Oura Ring 5 Is Alive and WOW!

This is such a massive announcement that I just couldn't pass up the chance to weigh in with a solo commentary. It’s also completely blindsided the market—industry analysts didn't expect a launch like this until autumn 2027.

In the beginning was the Word - or rather, the prompt 🤖

Oura features a built-in AI assistant called Advisor. A community member decided to grill it about the Oura Ring 5... 

and the bot spilled everything it kne. Was it a glitch? Intentional? A stroke of marketing genius? Your guess is as good as ours.

Zobrazit příspěvek na Instagramu

Příspěvek sdílený Lord (@lordofthesmartrings)

The Gap

The gap between Gen 3 and Gen 4 spanned three long years. Between Gen 4 and Gen 5? A mere 20 months. So, what changed? The competition (even if Oura keeps tight-lipped and resorts to quiet lawsuits) is clearly breathing down their neck—and it's a hell of a motivator.

• RingConn Gen 3—the reigning king of miniaturization (complete with haptics and BP trend tracking)—started shipping on May 29th, exactly one day after the Oura Ring 5 announcement.

RingConn Gen 3 First Impressions: A Best Ring ever?

After testing every generation, I’m diving into the brand new RingConn Gen 3. With groundbreaking vascular trends, a built-in haptic motor, and a sleek new matte finish, this dark horse of the smart ring market continues to deliver premium hardware with zero subscription fees.

LordOfTheSmartRingsLORDoftheSMARTRINGS

• Ultrahuman Pro—the new generation designed to bypass the patent war with Oura Health—is officially out. However, its form factor leaves a lot to be desired. According to available data, the Pro is actually about 0.25 mm thicker while maintaining the same width.

Ultrahuman PRO - LordOfTheSmartRings

LordOfTheSmartRingsLORDoftheSMARTRINGS

• Velia Ring—the one that personally hooked me on Kickstarter years back, specifically because of its ultra-thin profile. It still hasn't arrived, though their ads keep popping up all over my social feeds...

📐 The biggest (and perhaps only) new feature is a 40% reduction in size.

It looks like getting beach-ready this season means trimming down the width, and the Oura Ring 5 is shaping up to be the ultimate showstopper. In my book, hitting that 6 mm mark is the wearable equivalent of a six-pack.

Before you reach for your wallet, there are a few key things to keep in mind:

• The size range has shrunk from 4–15 down to 6–13. If your fingers are on the very small or large end of the spectrum, the Oura Ring 5 won't fit you just yet.
• The sizing kit is entirely new and incompatible with previous generations. The Ring 5 dimensions differ from the Ring 4—which, to be fair, is exactly what happened last time around.
• The subscription is still mandatory. You're looking at €6 a month, though Oura does throw in the first month for free.

What else is new?

Honestly, quite a lot. But we need to separate the wheat from the chaff here—meaning, what’s exclusive to the Oura Ring 5 versus what will trickle down to your trusty Gen 2 or (mainly) Gen 3.

Let’s start with the Oura Ring 5 exclusives.

Oura Ring 5 Only

• Under the Hood: Oura claims they had to completely re-engineer the internal architecture from scratch. And while they were rearranging the furniture inside, they reportedly managed to beef up tracking accuracy too.

• 🎯 Better Accuracy: Specifically, Oura is backing up its claims with some concrete data:
  • 12% more accurate overnight HRV compared to the Oura Ring 4 for the average member.
  • 24% improvement in signal quality for workout heart rate, translating to a 19% increase in accuracy during primary activities like running, cycling, and walking.
• 🔋 A 6-to-9-Day Battery: While the Ring 4 promised 5 to 8 days, the new model pushes that to a 6-to-9-day window. Real-world mileage will likely land somewhere in the middle, but considering the dramatic hardware diet, those are impressive numbers.
  If you want more juice, an optional charging case (€109) will buy you up to an additional 30 days on the go.

Across-the-Board Features

• Health Radar (Gen 3+)—A new, proactive layer that continuously scans your cardiovascular and respiratory signals in the background. It feels like a massive evolution of their impressive Symptom Radar, expanding into new territory that will definitely give RingConn some sleepless nights:
  • Nighttime Breathing: Born out of a new partnership with sleep-tech giant ResMed, this feature tracks sleep-related breathing disturbances over a 30-day rolling window. If you're getting strong Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) vibes from this, you're not alone.
  • Blood Pressure Signals: This metric tracks trends that could indicate cardiovascular strain and potential hypertension. Just like the RingConn Gen 3, this isn’t a direct cuff-less blood pressure reading; it’s strictly pattern detection. This feature is graduate tech, graduating directly from Oura Labs into the main app.
  • Speaking of Oura Labs, June will see the debut of Counsel Health. This is the next evolution of the Oura Advisor, integrating an AI-driven primary care platform that can bridge the gap between your data and actual medical guidance—including the option to connect with real, licensed human physicians (though expect this to be US-only at launch).

• Live Activity Tracking (Gen 3+)—real-time workout tracking directly in the app (covering pace, distance, and heart rate) paired with a lock screen widget. This feels like a strategic play for the athlete crowd. I’ve long maintained that a smart ring isn't the ideal sports watch or fitness tracker, but with this move, Oura is definitely trying to change my mind.

• GLP-1 Insights (Gen 3+)—Following in Ultrahuman’s footsteps, Oura is officially jumping on the Ozempic wave. The app is introducing a dedicated in-app companion journal specifically designed to track weight-loss medication journeys. It allows users to log dosages, track side effects, and monitor weight changes while mapping that data directly against core Oura metrics like sleep, stress, and activity levels. Down the line, the platform plans to tie this ecosystem together with continuous glucose monitor (CGM) integration and their AI-assisted "Meals" feature. For those of us in the EU, however, this remains irrelevant for now—the feature is launching exclusively in the US, UAE, and India.

• Data Deletion (Gen 2+)—This looks more like a regulatory compliance checkbox than a flashy user feature. You can now wipe your Oura data entirely, even filtering for specific windows of time.

The Price Hike

A new generation is always a prime opportunity to adjust for inflation. :) The entry-level price has jumped from the Ring 4's $349 up to a steeper $399. Disappointingly, Oura isn’t offering any sort of trade-in or trade-up program for older models—likely because making it profitable just didn't make sense on their spreadsheet.

Conclusion

I’ll be honest, I was already imagining this kind of downsizing back with the Oura Ring 4, only to end up disappointed. My initial thoughts this time around were pretty straightforward:

Is a smaller footprint really all we’re getting? And is that enough?

But as I’m writing this and digging through the specs, it hits me: the whole reason I got into smart rings in the first place was sheer fascination with how much tech could actually be crammed into such a tiny gadget. Now, they’ve managed to shrink an already impressive piece of hardware by another 40% while holding the line on battery life. Hat's off to them.

Sure, we're still waiting on those true "wow" features—like a user-replaceable battery, non-invasive CGM tracking, or kinetic body-charging. But I have to tip my hat a second time for how perfectly they timed this to counter the competition.

Do you actually need to upgrade from the Oura Ring 4? Honestly, if your current ring works fine and you're perfectly happy with its size, probably not. You're getting the new software features either way, and despite all the marketing percentages being thrown around, the daily data trends will likely look identical. Want to bet?