Whoop and Oura have curved a unique niche for themselves in the wearable space, and they’re gaining credibility and popularity for it.
These two brands don’t focus on counting steps or estimating calories burned.
Instead, they emphasize heart rate variability, body movement, and patterns to help you improve the quality of your physical fitness through sleep and sufficient recovery.
But how do they compare? Is Whoop better than Oura Ring or vice versa?
In this Whoop vs Oura guide, I do a front to back comparison to help you decide which one of these two fitness trackers would be ideal for you.
Whoop vs Oura Ring Comparison Table
I’ll get into more details on Whoop vs Oura Ring later in this guide.
First, let’s have a comparison chart with a summary of the similarities and differences between these two fitness trackers.
| Whoop 4.0 | Oura Ring 3 | |
| Design | A band worn around your wrist | A ring to fit on your finger |
| Sensors | Heart rate monitor, SpO2 sensor, skin temperature sensor | An infrared sensor, skin temperature sensor, SpO2 sensor, 3D accelerometer and gyroscope |
| Activity Tracking | Sleep, reproductive health, recovery | Steps, sleep, ovulation, running, calories burned |
| Water Resistance | Up to 1 ATM (32 feet) | Up to 10 ATM (330 feet) |
| Battery Life | 4-5 days | 6-7 days |
| Compatibility Apps | Apple Health, Strava, Equinox+, Training Peaks | Strava, Google Fit, Nike+ Run Club, Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, Runkeeper |
| Pricing | $30 per month | $349 on Oura Website |
As you can see, there are significant similarities and differences between Whoop 4.0 and Oura Ring 3, and they’re worth discussing in-depth.
Whoop vs Oura Ring: Here’s How They Compare
We tend to use fitness trackers and smartwatches as motivational devices to help us stay on constant move.
But there’s more to it than just counting steps, estimating calories burned, setting hydration reminders, and trying out different sports modes.
Wearable technology has improved so much that you can now focus on sleep, activity, and recovery with the help of Whoop and Oura.
Here’s how these two fitness trackers compare:
Membership Plans
When it comes to money, Oura and Whoop have one thing in common:
They’re wearable technologies that work based on a subscription model rather than a one-time purchase.
Oura offers first time users a free plan for the first month. During this time, you can explore what the service brings to the table, from personalized data to insights that go beyond your daily scores.
Upon the expiry of the trial period, Oura will charge you $5.99 per month to continue serving you with in-depth health and fitness data from the ring.
Interestingly, you can use your Oura Ring even if you don’t have an active subscription. Only that the data you get will be a subset of what you would get if you had an active payment plan.
As of this writing, the free plan by Oura gives you access to three simple daily scores for your Sleep, Readiness, and Activity.
Whoop’s subscription is almost three times more than what you pay for Oura, but at least you do get the Strap shipped to you for free.
Apparently, Whoop requires a 12-month commitment for its monthly plan.
You get a 30-day free trial to test what the Whoop Strap 4.0 brings to the table. And you can cancel your membership and return the strap within this period for a full refund if you’re unhappy with Whoop.
Unlike Oura, you cannot use Whoop without membership. Upon the expiry of your subscription, you’ll have a three-day grace period to renew, or your account will automatically go into an inactive status.
Design
Whoop and Oura Ring feature a design model different from the standard fitness trackers. And it’s hard not to love how they look.
To begin with, the Whoop 4.0 Strap features a knitted band attached to a metal buckle. And given that the bands are available in different color, you can get a more personalized touch if you want something else other than black.
Whoop doesn’t have a screen, but that isn’t a deal breaker because it isn’t a smartwatch in the first place.
You can wear it on either wrist. But for the best results, I do recommend having it on your non-dominant wrist.
Oura Ring is a different design altogether.
On the outside, it’s a stylish jewellery about the size of a standard wedding ring. But underneath are sensors with over 20 biometric signals designed to help you take full control of your overall health.
Whoop and Oura should fit to a snug. And given how comfortable they feel when you fit either of them, you won’t have to worry about wrist pain or bruises on your fingers.
Integrated Sensors
Oura integrates five significant sensors in its design, making the ring a powerful piece of technology in the wearable space.
Together, the optical infrared sensor, body temperature sensor, SpO2 sensor, 3D accelerometer, and gyroscope give you incredibly useful insights that you don’t get from a standard fitness tracker.
For example, Oura Ring Gen 3 optical heart sensor uses photoplethysmography technology at 50Hz, which shines light on your skin and reflects some of it back from your blood vessels onto a photodetector.
The technology monitors the contraction and expansion of your blood vessels and uses the behavior to determine your live heart rate.
Also, the red and infrared LED light will turn on and off 50 times a second to monitor your blood oxygen levels. Furthermore, the combination of the body temperature and blood oxygen sensors can help you detect illnesses, as well as monitor your overall cycle.
Whoop 4.0 Strap also has a number of integrated sensors that monitor heart rate, skin temperature, and the amount of oxygen in your blood.
The inclusion of the SpO2 sensor and skin temperature sensor in Whoop equally makes it easy to detect illnesses.
Activity Tracking
Once you log your exercises in the Whoop companion app, the strap will detect the workout automatically as soon as it detects a rise in your heart rate.
Given that it gives you a strain score, the Whoop ecosystem can help you to understand how hard to push yourself when working out.
With Whoop Strap 3.0 and 4.0, you can track boxing, baseball, basketball, barre, assault biking, and caddying sports.
But my biggest issue when it comes to activity tracking is that Whoop doesn’t count steps. Their model works on quantifying body strain, but I think that step counting would have been a nice feature to have.
Another problem with Whoop is the lack of a GPS system, and, as such, it isn’t going to help you map routes, record bike ride, or count total distance covered during a workout.
Oura tends to focus more on your daily movements and their intensity. In fact, the ring includes an activity algorithm that can detect and count the steps you take for the entire period that you’re active.
It used to be that you had to log your workouts manually with Oura to get an estimate of the calories burned. But the brand introduced the Automatic Activity Detection so that you can focus on working out and worry less about the ring not picking your exercises.
There’s even the option to confirm if your activity data is correct, not to mention that you can edit your information if you think the stats are incorrect.
Sleep Tracking
Sleep tracking is a big deal because it helps you to determine whether you’re getting enough rest or otherwise. And both Oura Gen 3 and Whoop 4.0 Strap can help you with that.
I’ve mentioned before that Whoop differs from Fitbit in terms of sleep tracking because it does so in more than three stages.
But how does it compare with Oura on the same metric?
By design, Whoop 4.0 Strap can detect when you fall asleep and when you’re awake, and it tracks your naps in four unique stages: light, REM, awake and slow wave sleep.
Although Whoop does a good job in determining how many hours you spent asleep, its sleep cycle data isn’t up to the mark yet. You may experience moments of inaccurate output, even when there’s nothing wrong with your body.
As you sleep, Whoop will measure your respiratory rate, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate. It will then compare the number to your baseline to determine whether your body has recovered and ready for a physical activity.
One thing that stands out about Oura is automatic sleep detection. It knows when you fall asleep and when you wake up, and it reports the metrics for awake, relaxed wakefulness, light, deep, and REM sleep to the companion app.
As you sleep, Oura Ring detects and monitors your respiratory rate, resting heart rate, body temperature, and heart rate variability.
The wearable then uses compares these variables to your baseline metrics to give a readiness score. Graded out of 100, the ring’s readiness score helps you determine whether you’re ready for physical activities or your body needs more rest.
Synchronizing sleep data between Oura Ring and its app is almost instantaneous. Unfortunately, it takes a couple of minutes for the same data to show in the Whoop app, but you still get it anyways.
Water Resistance
If you’re the kind of a wearable enthusiast that doesn’t want to take a tracker off when getting in water, the Oura ring is the device for you.
While it’s not clear what its IP rating is, Oura prides itself for its 10 AMT water-resistance. Expect it to withstand water pressure of up to 100 meters below water.
Oura can stay under water for up to 12 hours, but I doubt you’ll be bathing or swimming that long.
Unfortunately, Whoop doesn’t have a decent rating for water-resistance.
You’re buying a strap with IP68 rating, which means it can resist water only up to 32 feet. What’s more? Whoop makes it abundantly clear that you shouldn’t have the strap in water for more than 2 hours.
You can wear either fitness tracker to the shower and swimming pools. You can even wear them in ice baths, cryotherapy tanks, saunas, and hot tubs.However, I wouldn’t recommend using any of the two for scuba diving or in extreme temperature because heat damages things.
Battery Life
The Oura rings get their power from rechargeable Lithium Polymer batteries.
Apparently, battery capacity depends on the size of the ring, with the small rings featuring 15mAh and the large ones 22mAh.
Whoop uses the same type of rechargeable battery to do its work.
The difference is in how long each wearable can work on a full charge before the battery runs out.
With Oura, you get 7 days of runtime on a single charge. That’s two days more what you get if you opted for Whoop 4.0 Strap.
Also, it takes anywhere from 2 to 2.5 hours to charge the Whoop 4.0 Strap battery to full capacity while Oura ring takes somewhere between 40 and 80 minutes depending on what charging station you use.
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Closing Thoughts: Whoop vs Oura Ring
I guess now the question you have is:
Which wearable between Whoop and Oura Ring should I pick? And the answer is it depends on your needs and financial plan – and the insights I’ve shared with you in this comparison.
I hope this helps.
