The Oura Ring 4 (and Gen 3) pack in top water resistance ratings, which mean they can be used for swimming and watersports.
If you’re the owner of a shiny new Oura Ring 4, or indeed an older Oura Ring Gen 3, then you might be wondering whether it’s waterproof, and whether you can take your Oura for a swim.
There’s a common misconception around smart rings that they’re not waterproof, possibly because of their small and delicate build. But actually, most smart rings out there today boast some of the most robust water-resistance ratings going.
Below we explain the water resistance of Oura and what it means in real terms.
Is the Oura Ring waterproof?
No tech is fully waterproof, but Oura boasts some of the best water resistance you’ll find on the market.
Oura says that its ring is water resistant to 100m — that likely means a 10ATM/IP68 rating although this isn’t implicitly listed.
On the Oura Ring spec sheet the company states: “100m/328ft, suitable for sauna and water sports but not diving.” That has all the hallmarks of 10ATM water resistance.
You can read our in-depth guide to water resistance here.
What can you do with the Oura Ring 4?
Pretty much anything. You can shower, swim, and even do high-velocity water sports (surf, jet ski, whatever), and the Ring 4 will stand up to the test.
The sauna is also on limits, so there really are very few activities that the Oura Ring can’t handle.
However, diving is off-limits. Despite inferring that you can dive down to depths of 100m, a 10ATM rating refers to depth, it accounts for the speed of water hitting the device.
Is Oura Ring good for swimming tracking?
While the Oura Ring can be worn for swimming, it’s not much of a swim tracker. Oura is generally a passive tracker, which looks at workout data holistically as part of your daily movement and doesn’t do much in the way of workout analysis.
Swimming isn’t one of the manually trackable workout types in the Oura app, and there aren’t provisions for recognizing stroke or length data. However, swimming is part of the expanded auto-detected workout types, and it will export basic data to services such as Strava. You can see some of this data above in a summary of one of our swim sessions by Wareable tester Michael Sawh.
Movement will add up as part of your goals, as will calorie burn. But while it can register HR, there are mixed reports on how effective that is underwater.
So while Oura Ring can be used for swimming, it’s not an effective swim tracker, as we’ve seen with smartwatches. You can read our guide to the best smartwatches for swimming here.
