Medically reviewed by: 
While there are many fitness trackers available these days, the Whoop 4.0 and the Oura Ring 3 are doubling down on their health and wellness tracking technology to provide even more accurate and robust data than many of their competitors.
These activity wearables are primarily designed to track daily health, fitness, and sleep data. They use a variety of sensors to measure heart rate metrics, skin temperature, and blood oxygen levels. The devices are also equipped with an accelerometer to track movement and calculate the wearer’s daily caloric burn.
While the Whoop 4.0 and Oura Ring 3 both come with their own pros and cons, after wearing each for several years, in general, we recommend:
The Whoop 4.0 . . .
for more serious athletes or anyone who is primarily interested in monitoring and being coached on ways to meet or exceed fitness, sleep, health goals
The Oura Ring 3 . . .
for anyone who is mainly interested in wearing a minimalist fitness tracker that offers useful health and wellness insights, with some personalized recommendations.
Whoop 4.0 vs Oura Ring 3 | |
 
– Can be worn almost anywhere on the body: with Whoop’s athleisure clothing line – Features enhanced fitness tracking: that monitors heart rate metrics, blood oxygen levels, and skin temperature – New Stress Monitor feature: hat offers breathwork exercises based on your real-time stress score. – Haptic alarm: that can be set to wake you up based on sleep needs. – Personalized health, fitness, and sleep feedback from the app: provides valuable insights in real time – Fertility, menstrual cycle, perimenopause, and menopause insights: tracking and coaching
Cons– Must wear it on wrist which may not work for everyone – Some users found the Apple Watch to be more accurate with the heart rate monitor when comparing both products – Wet wrist straps can be uncomfortable and inconvenient
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– Discreet, minimalist, and comfortable: enough to forget you’re wearing it – Enhanced fitness tracking: with automatic activity tracking. – Fertility and period tracking: take into account skin temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure to help you plan or prevent pregnancy, and give you a period prediction window. – May prevent substance use: based on comparing current and baseline health metrics – New Restorative Time feature: tracks how much time you’re in a relaxed state – Daily goals automatically adjusted:based on stress, sleep, and illness data – Social Circles feature: allows you to share scores and check in with other members
Cons– Equipment-training isn’t recommended: as it may potentially damage the ring. – Some users reported having to manually adjust activities that were started automatically by the device. – May show scratches over time.
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Whoop 4.0 vs Oura Ring 3 Overview: Which is Better?
Depending on your personal fitness, sleep, and health goals, both the Whoop 4.0 or the Oura Ring 3 may work for you.
While they both take into account heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), blood oxygen levels, skin temperature, and activity, they each use that information to generate different insights and coaching recommendations.
The Whoop 4.0 app offers:
- Sleep cycle and sleep quality information
- A Strain score that recommends when to train harder and when to rest
- A Recovery score that takes into account your resting heart rate and HRV to show you how certain behaviors impact this score
- Highlights when your baseline metrics (skin temperature, heart rate, HRV, blood oxygen levels) differ from their original values
- A new feature that measures stress in real-time using HRV and heart rate, and offers breathwork exercises to help reduce stress
- Strain coaching that helps optimize your workouts and training, based on your recovery score
- Sleep coaching that gives personalized insights and recommendations based on your sleep cycle and sleep needs
- A health journal that helps you track daily behaviors so you can see how they impact your overall health
- 24/7 health and wellness monitoring and tracking
Want to Try Whoop for Free?
Whoop is currently offering a 1 month free trial for Fin vs Fin readers. Try out the Whoop 4.0 for a month and return it if it’s not the right fit for you. Keep in mind, an annual membership will be automatically charged at the end of the free trial, unless membership is canceled and the device is returned
The Oura Ring 3 App offers:
- A Sleep score based on total sleep, HRV, sleep quality, as well as bedtime routine guidance
- Nighttime blood oxygen sensing that notes any breathing issues
- A Readiness score that gives you a snapshot of your overall health and sleep patterns that can be viewed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
- Dynamic daily goals, including activity targets, that change based on your overall health snapshot and take into account illness, stress levels, and lack of sleep
- A new feature called Restorative Time that notes how much time your mind and body are relaxed
- 24/7 heart rate monitor
- Heart rate tracking during workouts, with personalized insights to implement during your next training session
- Automatic activity level tracking that includes calories burned (can opt out), step count, and training frequency
Whoop 4.0 vs. Oura Ring 3: Our Personal Experience
While both the Whoop 4.0 and Oura Ring 3 are designed for continuous wear, we found several places where one outshone the other.
Having used each device for over 3 years, I found the Oura Ring is a bit more comfortable to sleep in. Its style is also modest and elegant enough that many may not even notice you’re wearing anything other than a piece of jewelry. We particularly like that you can manage your stress with audio wellness sessions and receive biometric feedback via the Oura app. If you see that a particular session helps you relax, you can add it to your routine. For simply better understanding our body’s systems and gaining insights, we prefer the Oura Ring’s gentler approach over the Whoop 4.0.
We appreciate that the Whoop 4.0 can send haptic alerts that gently vibrate to wake you and includes three alarm settings that silently wake you depending on your sleep needs– at a specific time of your choice, when you’ve reached a desired sleep goal, or when your recovery is optimal. We also prefer Whoop’s coaching over Oura’s insights when it came to fitness and enjoyed how motivated we felt during workouts. We definitely feel that the Whoop pushed us harder when it came to meeting our health and wellness goals.
Whoop ends up being as expensive as Oura after just 10 months of payments, so if you’re fully committed to optimizing your performance over the long-run, then it could be economical to choose the higher priced Oura Ring. However, the low up-front cost of Whoop may work better for some individuals.
Whoop 4.0 Review
To help you get a better feel for the Whoop 4.0, we cover its design, pricing, battery life, and app, including what it tracks, what their coaching looks like, and new features. In addition, we look at some customer reviews.
Whoop 4.0 Design and Pricing
Whoop has updated its product to a sleeker, more technologically powerful design, along with a line of athletic clothing featuring a pocket for the tracker, allowing users to exercise and track strap-free.
The Whoop 4.0 is 33% smaller than the 3.0. However, it now totes 4x the number of photodiodes on the sensor, and 5 LEDs that use green, red, and infrared lights to provide new health metrics, with increased accuracy, according to the company.
The Whoop is free, but membership costs about $30 per month.
Battery Life
The Whoop 4.0 has an improved battery, lasting about 5 days, as well as a waterproof, wearable, rechargeable battery pack. This means you can track your health data 24/7, without any gaps in your metrics.
Whoop App and Personalized Coaching
The Whoop 4.0 app features a new home screen that simplifies the user experience and provides beautifully designed graphics that offer insights into health trends either by the day, or dating back up to six months in the user’s history.
Along with updates to their primary health metrics, Sleep, Recovery, and Strain, Whoop has also unveiled two new metrics, evaluating a member’s Stress in real time and Reproductive Health, for members interested in tracking ovulation, trying to conceive, pregnancy, perimenopause, and menopause.
Sleep
Whoop automatically records naps, calculates sleep debts, and recommends hours of sleep needed based on how strenuous your day was. Whoop will suggest an optimal wake time for you to feel your best.
The Whoop App evaluates the quality of your sleep and the transitions between stages based on metrics, like your heart and respiratory rate. Tracking sleep consistency allows the user to improve their sleep hygiene.
Recovery
Recovery is the daily measure of how prepared your body is to perform. Your Recovery gets categorized in real-time each morning into percentages, displayed as “Green” (67-100%), “Yellow” (34-66%) and “Red” (0-33%).
Recovery is determined by your HRV, resting heart rate (RHR), sleep performance, and respiratory rate. Hydrating, eating well, getting quality sleep, and meditating may improve your Recovery score, and your ability to face physical stress throughout your day.
Strain
Strain measures your cardiovascular load, and combined with your Recovery score, it may determine your ability to handle the day’s workload.
The Strain Coach gives you an exertion-level recommendation towards your daily health and lifestyle goals. When a user begins an activity, the Coach shows in real-time how their Strain is building towards the suggested goal, with Strain categorized through three training zones: Restorative, Optimal, and Overreaching.
This may be especially helpful for athletes wanting to optimize their training, using this information in real-time during their workouts to know when to push harder or ease up.
Stress (New Feature)
Whoop 4.0’s Stress Monitor is the latest feature to unfold. Stress is evaluated by 3 categories (low, medium, high), and is calculated by a user’s heart rate, HRV, and by comparing these to their baseline.
The Stress Monitor works in tandem with the other metrics to differentiate whether a user is physically stressed during a workout, or whether they are stressed from variables impacting their day.
If Whoop’s Stress Monitor detects stress within the member, it will guide them through breathing exercises to help lower stress levels. It also provides a 12-hour graph noting the ebbs and flows of stress throughout the day, which may help members better understand what triggered their physiological changes.
Reproductive Health
The new Reproductive Health feature may be useful for pregnant individuals and anyone who menstruates who can use it to monitor skin temperatures, heart rate, HRV, as well as Strain and Recovery levels in order to gauge their own personal health.
In addition, it provides:
- A Weekly Performance Assessment, which provides insight into the developments occurring within the pregnant individual, and provides exercise consideration and hydration suggestions
- Graphs with trend lines for expectant members to better understand how their own resting heart rate and HRV compare to what has been seen in other expectant members over the course of their pregnancy
- A possible new biomarker (nighttime HRV in the pregnant person) for premature and full-term births, based on a study led by Whoop Senior VP of Data Science and Research Emily Capodilupo
- Menstrual cycle coaching, with personalized sleep and fitness recommendations
Whoop Customer Reviews
Reviews vary, but many users seem satisfied with the Whoop 4.0. While some found it useful overall, others found it to be mainly helpful with sleep or fitness tracking. Some noted the cost as being a negative, as well as the app needing some improvement.
Oura Ring 3 Review
To better understand the Oura Ring 3 and all that it has to offer, we’ll take a look at its design, pricing, battery life, and app, including what it tracks, personalized recommendations, and new features. In addition, we look at Oura’s customer reviews
Oura Ring 3 Design
The Oura Ring has long been lauded for its minimalist style that comes in shiny and matte finishes, including silver, gold, rose gold, black, and matte black. Its newest addition, the Horizon Ring, comes with a smooth, circular finish, differing from the older version’s plateau design that had some flat surfaces on top of the ring.
Aside from its sleek, lightweight design, Oura notes that the reason behind this design choice is all about collecting the most accurate health data using research-grade optical sensors, accelerometers, temperature sensors, and gyroscopes.
The Oura Ring 3 costs between $299-$349, depending on the ring style, with membership costing $5.99 per month.
Battery Life
The Oura Ring 3 has a battery life of about 7 days, with the option to “fast charge” in about 20-80 minutes.
Oura Ring 3 App
The Oura Ring 3 app offers health and wellness insights that are delivered to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Along with offering their standard health metrics like Sleep, Readiness, and Activity, Oura has also developed several new features and updates, including Oura Circles, Reproductive Health, Restorative Time, new heart rate metrics (daytime and workout), improved illness prediction, and location-based activity insights.
Sleep
Oura measures skin temperature, detecting the natural drop as you fall asleep. As you sleep, several metrics are calculated that provide you with detailed insights into your sleep stages.
Oura learns about your individual sleep patterns and, through the app, it shares personalized guidance on when to start winding down to improve your sleep quality.
Oura can also tell when you might be experiencing breathing disturbances, through nighttime blood oxygen testing, that could impact your sleep or indicate other health issues.
Readiness
Your Readiness score is calculated by summing up your Sleep and Activity scores, and giving you a score on a 100-point scale. Based on your Readiness score, Oura will make personalized suggestions on either how to improve your Readiness, or how to release excess energy.
Oura also warns you of any sudden shifts from your baseline range that could indicate stress, strain, or illness, so you can focus on rest and recovery.
Activity
The Activity score is also on a 100-point scale, and tells you, at a glance, your activity-rest balance. Activity contributors are categorized as Inactivity, Activity Amount, and Recovery.
Oura Ring 3.0 has improved its Activity tracking functions with location-based activity insights and automatic activity detection. From cycling to basketball to housework, Oura can automatically detect over 20 activities for you and gives you credit for every move you make. You can also manually add an activity if yours isn’t listed.
To accommodate those who still prefer to track workouts with other fitness trackers, Oura syncs activities with Google Fit, Apple Health, Strava, and more to give you one convenient location to view all of your metrics.
Oura Circles
Oura Circles allows users to share their Activity, Sleep, and Readiness scores with each other within private groups. You can also react to other members using emojis. You can join up to 10 circles and share either daily scores or weekly averages.
Reproductive Health
Oura has partnered with multiple non-profits to conduct research on individual’s reproductive health, including menstrual cycles, digital birth control, fertility tracking, and pregnancy prediction through skin temperature readings, heart rate, and blood pressure data. It aims to pair this information with subjective, user-reported symptoms and “feelings” for the day to detect possible health risks.
In a study led by UCSD of 30 pregnant members, the Oura Ring 3 temperature data was able to identify pregnancies an average 9 days before individuals received a positive at-home pregnancy test, and only 5.5 days after self-reported conception.
Restorative Time
Restorative time lets you know how much time your mind and body have spent in a relaxed state. Body temperature and decreased movements help Oura determine when you’re experiencing rest and recovery. Restorative Time can be found on your 24-hour heart rate graph and is shown in green dots or segments that indicate the amount of time spent in this relaxed state.
Oura Ring 3 Customer Reviews
Many users seem happy with the Oura Ring 3 overall, but note that it can scratch fairly easily and it may be most useful for sleep tracking. Others note their data may seem off occasionally and the product is quite expensive.
Compare the Best Oura Ring and Whoop Alternatives
We’ve compared the best Oura Ring and Whoop Band competitors, including Apple, Fitbit, Circular, Garmin, Xiaomi, and Huawei to help you make an informed decision when selecting the right health wearable.
Oura and Whoop Alternatives | Battery Life | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Fitbit Inspire 2 Health & Fitness Tracker | 10 days | $59 |
| Apple Watch | 18-36 hours | $240 - $800 |
| Xiaomi Mi Band 5 | 14 days | $77 |
| Huawei Band 7 | 2 weeks | $46 |
| Fitbit Sense 2 Premium | 6 days | $290 |
| Garmin Vivosmart 4 | 7 days | $90-$185 |
| Circular Ring | 4 days | $284 |
Oura vs. Whoop: How They Work
The Oura Ring 3 and the Whoop 4.0 use updated technology, including:- Optical sensors, which capture reflected beams of light to detect changes in blood flow to help calculate heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood oxygen saturation levels
- Accelerometers, which are sensors that detect movement and can be used to measure physical activity while both awake and asleep
- Temperature sensors, which track body temperature throughout the day, providing valuable information about circadian rhythm and sleep quality
- Gyroscopes, which are sensors that measure rotation and can be used to track movement and posture throughout the day
Why Certain Health Metrics Are Tracked
The Whoop 4 and the Oura Ring 3 track various health metrics to give you a snapshot of your health and wellness.
Heart rate: Tracking your heart rate, especially during and after exercise, can help you determine your fitness level in real time. As you exercise, your muscles require more and more oxygen, and in order to keep up with the demand, the heart beats faster and harder. The more intense your workout is, the higher you can expect your heart rate to increase.
Heart-rate variability (HRV): This measures the variation in time between heartbeats. While more research is needed, HRV data may reflect an individual’s level of physical and emotional resilience, with a lower HRV being associated with a fight-or-flight response and a higher variability being associated with more of a relaxed state. Various factors can cause fluctuation in HRV, including stress, sleep quality, interpersonal relationships, and exercise.
Skin temperature: Skin temperature varies throughout the day and night due to both environmental and internal bodily factors. Skin temperature can affect the quality of your sleep, and can also be indicative of hormonal changes or an oncoming fever.
Blood oxygen levels: Certain kinds of athletes can benefit from understanding the saturation levels of their blood oxygen, but so can those with poor circulation, and respiratory conditions, such as sleep apnea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, pneumonia, and COVID-19.
Sleep: Many may benefit from understanding their personal sleep patterns and sleep trackers can help shed light on sleep interruptions, such as breathing and heartbeat irregularities, snoring, and room temperature.
Respiratory rate: Tracking the number of breaths you take each minute can be useful for identifying blood oxygen irregularities, emotional stressors, exercise-induced fatigue, oncoming pneumonia, or sleep conditions, like sleep apnea.
The Verdict: Which Health Tracker Is Right for You, Whoop 4.0 or Oura Ring 3?
Whether you have a packed schedule, are interested in connecting more with your body, or are hoping to boost your overall fitness, understanding your body’s sleep, recovery, activity, reproductive health, and stress can help you reach your health and wellness goals with a bit more insight and possibly even more motivation.
Whoop is Best for Personalized Coaching + Motivation | |
More serious athletes may prefer the Whoop 4.0 as a fitness and sleep tracking wearable due to its robust data collection, health analytics, stress monitoring, and valuable personalized coaching. From Strain to Recovery to Reproductive Health, the Whoop 4.0 offers personalized coaching ultimately guiding users through the most optimal times to exert themselves, or to rest.
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Oura Rings Offer Better Sleep Optimization and Social Community | |
The Oura Ring 3 has you covered if you’re looking to take charge of your day-to-day routine with key insights about your body’s systems, including impacts of strain, stress, illness, and reproductive health. We also especially like Oura Circles, as a way to connect and support other Oura users. But, it really stands out as a sleep tracker, reflecting valuable insight into user’s lifestyles that can guide them towards improving their overall health and wellness.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Whoop 4.0 cost?
The Whoop 4.0 device is free, with a $30 per month membership (so $360 total for the year). Discounts are available for an Annual Membership ($239) or 24 Month Membership ($399). The Whoop Pro Membership, for an additional $12/month, gives members early access to new products, complimentary gear every 3 months, as well as other discounts and perks.
Whoop is currently offering a 1 month free trial for Fin vs Fin readers. Try out the Whoop 4.0 for a month and return it if it’s not the right fit for you.
How much does the Oura Ring cost?
The Oura Ring starts at $299, with an additional $5.99 per month (1st month is free) for the membership that gives you access to all of Oura’s insights, features, and community.
How do Oura Ring fittings work?
Upon signing up with Oura Ring, you will receive a sizing kit in the mail, which includes 8 sample rings so you can find the best fit for your index finger.
There shouldn’t be any gaps between the ring and your finger, but the ring should also feel snug in place. You should be able to twist the ring around your finger comfortably, and be able to take it on and off without hurting your finger or having it slip off.
What are the best Oura and Whoop alternatives?
Oura and Whoop alternative options may include:
Are the Whoop 4.0 and Oura Ring 3 accurate?
Both Whoop and Oura have been validated through science-backed research and various studies monitoring sleep, exercise, and reproductive cycles.
Whoop has had its technology validated by third-party testing and in a sleep lab, with studies showing how receiving daily feedback on sleep patterns can actually improve the quality of sleep over time. Research also notes that Whoop measured heart rate and HRV nearly perfectly.
Oura has been proven by sleep experts to be extremely accurate, even when compared to a medical-grade electrocardiogram (ECG), and validated against a polysomnogram (PSG). Oura matches performance with research-grade sensors at >99% and measures changes as small as 0.13 °C, but, keep in mind that this research was conducted in Oura’s lab.
Curious which subscriptions are worthwhile?
We asked our certified fitness coaches. Find out which they think are best, and get exclusive discounts on popular brands.
Methodology
We conduct extensive research to evaluate the pricing, effectiveness, accessibility, overall quality, and user experience of each product we review. This also included examining and comparing them to several alternatives.
| Review Process | Key Metrics | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase online | – ease to complete intake form – affordability – upfront commitment or subscription required? – money back guarantee or refund policy? | 1 |
| Shipping + unboxing | – shipping cost – time from order to treatment delivery – sustainable packaging | 1 |
| Testing + journal for 1-3 months | – ease of use – transition into habitual use – taste / smell / feel / pain | 1.5 |
| Results after 3 months of use | – efficacy / results – ease of forming a health habit – requires additional purchae? – responsive customer support – willingness to recommend to a friend | 1.5 |
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