Oura Ring 5 review: Slimmest smart ring looks the part

Oura helped popularise the smart ring, the category of wearables that shrink fitness trackers down into rings that masquerade as jewellery, but never quite passed for it as they were too big and chunky - until now.

The Oura Ring 5, released in June 2026, is, according to the firm, the smallest smart ring available, but doesn’t offer any new features over the Oura Ring 4 from 2024.

That means it tracks steps, stress, heart health and sleep, and collates it all into scores and advice about how to feel better and be more mindful.

I wore the Oura Ring 5 for more than three weeks to find out if it’s as small as Oura says, and if after several years, smart rings are finally useful enough to wholeheartedly recommend.

Spoiler: they are not. That makes the ring a hard sell, costing from £399 and with a basically necessary £5.99 per month subscription. Whether or not you want the slim design is where the decision lies, as the Oura Ring 4 costs £50 less and has all the same sensors and features.

But first, the positives. My previous reviews of the Oura Ring 3 and Oura Ring 4 both found Oura’s hardware too bulky and chunky to wear comfortably for days on end. I used to have to take those rings off to give my finger a break, and take them off when washing my hands due to the bulk, making them annoying to wear.

The design had to be bigger than a normal metal ring to fit in all the sensors and battery, but Oura has done an amazing job slimming down the Ring 5. It's waterproof too, so showering and swimming are in.

It’s the first smart ring worn on my left index finger (the index finger being the digit smart ring firms recommend their gadgets be worn on) that I have forgotten I was wearing, such is the thinness. In the black matte ‘stealth’ colour of my review sample (a pricier £499 option), it looks like a fashion choice, rather than a conspicuous piece of technology.

When you buy one, Oura first sends you a sizing kit with plastic rings to check which size is best. You can also opt to wear it on your middle or ring finger.

When your actual Oura Ring arrives, the outside is plain save for a small divot with a rough texture that should be positioned on the underside of the finger so the sensors on the inside are best placed to track heart rate, skin temperature, steps and movement.

At first glance, there’s not much damage on my ring after three weeks, though on closer inspection, the matte surface is slightly marked, and the divot has picked up some damage. The shiny silver and gold models will likely scratch much more easily, though.

The ring promises six to nine days of battery life. At first test, mine lasted nearly ten days - on the tenth day I woke up, and it had died in the night, so this claim seems accurate. But annoyingly, I lost that night’s sleep data - wearers should heed the app warning to recharge when the juice hits 20 per cent. The ring charges on a small puck via USB-C and takes about an hour to refill.

Inside the companion app for iPhone or Android are displayed three updated scores out of 100. These track the wearer’s readiness, sleep and activity depending on the previous days and nights of data.

For the first week or so of use, the Oura Ring 5 is not that helpful, because its long-term benefits require you to wear it for days, months and years to spot changes in data. The app has improved over the years and is now well polished, providing clear updates when you open it.

Readiness is higher after a rest day, sleep is lower if you had a disturbed night, and activity is affected by your personally set exercise goals. The sleep data is detailed and interesting, but worn alongside the Fitbit Air and Whoop MG bands, all three show different times and sleep stage breakdowns, so who knows which one is most accurate?

As a sedentary desk worker, my activity score was bang average unless I hauled myself outside for a run after work.

That said, the Oura Ring 5 is not the wearable to replace a keen runner’s GPS sports watch. With no screen or GPS, it cannot track your run routes or display any information, though worn on a run or during exercise, it is clever enough to automatically detect activity. You can then confirm in the app what you were doing, and it shows you the heart rate and movement data.

Where the ring excels is for an overview of overall wellness, even if knowing these data points doesn't necessarily mean you’ll understand them better. I can open the app and see my sleep debt in hours, calories burned, my estimated cardiovascular age, heart rate variability, and last night’s skin temperature, but they are just numbers.

Tapping on the ‘My Health’ tab brings up the most useful information. There, it collates sleep health, stress management and heart health and provides tailored observations, also ranking each area as ‘needs care’, ‘worth watching’, ‘looking good’ or ‘thriving’.

My sleep was ‘worth watching’, the app saying I am “running low on reserves” - I have a newborn, so that tracks. I had to tell the app’s AI Advisor that that was why I was having such terrible sleep. The chatbot helper mostly keeps out of the way, but does deliver timely notifications that are well-observed pieces of advice.

These notifications were among the most useful, as they look at patterns over several weeks to suggest actionable changes to improve an area of your everyday health.

But this is where the point of contention is on the Oura Ring 5. Although the data it gives me is interesting, I’m still not convinced it's truly useful for me to know it all.

I know I only slept five hours last night, which is why I am very tired. Do I need my smart ring to make me feel bad about it the next day?

On the other hand, after a late night staying up to watch England toil against Panama until midnight or so, my readiness dipped into the red for the next day. Accurate tracking to suggest I’d feel knackered, but not something I needed a gadget to tell me.

That makes the Oura Ring 5 a hard sell still, especially when you consider it requires a subscription to unlock all this data. Without one, the device costs from £399 and only really tracks sleep and displays a few scores - you can’t deep dive into results or get served any real insights without stumping up the £5.99 per month outlay for Oura Membership.

That’s £71.88 per year on top of the cost of the ring. You really have to be keen to invest in a discreet wearable to pay that amount.

The fact that the ring can’t track exercise and sports as accurately as a cheaper Garmin sports watch means it’s a companion to a smartwatch rather than a replacement. The Garmin Forerunner 170 Music costs £299.99 and has longer battery life, a screen, built-in GPS and can play your Spotify playlists to headphones without your phone. It all depends on what you want out of a wearable gadget.

Maybe that’s the trade-off you’re looking for. You probably can’t wear your Garmin to a wedding, but the Oura Ring 5 will go with your Sunday best. It’ll also be there in the morning to tell you you probably drank one too many proseccos.

Smartwatches can do that, but they are obviously tech on your wrist. If you want to wear a normal watch (or not watch) or find smartwatches ugly and their battery life unacceptably short, the Oura Ring 5 is an excellent alternative with subtle stylings, week-long battery life and the bearer of interesting data.

But the kicker still for smart rings is whether or not the wearer is any better off for having the data. The fact you have to spend hundreds on a ring and a subscription to find out, when smartwatches that offer more with no subscription and cost less, means smart rings are destined to stay niche. Like its predecessors, the Oura Ring 5 is a luxury purchase.

You might be better off with a cheaper alternative, such as the Ultrahuman Ring Air, which costs £329 and doesn't need a subscription.