The best smart ring I've tested isn't made by Samsung or Ultrahuman

ZDNET's key takeaways 

• The Oura Ring is the most competitive smart ring on the market, starting at $300 with a $6-per-month subscription. 
• Phenomenal app experience, health data visualization, sleep tracking capabilities, and cross-platform integrations make this smart ring the one to beat. 
• The monthly subscription is a grievance among wearers, and the battery life tends to wither over time.

If you've heard of smart rings, chances are you've heard the words "Oura Ring" tossed around. It is, after all, the biggest player in the smart ring space and a near blueprint for today's rivals, whether the rival in question is the Samsung Galaxy Ring or the Ultrahuman Ring Air. The market for smart rings has ballooned ever since the debut of the Oura Ring way back in 2015. There are many more options today than ever before, catering to various demographics like women, fitness junkies, and Android users.

With all these hot, new choices, is the $300 Oura Ring (plus the $6 per month subscription) still worth it? I've been testing the smart ring against its competitors for several months, and the answer is a resounding yes. The Oura Ring is still the smart ring most people should buy for its competitive and regularly improving features, app user experience, pristine sleep tracking data, and industry-leading integrations. Here's everything else you should know. 

Also: The best smart rings you can buy

A smart ring is only as good as its accompanying app. Unlike a smartwatch with a glowing screen you can toggle and view information on, a smart ring's usability relies on its app and only its app. The Oura Ring app is the best in the business, with the most well-rounded user experience out of every smart ring app I've tried. The app loads quickly 95% of the time and syncs your data from the ring in seconds. Taking your workout heart rate or recording a workout also doesn't take too long. 

Oura measures four core areas of wellness, as categorized by the tabs in the app: sleep, activity, resilience, and readiness. It's easy to see the underlying data that makes your scores what they are by tapping into each tab. Go into the sleep tab, and you'll see all the data contributors, like efficiency, time in bed, resting heart rate during sleep, latency, and the time spent in each sleep stage. You can click on any of these data points to see a historical view of, say, your latency or average heart rate. This extensive level of data capture and illustration, how every essential data point is easy to access and view from a daily or monthly glance, is my favorite part of Oura. 

Also: We've entered the era of the smart ring. Here's why it will shake up the wearables market

This brings me to a nerdy but essential reason why I love Oura: it's great with health data visualization, which is vital for smart rings. The Oura Ring takes your sleep or activity data, stores it in an easy-to-find place, and provides you with useful recommendations for going about your day. And even though all those numbers are there in the app for you to learn more about, you don't need to interpret any of them to apply the data and tips to your lifestyle. Most data is paired with a short and sweet summary to help you easily digest the numbers. 

Take the Resilience tab, for example. You could check out the ebbs and flows of your resilience by keeping an eye on which quadrant of the resilience map you fall into every day. Or you could scroll down a smidge and read Oura's resilience insight, which offers up an accessible summary plus a recommendation or two on rest and activity. 

Sleep tracking is another selling point of the Oura Ring. Given the wearable's discreet form factor, you can go to bed every night with it around your finger and barely notice it (unlike a clunky Apple Watch, which, from experience, is a pain to sleep with). Plus, the four to five days of battery life you get out of the Oura Ring means it will usually monitor your sleep for a few nights before you recharge. 

There are several helpful features that distinguish Oura from its competitors. But what really sold me on it was how it helped me recover from an illness a few months ago. Before I got sick, I didn't take the ring's recommendations to heart. But right as I found myself getting ill, Oura notified me that my sleep, readiness, and body temperature data were all at alarming levels. 

Also: Low on vitamin D? This new smart ring feature aims to help

As I spent a few days in bed with headaches, congestion, and a fever, I found Oura's data collection to align with how I was feeling. The day I had a fever, my abnormal body temperature was noted on the app. I didn't have the energy to go to a doctor or consult a professional, but I did get recommendations on the app that helped me recover or, at the very least, document my progress to recovery. For example, the app suggested I take it easy and concentrate on recovery when my body temperature rose. I turned off rest mode a few days later, but Oura continued to remind me to ease into activity and not push myself to support my recovery. 

Oura also stands out with its software longevity and feature relevance. In the past few months, Oura has debuted features for heart health, menstrual and menopausal tracking, and even a body clock graph. The ring also integrates with popular services like Strava, Natural Cycles, and Apple and Android health apps. Given its long history in the space, Oura has far more integrations than its competitors. 

That said, there are some caveats with the Oura Ring that you should consider. The first and most infamous one is the $6 monthly subscription fee to access the extensive data tracking on the app. Naturally, we're seeing more subscription-free smart rings, like the Ultrahuman and Samsung, that entice users with one-off payments. 

Also: I tested this smart ring for fitness users and it nearly beats Oura. Here's why

Oura claims the monthly subscription fee helps the brand continue to upgrade and release new features regularly. While it's true that the smart ring brand churns out new features like no other competitor, it's a more challenging message to sell to consumers who could opt for a one-time purchase of the $400 Galaxy Ring with all their health data openly accessible instead.

Another issue I encountered while testing the ring is the chunkiness of the band. Compared to the Galaxy Ring, which has a thinner, inverted band that rarely scratches, the Oura Ring band juts out and is girthy around my finger, making it more prone to wear and tear over time.  

ZDNET's buying advice

Still, the Oura Ring is the best smart ring you can buy right now. It isn't without its flaws, but the sheer health data collection and visualization a user has access to, its abundance of helpful features for anyone no matter the gender, age, or health status, and the user experience of the app and the smart ring itself make for a compelling wearable, even amid the bustling competition. 

By regularly wearing the Oura Ring, I learned more about my health. I learned that eating or drinking too late makes it harder for my heart rate to drop during sleep that regularly exercising during the beginning of my menstrual cycle sets my energy levels up for success for the rest of the month, and that sleep is essential to my quality of life.

I can't say as much about my Apple Watch, the Evie Ring, the Samsung Galaxy Ring, or the Ultrahuman Ring Air. If technology is supposed to improve our lives and help us better understand ourselves through data we could never collect on our own, the Oura Ring is one revolutionary wellness wearable.  

Oura Ring specs

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