its sensors to perform a number of measurements to properly detect skin color and account for it in the data it produces.
This difference in accuracy across skin tones is an issue that has been reported for some time with smartwatches that use similar optical sensor setups to track things like heart rate and blood oxygen. If Oura can figure out a way to solve this problem, it would be a major step forward not just for smart rings, but for smartwatches in general.
Software
More recently, we’ve seen Oura make improvements to how it lets users track stress and add more fitness-focused metrics. If you’re already an Oura user, you’re probably familiar with the Labs section of its app, which offers access to features that provide the ability to test out experimental features that Oura is exploring.
Two of the latest additions are a symptom radar that lets you detect early signs of changes in your health by tracking biometric data like breathing rate and temperature changes. This sounds a lot like the Health Monitor feature included on the Whoop Strap and could indicate that Oura is getting a little deeper into the health monitoring realm.
The company is also testing an AI-style advisor, which is basically a chatbot that aims to offer personalized recommendations based on your data, so AI could play a big role in Oura’s upcoming smart ring.
We’ll update this article when there are more rumors about the upcoming Oura smart ring.
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