When you've got a chunky smart ring wrapped around your finger, size isn't just a detail - it's a lifestyle statement. Oura unveiled its super-slim Oura Ring 5 in late May, and it's visibly smaller and lighter than the Oura Ring 4 the company dropped two years ago. The new ring arrives with a 40% smaller, thinner design and an extra day of battery, which Oura achieved by completely redesigning the smart ring: swapping out the battery, refining the algorithm, and inserting more powerful LEDs for health tracking. This is Oura's most substantial cross-generation update, even if much of the software arriving on the Ring 5 is also available on the Ring 4.
I've been wearing the ring for a day, and my favorite part about this health tracker is, unsurprisingly, its small size. Ironically, the most noticeable difference between the Oura Ring 5 and the Oura Ring 4 is how little I notice the Oura Ring 5 around my finger. The miniaturization makes it a lot more comfortable to do simple stuff, like grip a heavy object or perform the Girl Scout hand sign (stick your index, middle, and ring fingers together with no gap). With the Oura Ring 4, I could never fully squeeze my fingers together without the ring leaving a small gap - not a massive problem, but marginal enough to be annoying, especially since I was wearing the ring almost 24/7. That issue has all but disappeared with the Ring 5: a teensy bit of space surrounds the ring when I squeeze my fingers together, and the reduced size helps it assimilate with actual analog accessories. It looks - and I can't emphasize this enough - like the jewelry I wear every day.
In fact, when I compared the Oura Ring 5 to ZDNET's Kerry Wan's wedding band, I found the two rings to be practically the same thickness and width. That may not sound like a big deal, but it represents a great advancement in sensor technology, battery, and hardware - and it's the first mainstream example of wearable tech becoming even more comfortable and, as the name suggests, wearable. Yes, the Oura Ring 5 gets me excited for Oura's future, but it also makes me excited for all the small pieces of technology that will be just as - if not more - capable, now that we know these devices don't have to be chunky and overbearing to work.
Because I've only worn the ring for a day, I can't vouch for its extended battery life. I'll be updating this review in a week, once I've put those battery claims to the test. The same goes for the bulk of the software updates arriving through the Oura Ring 5, including Health Radar, live activity tracking, blood pressure signals, and more.