Sleep, activity, stress and more without getting in the way

Review: Oura Ring 5 - Logs your life at a luxury price

With the ring on your finger and the app on your phone, you get a log showing exactly what your sleep, activity, health and stress look like, based on what the ring measures on your finger.

Erik Mörner Erik Mörner

Published 24 September 2026 - 14:27

Using a ring specifically to measure health naturally has both advantages and disadvantages. The obvious advantage is, of course, that the ring is unobtrusive. You barely feel it or think about it being there, which makes it considerably more comfortable than a smartwatch, particularly for measuring sleep. There are also advantages in the measurement data, as Oura itself is quick to point out that heart rate monitoring is much easier to do well with a finger-based measurement than with a watch around the wrist.

Smaller and more comfortable

With Oura Ring 5, the manufacturer has made the ring smaller and improved the sensors. This means the ring is slightly more comfortable than previous models, although the difference is not as noticeable as the figure of 40 per cent smaller suggests. At the same time, battery life has improved somewhat.

When you buy an Oura Ring, you first need to know which size you need. This is determined by trying sample rings until you find the right size. The sizing kit, containing rings that feel as though they are made of thick cardboard, is included with your order at no extra cost, but it adds an extra step to the ordering process. Oura points out that the sizes have changed with each new model. Oura Ring 4, for example, was available in sizes 4–15, while this Oura Ring 5 comes in sizes 6–13. However, I have worn size 11 for Oura Ring 3, 4 and 5.

A week's battery life

During the couple of weeks I used the ring in the test period, I generally needed to charge it almost exactly once a week. The app on the phone starts warning you when around 20 per cent battery remains, giving you some margin so you do not risk running out of battery while you are asleep. The first time I charge it, the battery level is at 15 per cent, and it takes around an hour and a half to charge fully.

When you buy an Oura Ring, a charger is included. It is a pad with a small holder and connects to a wall socket or another power source via USB-C. A charging case is now also available as an accessory. It is a small round case, like one for jewellery, and it stores power so you can keep the ring charged for a month without having to rely on a wall socket. In the phone app, you can continuously see the battery level in the ring and also in the charging case if you have bought one, as it is sold separately.

The app shows insights and data

In the accompanying app, you get a timeline of what you have done during the day. It shows automatically recorded activities, such as walks, runs and similar activities. You can also see when you fell asleep and when you woke up. Oura Ring is intended to automatically recognise around 40 different types of exercise, including walking, running, cycling, swimming, strength training and a range of others. However, it is not entirely flawless. For one thing, it takes a while of continuous activity before anything is recorded at all. This means that my shorter walks, from home to the underground or bus, for example, are rarely recorded as walks, even though the steps themselves are registered.

The same applies to a shorter swim on a warm day in Lake Mälaren. It was probably too short to be registered.

You have to manually approve automatically registered workouts in the Oura app before they are actually saved, which says something about the fact that Oura itself is not 100 per cent confident in its automatic activity detection function. A couple of times during the test period, it also gets things wrong. A longer walk of just over ten kilometres, for example, is registered as only two shorter walks of just over one kilometre each. In the app afterwards, as well as approving automatic registrations, you can also edit what has been registered if you know it is incorrect. In the mornings, I am sometimes prompted to approve the previous day's activities, and then there are times when I do not quite remember where and when I walked. I usually trust the ring's data then. For walks, running, cycling and other outdoor activities, the ring relies on GPS from the phone if you have it with you. Accuracy varies considerably here. Some walks have very precise location data step by step, while others are only registered with a location now and then.

Active training, mostly reliable measurements

One new feature in the Oura app is that you can manually start a workout and then have data such as distance and heart rate displayed directly on the phone screen while you exercise. This gets around the disadvantage of smart rings, which cannot provide any direct feedback because they do not have a screen themselves.

Overall, I think the ring provides reliable data most of the time, but both in activities and sleep tracking, I do sometimes spot errors. On one occasion, sleep tracking continued until 10:30 despite me getting up at 07:30 and clearly moving around, so it should not possibly have been recorded as rest.

For either iPhone or Android

The Oura app on the phone was updated in the spring when Oura Ring 5 was released, but some of the new features, such as the new Health Radar, are not available in Sweden. In addition, the new features that are actually available to us are also coming to older rings from Ring 3 onwards. For example, the real-time activity feature I have already mentioned.

When using an iPhone, Oura can sync its information with Apple Health, and when using Android, with Health Connect, as well as with Strava whether you use an iPhone or Android. This means that alongside the ring, you can use other devices, such as a smartwatch or heart rate monitor, without risking activities being saved as duplicates.

Expensive and still requires a monthly subscription

For your Oura ring to be of any use, a monthly subscription costing €5.99, around SEK 70, is required. When you get a ring for the first time, the first month is free, but after that you have to pay. If you do not, you can only see very general figures and cannot even see how much you have slept. Without paying the fee, the ring is therefore completely pointless.

The fact that Oura Ring 5 is significantly more expensive than its predecessors while still requiring a subscription to be useful is the ring's main weakness. Those who pay do, however, receive fairly detailed advice and conclusions. The app is good at putting the collected figures into context, and it always provides up-to-date conclusions about your daily condition. There you can see whether you should focus on activity or concentrate on rest and recovery, how your sleep affects your readiness and important key metrics.