Oura Ring 4 wins ZDNET's 2024 Product of the Year over Samsung, Apple

The smart ring has arrived as a mainstream device, and with it comes a reckoning about what we're willing to wear on our fingers in the name of health. This year, the market proved it. After selling roughly 880,000 smart rings globally in 2023, the industry is on track to move 1.7 million units in 2024, with projections climbing to 3.2 million by 2025. That trajectory matters because it signals something larger: consumers are abandoning the wrist for the finger, trading the bulk of smartwatches and fitness bands for something smaller, less intrusive, and arguably more intimate.

Oura, the Finnish company behind the Oura Ring, understood this shift early. While Samsung rushed the Galaxy Ring to market and upstarts like Ultrahuman and Movano Evie scrambled to capture attention, Oura took a different approach. The company released its fourth-generation ring in early October, but the real work happened in the months before. Software updates arrived steadily—improvements to stress monitoring, women's health tracking, heart rate variability detection. By the time the Ring 4 launched, Oura had already proven it could listen and iterate.

The Ring 4 itself is a modest but meaningful evolution. At $349, it costs the same as its predecessor, yet delivers tangible improvements. The internal sensors sit flush against the skin now, making the ring more comfortable to wear continuously. Oura expanded the size range to include options 4, 5, 14, and 15, acknowledging that fingers come in more varieties than most wearables companies admit. The hardware gained 18 distinct signal pathways—up from previous generations—allowing for more granular health data collection. The battery stretches to eight days on a single charge, a practical advantage over competitors that demand daily or near-daily charging.

But hardware alone doesn't win awards. The real distinction lies in what Oura does with the data it collects. The companion app has become something rare in consumer tech: genuinely useful software that respects the user's time and intelligence. Sleep scores arrive with personalized recommendations tailored to your actual sleep patterns, not generic advice. Stress data surfaces alongside mindfulness prompts calibrated to your current state. Activity tracking adjusts to your readiness level, accounting for whether you're recovering from illness, managing a heavy work week, or simply having an off day. The app transforms raw biometric numbers into actionable context.

This integration of hardware and software, paired with the company's willingness to keep improving both, earned the Oura Ring 4 ZDNET's Product of the Year for 2024. It beat out Samsung's Galaxy Ring, which launched at $399 with no subscription requirement, and a field of other contenders released during a year crowded with technological announcements. The choice reflects a judgment about what matters most: not the lowest price or the biggest brand name, but the product that actually changes how people understand their own bodies.

There remains one persistent tension. Oura charges $6 per month for full access to its platform—a subscription that Samsung's Galaxy Ring does not require. Competitors have made the subscription-free model a selling point, and for price-conscious buyers, it's a real consideration. Yet Oura argues, with some justification, that the monthly fee funds continuous innovation. Even owners of the older Ring 3 benefit from updated algorithms and new features pushed through the app, even if they can't access the Ring 4's enhanced sensors. For many users, that ongoing improvement justifies the cost. For others, it's the deciding factor to choose a competitor instead.

What the Oura Ring 4's recognition signals is the maturation of health tech as a category that matters. We've moved past the era when fitness trackers were novelties. Now they're tools people expect to work reliably, to respect their privacy, and to deliver insights that actually influence behavior. The smart ring, in its unobtrusive form, may be the device that finally makes continuous health monitoring feel less like surveillance and more like genuine self-knowledge. Whether that future arrives depends partly on whether companies like Oura can keep the promise they're making: that the data they collect, and the insights they provide, are worth the monthly fee and the intimacy of wearing a sensor on your skin.