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The Oura Ring wasn’t the first smart ring, but it’s certainly the one that best showed how we can bring fitness and health monitoring features to our fingers.
However, it’s now no longer the only smart ring that can do that, with the rise of rivals like the Samsung Galaxy Ring. There is no doubt that Oura will take or has already taken steps to stave off the new competition.
Has there been talk yet about a new Oura that could be known as the Oura Ring 4? Will it start soon? Here’s what we think we know so far about Oura’s next smart ring.
When will the Oura Ring Gen 4 be released?
Oura hasn’t revealed that a new smart ring is on the way, but as we’ll see later, there are indications that it’s in the works.
The current version, the Oura Ring Gen 3, was launched in October 2021 and since then Oura has focused on offering its sensors and smart features in new designs as well as adding more features to the companion app to expand the capabilities of its smart ring to enlarge.
The Oura Ring Gen 2 launched in 2018 and started shipping worldwide in April of that year, so we’ve seen launches both earlier and later in the year. The gap between launches is about the same, so it feels like we could be getting a new ring, but given how much work Oura has done in recent months to improve Gen 3’s functionality, it’s not a given that one will be coming anytime soon. horizon.
Samsung’s Galaxy Ring beats Oura in these four key ways, but loses in one way
How much does the Oura Ring Gen 4 cost?
Much like the launch date of a new Oura ring, we have no form of control over how much it will cost when or if it lands.
We can see how much the Oura Ring currently costs and whether Oura could decide to respond to the arrival of cheaper smart rings from the likes of Ultrahuman, Ringconn and Circular.
The latest Oura Ring prices start at £299/$299 for the Heritage model and go up to £349/$399 for the all-round Horizon design. If you opt for the Stealth finish or Gold, the price rises to £549 / $599.
While it’s not the cheapest smart ring available, it’s still cheaper to buy than the Samsung Galaxy Ring (£399/$399), although unlike Samsung’s ring you do have to pay for the extra subscription to get the best out of it.
It seems unlikely that Oura will abandon that subscription model and will likely have to pay for both hardware and software for the next one, although we’re glad to be proven wrong.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
What specifications and features does the Oura Ring 4 have?
Design
One of the biggest reasons why Oura stands out above all other smart rings is that it simply looks fun to wear. You have two designs and a range of different finishes.
I just wish that when the new Oura comes out it will be more of the same.
Mainly based on the first piece of evidence of its existence surfaced and spied by Android Authority via a certification list, which may have given us our first glimpse of Oura’s new ring.
The set of images assigned the model number OA11 shows a ring that looks very similar to Oura’s Horizon ring, with sensors that appear to sit more flush with the inner casing than previous versions.
In addition to mentioning an additional OA12 model number, which could very well relate to the Heritage version of the smart ring, the listing also mentions the Oura Ring 4 name along with a possible gold color option on a product label.
As for ring sizes, the documents suggest that the ring pictured is tested in 7, 9, 13 and 15 ring sizes. The Oura Ring Gen 3 is available in sizes 6-13, so this would be a clear way to spread the testing across a wide range of sizes to ensure it performs consistently across the rings.
Features
Since the launch of Gen 3, Oura has been busy adding more features to its smartphone app to better track your habits and activities. It seems like another area that could be improved is the way Oura takes into account what you eat.
While it may not necessarily go as far as allowing you to detect what you ate for your lunch, a teardown of the Oura Android smartphone app suggests that Oura will add the ability to log meals and meals to get a more comprehensive view of to get you. day.
This is of course something that many fitness tracker companion apps already let you do, and the app’s suite of coding suggests there will be a manual logging option, as well as the ability to take photos of food items. Oura will then look to use AI to analyze items to make meal logging easier.
Screenshots of the meal tracking user interface indicate that Oura plans to use this information to help users better understand the impact of when and what you eat on sleep and your circadian rhythm.
That is the 24-hour cycle in which the body performs essential functions. Several things can influence maintaining a good circadian rhythm, including good sleep quality.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
While these alleged first images suggest that Oura will look to change the design of its sensor array, the company may also tweak things to improve the accuracy and tracking performance of its sensors. A patent application discovered by Wareable indicates that Oura could try to improve accuracy when monitoring different skin tones.
The application refers to the different noise levels that can be produced by different skin tones, which can lead to a decrease in the accuracy of monitoring data such as blood oxygen levels. To address the difference in accuracy between skin tones, Oura wants to use its sensors to take a number of measurements to correctly detect skin color and incorporate that into the data it produces.
This difference in accuracy between skin tones is something that has been leveled out in wrist-worn wearables, which use similar optical sensor setups to track information like heart rate and blood oxygen for some time. If Oura has managed to find a way to address this, it would be a pretty big breakthrough, not just for smart rings, but for wearables in general.
Software
Recently, we’ve seen Oura make improvements to the way users can track stress and add more fitness-oriented metrics. If you’re an existing Oura user, you’re probably aware of the Labs section of the app, which provides access to features that provide the ability to test out experimental features that Oura is exploring.
Two of the latest additions are a symptom radar that allows you to detect early signs of changes in your health by tracking biometric data such as breathing rate and temperature changes. This looks a lot like the Health Monitor feature on the Whoop Strap and could be an indication that Oura is moving a little more into the health monitoring space.
Also being tested is an AI-style Advisor, which is essentially a chatbot that aims to make personalized recommendations based on your data. So AI could play a big role in Oura’s next smart ring.
We will update this article when there are more rumors about the next Oura smart ring.