Oura Ring 5 Unveiled: Thinner, Smarter, and Pricier

The smart ring has spent years trying to convince people that the most advanced health tracker they own could be the one they almost forget they are wearing. With the Oura Ring 5, Oura is pushing that argument to its physical limit. The company has unveiled its next-generation device as what it bills the world's smallest smart ring, shaving down a design that was already discreet and stuffing it with reengineered sensors, a longer-lasting battery, and a roster of new health features. The catch, as is increasingly the story in wearables, is that getting smaller and smarter also means getting more expensive.

Pre-orders opened on May 28, with the first rings shipping to customers on June 4. The base model lands at $399, a $50 jump over the Ring 4's $349 starting price, and premium finishes climb to $499. For a category that lives or dies on how invisible it feels and how reliable its data is, the Ring 5 is Oura's clearest statement yet that it intends to stay the brand to beat.

A Ring That Almost Disappears

The headline change is size. Oura says the Ring 5 is roughly 40% smaller in volume than its predecessor, a reduction you can feel rather than just read on a spec sheet. The ring measures 6.09mm wide and just 2.28mm thick, down from the Ring 4's 7.99mm width and 2.88mm thickness. The lightest sizes tip the scales at around 2 grams, light enough that the device starts to read more like a piece of everyday jewelry than a gadget.

That slimming act did not come at the expense of durability. The Ring 5 keeps a scratch-resistant titanium build inside and out, carries an IP68 rating, and is waterproof to 100 meters, so showers, pools, and open water are all fair game. Oura is offering six finishes, including Silver, Black, a redesigned Gold, Brushed Silver, Deep Rose, and Stealth, with the premium colorways commanding the higher price.

New Sensors and a Battery That Lasts Longer

Squeezing a smart ring is one thing; making it more accurate while doing so is harder. Oura rebuilt the sensing system from the ground up, fitting what it calls precision-engineered, low-profile sensor domes for better skin contact. Inside are more powerful LEDs and 12 signal pathways designed to deliver more consistent readings across different finger sizes and skin tones, a longstanding pain point for optical heart-rate sensors. Oura claims the pulse signal it captures can be up to 100 times stronger than a typical wrist-worn wearable, the upside of measuring from the finger rather than the wrist.

Battery life improves too, which is the part that tends to surprise skeptics given the smaller frame. The Ring 5 is rated for 6 to 9 days on a charge, up from the Ring 4's 5 to 8 days, thanks to what Oura describes as a chemical and mechanical redesign of the battery. A separately sold charging case offers up to a month of total runtime with wireless charging, a convenience cribbed straight from the earbuds playbook.

The Software Story: Blood Pressure, GLP-1, and On-Demand Care

Oura has long argued that the ring is really a delivery system for software, and the Ring 5 arrives with the most ambitious feature set the company has shipped. Among the additions are blood pressure signals tracked during sleep, expanded nighttime breathing analysis with a rolling 30-day view, and live activity tracking that surfaces real-time metrics during runs and rides. There is also improved automatic detection for low-motion activities, the kind of gentle movement older trackers tended to miss.

The more eye-catching moves are in personalized health. The Ring 5 introduces GLP-1 insights aimed at the surging number of people on medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, a new Health Radar overview, and an option to import medical history such as conditions, medications, and lab results. Oura is also leaning into care itself through a partnership that offers AI-assisted medical guidance, with on-demand access to clinicians available for an additional fee. Crucially, many of these features will roll out to Ring 3 and Ring 4 owners as well, softening the pressure to upgrade.

How It Stacks Up Against Samsung and the Field

The Ring 5 arrives into a market that has gone unexpectedly quiet at the top. Samsung's Galaxy Ring, the most credible big-tech challenger, has not received a successor nearly two years after its debut, with reports pointing to a Galaxy Ring 2 slipping into early 2027. Apple, despite years of patent chatter, has yet to enter the ring category at all. That leaves Oura competing largely against itself and a clutch of upstarts.

The biggest knock on Oura remains its subscription. Full functionality requires an Oura Membership at $5.99 a month, a cost that compounds over the life of a device. Samsung's pitch with the Galaxy Ring was the opposite: pay once, own everything, though full features depend on a Samsung phone. Subscription-free rivals such as RingConn and Ultrahuman make the same no-fee argument and have been gaining ground on price-conscious buyers. Oura's counter is breadth and polish, plus broad compatibility with both iOS and Android, an area where Samsung is more restrictive.

What the Launch Signals

The Ring 5 is less a reinvention than a refinement, and that is precisely the point. By making the hardware nearly disappear while widening the software moat, Oura is betting that the smart ring's future is about staying out of the way and going deeper into clinical-grade insight. The price creep and the persistent subscription are real friction, and rivals will keep hammering both. But with Samsung stalled and Apple still on the sidelines, Oura has bought itself room to define what the next phase of the wearables market looks like, one barely-there ring at a time.