Price: A Question of Longevity
Both the Oura Ring 4 and the Whoop 5.0 are expensive trackers. The Oura starts at $349 and requires a $69.99 annual membership fee. It’s available in a variety of sizes and colors, mostly for the same price, though extra-durable ceramic models start at $499.
Whoop doesn’t have an ordinary pricing structure; you can’t just buy the device outright. Instead, you need to sign up for a Whoop membership, and the tracker is included with your subscription. The brand offers three subscription options, but as I concluded in my Whoop 5.0 review, the middle tier, called Peak, is the Goldilocks pick of the bunch. This tier costs $239 per year and includes the Whoop 5.0 with a black SuperKnit band and a wireless power pack that lets you recharge the tracker while it’s still on your wrist.
Whoop’s pricing tiers (Credit: Whoop)
While Whoop’s hefty subscription price elicits more sticker shock, the comparative cost between the two depends on how long you plan to keep your gadget before upgrading. If you like to trade out new gadgets every year, the Whoop 5.0 will be less expensive at $239 compared with $418.99 for the Oura.
After two years, the scales balance, with Whoop 5.0 fees totaling $478 compared with $488.98 for the Oura Ring 4. After three years, the Oura is more affordable at $558.97, compared with $717 for the Whoop. The scales tip further and further toward Oura the longer you own the device after that.
For reference, Whoop’s upgrade from the fourth to the fifth generation took roughly three years, while Oura waited four years to move from version three to four. With both devices, you can still use the previous-generation model to access most of the current features.
Since I’d venture that most folks are looking to purchase a device that will last for years, Oura comes out on top in this category.
Winner: Oura Ring 4
Sensors and Features: Similar Capabilities
Since both the Oura Ring 4 and the Whoop 5.0 specialize in holistic health tracking, they have a similar set of sensors built into their wildly different frames. The Oura Ring 4 has red and green infrared LEDs to measure blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), heart rate, heart rate variability, and respiratory rate, plus skin temperature sensors and an accelerometer. It can track 40 different types of exercises, your movement throughout the day, your sleep duration and stages, as well as your stress levels.
The bottom of the tracker holds Whoop’s sensors (Credit: Andrew Gebhart)
The Whoop 5.0 has a built-in accelerometer for movement tracking, a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor for heart rate tracking, and a skin temperature sensor. It can measure heart rate variability, respiratory rate, sleep, SpO2, and stress as well. It supports a wide range of exercises, including recovery and household activities, in addition to the standard mix of gym machines and sports. It also lets you log specific strength training exercises, like back squat and bench press.
Since both devices have similar sets of sensors, Whoop wins with its wider variety of trackable activities.
Winner: Whoop 5.0
Design: Fashion vs. Utility
Obviously, this is the most subjective category, but the battle isn’t particularly close for me. The Oura Ring 4 looks stylish enough to wear for any occasion. The Whoop 5.0’s utilitarian strap blends in at the gym, but would detract from a nice outfit for a night on the town. Whoop offers various band styles and apparel with a pouch you can slip the sensor into, but those accessories are sold separately, whereas the Oura just looks nice to begin with.
I like the way the Oura Ring looks (Credit: Andrew Gebhart)
Both devices are comfortable. I wore them throughout my day-to-day life, at the gym, while sleeping, and on a few fancy occasions. Neither one bothered me physically. The Whoop 5.0 just can’t quite match the attractive look of the Oura, though, and the ring’s not so ostentatious to feel out of place during ordinary occasions or at the gym, either.
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Winner: Oura Ring 4
Battery Life: One Week or Two?
Since both devices measure your wellness over time, battery life is an important factor. Both the Oura Ring 4 and the Whoop 5.0 work better the more that you wear them. On this front, Whoop is the clear winner, since you never actually have to take it off. Even without factoring in the portable battery pack, it more than doubles Oura’s battery capacity. The Whoop 5.0 lasted for 16.5 days in my battery rundown test. The battery pack just adds unmatched convenience, since you can click it in place and keep wearing the strap while it recharges.
The Oura Ring 4 lasted just over 7 days in my testing, and that’s a fine total. You only have to remove the ring once a week, so you can recharge it for a couple of hours during a lazy Sunday afternoon and have it on the rest of the time. While respectable compared with other fitness trackers, Oura’s battery can’t match Whoop’s.
Winner: Whoop 5.0
Activity and Exercise Tracking: Accurate, But Basic
Whoop translates your health metrics into three all-encompassing scores: Sleep (an assessment of your shut-eye), Strain (which combines activity and stress), and Recovery (based on your Strain, sleep, and resting heart rate). You can tap any of these scores for details, including how each was calculated.
Oura also offers three scores. The Activity and Sleep scores are self-explanatory, and a Readiness score encapsulates the rest of your data on a scale from one to 100. Over time, Oura also measures your cardio capacity, cardiovascular age, and sleep regularity, while Whoop tracks physiological age (which may differ from your chronological age) and pace of aging.
Whoop measures activity and uses it to create its holistic scores (Credit: Whoop/PCMag)
Both trackers accurately measure everyday activity and basic exercise metrics. They can automatically detect and track certain exercises, or you can manually log your workouts. During workouts, both track your heart rate and other key stats like heart rate zones, pace, and time. However, neither offers the level of detail you’ll get from dedicated GPS fitness wearables, which typically measure more exercise-specific stats like cadence, oscillation, and power for running.
Winner: Tie
Sleep and Stress Tracking: Prescriptive vs. Descriptive
Both the Oura Ring 4 and the Whoop 5.0 excel as sleep trackers. Oura specifically monitors sleep duration, efficiency, latency, restfulness, time in bed awake, timing, and the amount of time you spend in each sleep stage, plus health metrics like average heart rate variability, breathing regularity, resting heart rate, and SpO2.
Whoop’s sleep data tends to be more prescriptive than descriptive. It also tracks sleep duration, time in each stage, the efficiency of your rest, and your sleep stress, but then uses these metrics to calculate sleep debt and recommend bedtimes to help you catch up. Its recommendations and assessments of your needed rest take up the bulk of its sleep page. It doesn’t show individual values for your overnight respiration, skin temperature, or even your average heart rate on its sleep page, though it monitors all three.
I prefer the way Oura’s app shows sleep and stress information (Credit: Oura/PCMag)
Oura makes it easier to find the granular sleep details that you might be interested in, while still offering its own recommendations. Both track stress as well, but again, Oura presents the info in a more helpful manner, graphing your stress against recent activity so you can clearly see the cause of spikes.
Both the Oura Ring 4 and the Whoop 5.0 proved accurate when measuring sleep and stress, but I found the way Oura presents its information to be more helpful.
Winner: Oura Ring 4