Honestly, I don’t really pay that much attention to my body. I wake each day a groggy bear from hibernation, vaguely angry at a new day’s tasks, don’t feel super energetic and forget to eat right. I mean, I run a 10K once a year and work out once or twice a week pretty hard (or not-so-hard, if I’m doing cozy cardio). However, I also am supine on my bed editing, researching and writing all day, so my overall fitness is pretty spotty. I want to tell you this because, unlike some friends I have here in California, I’m no endurance athlete or biohacker who has her finger on the pulse of all the latest body tech. (Or napping intel.) So when I say that my experience using health trackers—I tried the Oura Ring for a year and the Whoop health tracker for six weeks—has boosted my overall well-being, understand that it’s despite my rather lazy and careless attitude toward self-care. I did a deep dive into biometrics to assess the Whoop versus Oura Ring health trackers, using five elements: ease of use, accuracy, battery life, style and value. And what I learned by paying attention to my numbers helped me to get better rest (without resorting to mouth taping for sleep or even investing in the best sleep masks), feel more chill and also improve scores on health indicators like heart rate variability (which I didn’t even know was important, but learned about thanks to both device apps mini-tutorials).
The Whoop Health Tracker vs. the Oura Ring: I Ran, Slept and Stressed While Wearing Both—Here’s Which Works Best
Who needs a sleep clinic with these REM reports?
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What Do the Whoop and Oura Ring Have in Common?
Both the Whoop and Oura Ring are wearable health trackers that use infrared light and accelerometer motion sensors to capture information about your body mechanics. The devices don’t have screens to report said data (like, for example, the Apple Watch does) but instead use Bluetooth technology to send information about your sleep, stress level, heart rate and more to your handheld device. There, via an app, you can get reports on the information in real time as well as in longer-term charts and graphs that compare your performance over weeks and months. Both the Whoop and the Oura Ring require an initial hardware purchase as well as a monthly subscription in order to read the data. Finally, both the Whoop and Oura Ring are rechargeable and available in a small range of styles and colors.
What Are the Main Differences Between the Whoop and Oura Ring?
Most obviously, the Whoop straps on your wrist like a watch band while you wear an Oura Ring on your finger like a wedding band. The Whoop, which collects biometrics using five LEDs (green, red and infared) and four photodiodes, can be charged while it’s on or off your wrist. But to charge the Oura Ring, which similarly uses sensors for heart rate, respiration and body temperature, you have to take the ring off your finger and place it on a special plinth to charge it. Additionally, there’s a bit more lead time in getting started using the Oura Ring, since the company sends you a special set of ring sizers to try on at home in order to determine the right fit before purchase—in my case the turnaround time for this was two weeks. By contrast, the Whoop has an ingeniously designed knit band that can be custom-fit right out of the box (once you figure out the unusual buckle). The Whoop vibrates each day to wake me up, while the Oura Ring just sits there looking handsome. The Whoop device you more data, in a more complicated readout, while the Oura Ring gives you overall more streamlined information, with a more layman-friendly explainer screen—and a mommycat function I appreciate that prompts, via a phone notification, to start winding down to sleep every night (helping me overcome that bad bedtime habit I have of not prepping for shut-eye).
Whoop
Whoop
- Ease of Use: 15/20
- Accuracy: 16/20
- Battery Life: 18/20
- Style: 18/20
- Value: 20/20
TOTAL: 85/100
The wrap-style wristband of Whoop was confusing at first—luckily the app offers a tutorial and after a couple tries, fastening it on my wrist became intuitive. (Shout out to the designers for their innovative, hard-to-shake-off wristband made of fast-drying knit material without irritating buckles. My Whoops stays charged an average of five days until it needs topping up, and I appreciate how it warns me to charge it when it’s down to 20 percent. The charger snaps onto the top of the device on or off your wrist, so as long as you keep your charger full of juice and take it with you, you can be sure never to run out of power. My Whoop takes about 90 minutes to charge.
I appreciate how the Whoop takes a wide range of biometrics, including heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate and sleep levels, then crunches the numbers to give me a number-based score for sleep, recovery and strain. A January 2024 review of medical studies concluded context should guide use—in other words, any single reading of your HRV and deep sleep levels, for example, is most useful in context of the other readings you get. I think of it thusly: My whole life, my temperature has read slightly below normal—98.4, say, rather than 98.6. So when I find I am running a slight fever of, say, 100, that actually this is .2 degrees higher of a fever for me than for someone whose baseline is the usual 98.6. That’s why I never panicked at my relatively low heart rate variability score: According to the app, it’s meant to be over 50, but mine registered in the low 20s during my first week of using, then trended upward to the low 30s. Always the optimist, I took this to mean I am on the road to actually being healthier. I’ve docked the app a couple points because on two isolated occasions, Whoop completely misread my sleep data and registered that I had four hours less sleep than I had actually experienced, which was good in a way because the app kept encouraging me to take a nap and get to bed early, advice I’m always happy to take, and yet I knew I’d logged those sleep hours. One real plus with Whoop—it has a customization screen that lets you enter which health practices you want to keep track of. (I kept a daily log of when I took magnesium supplements, did Zone 2 cardo, spent time outdoors and took Vitamin D), and each day it reminded me to fill it out. I was able to see that these behavioral tweaks both lowered by resting heart rate and improved my sleep.)
The Whoop is delivered with a plain black band, but you can upgrade the strap with an option of colorful knit bands with buckles in a variety of metallic finishes that include rose gold and matte black, priced at $59 to $99. The look of the band is more “I’m a tech bro” than “I’m training for my 50K,” which to my mind is more appealing. And in case you’re someone who likes to switch up their accessories, Whoop has come out with bras, leggings and underwear that have slots to place your Whoop inside so that you can still have the sensor-skin contact necessary for readings. While the device and strap cost nothing, Whoop requires you pay for a two- or one-year subscription ($399 or $239, respectively) at time of order. This averages out to a 24-month plan costing $17 per month, a 12-month plan being $20 per month. Curious but undecided? Whoop offers a free trial month—using a pre-owned device.
Oura Ring
Oura
- Ease of Use: 15/20
- Accuracy: 18/20
- Battery Life: 20/20
- Style: 16/20
- Value: 18/20
TOTAL: 87/100
Initially, I was frustrated by the lag time required to get my Oura up and running; First I had to wait for the device’s ring sizing kit to come. I understand that the correct fit—so that the sensors on the inside of the ring could come into contact with skin—was crucial for the most accurate reading, I just didn’t like having to slow my roll on getting the new biometric lifestyle started, once I decided to take the plunge. In terms of accuracy, I found a March 2024 study conducted with 96 Japanese participants who wore Oura rings during a hotel-based sleep study in which nurses applied high-tech sleep technology sensors to measure against Oura’s readings of time in bed, total sleep time, time spent in light sleep, time spent in deep sleep and more. Researchers’ findings “indicate the overall agreement of a smart ring with the gold standard of sleep assessment.” Battery life was stellar, lasting six days without a recharge, then perking back up to 100 percent after an hour on its charging dock.
There are two styles of Aura Ring: the Heritage design, which has a classic plateau shape similar to a signet ring (from $299) and the Horizon (from $349) a round-edged circle. The Heritage is available in silver, black, stealth (a matte black) and gold, while the Horizon comes in those colors plus brushed titanium and rose gold. I chose a matte black Horizon, and appreciate how it coordinates with any other gold, silver or enamel jewelry I’m wearing. Sadly, however, after a year of wear swimming, gardening and doing light household chores, the ring is faded around the edges, nicked in places and a bit worn-looking. With a one-month free subscription and compulsory purchase of a one-year membership with your first ring purchase for $70, the monthly subscription price is just over $5. For comparison’s sake with the Whoop, let’s say you purchased the least expensive ring—$299—along with the $70 yearlong subscription. The cost of the device and subscription averages out to $31 per month the first year, then drops down to cost $5 per month in the second year and thereafter.
The Whoop vs. the Oura Ring: Final Thoughts
After using both the Whoop and Oura Ring health trackers, I’ve come to appreciate them both. As a casual self-care and fitness enthusiastic, I’m happy I used the Oura Ring first, since its small size and easy-to-understand app interface didn’t prove too intimidating or G.I Jane for me. The long-term metrics that the ring reported back to me taught me that a regular sleep schedule helped me feel more energetic during the day, and the app’s little reminders to stretch my legs after stretches of sedentary work made me feel less guilty about taking 15 minutes away from my computer.
Then, when I had the opportunity to use Whoop, I was intrigued enough by wearable technology to really engage with the app, by keeping track of my exercise and daily self-care (including magnesium supplements and time spent outdoors) as well as taking cues from the AI coaching feature that analyzes my previous day’s strain and sleep to recommend workouts.
TLDR: I’d recommend Whoop for my number-crunching biohacking friends, and Oura Ring for the wearables-curious crowd. Although, watch out if you’re wearing either one and we meet—I’m going to be all up in your grill asking how you use your Whoop or Oura Ring—because now I’m data-obsessed.
