The new Oura Ring 4 is a fantastic smart ring — but the high price means the excellent RingConn 2 is a superb alternative.
The number of choices in smart rings has exploded in the last couple of years, and two of the top options we’ve tested are the Oura Ring 4 and RingConn Gen 2.
With high-level health insights, comfortable fits, and battery life that outlasts most smartwatches, these smart rings are well worth considering. Yet, they have distinct strengths and weaknesses – ones we’ll discuss in detail in this comparison.
We’ve spent plenty of time living with and testing these 2024 releases from RingConn and Oura, and below we’ll offer recommendations for those choosing between them.
Check out our full, individual reviews:
Price comparison
Oura’s latest smart ring is the most expensive on the market, with prices starting at $349/£349 and running up to $499/£499 depending on the finish you select. You’ll also be required to pay $5.99 per month (or $69 per year) for the service.
RingConn’s Gen 2 is a snip cheaper, coming in at $299/£299 for all finishes and sizes. Plus, there’s no monthly subscription fee to pay.
Design and comfort
Titanium is the material of choice for RingConn and Oura, meaning you get a lightweight feel on the finger no matter which you pick here.
Both also come in similar finishes (black, silver, and gold), though Oura offers matte, brushed finishes and rose gold that flesh its choice out beyond what RingConn offers.
However, while similar in look, the comfort of RingConn’s Gen 2 ring is far superior.
Owing to its class-leading 2mm thickness, RingConn has got as close as any smart ring brand to replicating the feeling of an ‘actual’ ring. That reduced thickness compared to the Oura Ring 4 – around 2.8mm – also has a knock-on effect on the weight. Gen 2’s weight is 2-3g (depending on size), while Oura’s lags at 3.3g-5.2g despite its all-over titanium build.
We grade the thickness as the bigger consideration here, as it has a bigger effect on comfort. The image above is probably the best illustration of this difference – even though it’s actually of the RingConn Gen 2 and Oura Ring 3 Horizon (a thinner design than the newer Ring 4).
The only major consideration here is the size range. Oura has the edge, offering US ring sizes 4-15 compared to RingConn’s 6-14, but neither brand offers half sizes.
Ultimately, both are within a good range of comfort, but RingConn’s design makes it a more unnoticeable experience. If this is your priority area, the only reason to choose the Ring 4 is the wider range of finishes/sizes.
Winner: RingConn Gen 2
Health, stress, and sleep features
This is the core area of each ring, and Oura is a clear winner in our estimation. It’s not that RingConn necessarily lags on metrics – as we covered in our review, there’s actually a laughable amount of detail available in the app – but the presentation is severely lagging.
In truth, this is no major criticism of RingConn. Even wearable heavyweights like Apple, Garmin, and Whoop sit behind Oura’s platform. And we should also note that some may prefer RingConn’s graph-heavy, historical data approach.
But if your goal here is to help inform behavioral change, Oura has a suite of insights into health, sleep, and stress that excel at just that. Lists of metrics are amalgamated into scores for readiness and sleep gauged by your baselines. Stress tracking throughout the day is graded, summarized into restorative/stressed time, and even crossed against your recovery data with the Resilience feature.
Oura’s sleep tracking is also as good as any non-polysomnograph tracker when assessing stages. We still don’t put much stock into this area due to the lack of top-level accuracy, but other insights like chronotypes, sleep regularity, and blood oxygen data bolster this area.
Women’s health features are also unrivaled, delivering cycle insights, predicting periods, and pregnancy tracking with gestational age, maternal physiology info, and weekly updates.
Aside from the Wellness Balance feature, RingConn’s hub of scores that are nowhere near as true to feel, the same kind of longitudinal data isn’t available on RingConn.
The tracking itself is very accurate; there are no hiccups for metrics like HRV or blood oxygen, sleep hours are logged correctly, and 0-100 stress summaries are solid enough. Yet, we’ve found it isn’t an app we feel compelled to check often, given that it’s caked with data requiring manual interpretation.
In our view, you get what you pay for here. As we’ve discussed plenty this year, subscription-free platforms aren’t necessarily better value if a monthly fee is what’s powering continued feature development.
Oura’s track record of rolling out new and innovative features every month or two is unrivaled in the industry. That doesn’t mean RingConn is inherently bad (as we say, there’s a lot tracked here), but there’s a clear gulf in insights as a result.
Winner: Oura Ring 4
Battery life
Like in the design and comfort, RingConn is peerless in battery life. Despite the Gen 2 having a much smaller footprint than rivals like the Oura Ring 4, our experience showed it lasted around 10 days in most charging cycles.
If you turn the sleep apnea feature (still in beta), this caves considerably, to 5-6 days. Yet, this is the best-case scenario on the Oura Ring 4 with features like blood oxygen monitoring (traditionally a big battery drainer) turned on.
RingConn’s ring isn’t just capable of lasting longer – it’s also much easier to charge. The included charging case is good for a mind-blowing 15 additional full recharges (much more than any rival), while Oura users are still resigned to a charging puck and no carry case.
Winner: RingConn Gen 2
Activity tracking
We’re not overly excited by having to pick a winner between these two when it comes to activity or workout tracking. Ultimately, you’re far better off with a smartwatch if you’re looking for anything more than rough ballpark figures on step counts or calorie burn.
That said, Oura is a better companion in this area. We didn’t necessarily experience all the touted benefits of the improved automatic activity tracking in our Ring 4 testing, but it can still pick up the broad intensity of exercise.
Oura has interpretations for VO2 max (Cardio Capacity) and pulse wave velocity (Cardiovascular Age) that are contextualized and neatly presented as trends. It also boasts crucial third-party integrations with platforms like Strava (and tons of health and mental health partners).
If you wear another tracker, as we do, this takes tons of pressure off the Ring 4 to be your main activity monitor. That isn’t the case on RingConn, we’ve found, which can only sync with Apple Health/Google Fit.
At the time of writing, its exercise tracking is also in beta. Our testing showed the typical findings from smart ring workout tracking: passable in stationary activities like indoor cycling but pretty poor in hand-heavy movements like outdoor running.
Step tracking and calorie burn are within a helpful range, and we don’t mind the app’s focus on tracking inactivity. Yet, scoring and exercise suggestions are woeful compared to the reality of your training, which means it’s a limited fitness tracker.
Again, Oura isn’t perfect either, but it at least offers semi-functioning workout detection, better integrations, and more advanced metrics.
Winner: Oura Ring 4
Verdict and recommendations
We think these smart rings and their respective platforms are top options to consider, but they are for very different types of users.
If you want the most comfortable smart ring – or the one that lasts the longest between charges – the RingConn is the best option. It’s also available at a reasonable price and has plenty of health, sleep, and stress data to pore over – even if we don’t grade much of it as easily actionable.
Yet, if you can stomach the subscription fee, the Oura Ring 4 can unlock a much more compelling tracking experience. The design is nowhere near as slimline as RingConn’s Gen 2, and the battery life is a little disappointing by comparison, but the insights you can gain into stress levels, sleep personality and timing, health trends, women’s health, and activity balance are unrivaled.