Oura Ring vs Apple Watch: I've tested both for months — here's what you should know

NBC News

18-06-2025

If you told me to pick my favorite wearable, I would have a hard time choosing between the Oura Ring and Apple Watch (and Garmin, to be fair). What's interesting is that the two wearables are wildly different from each other. The Apple Watch is a tiny computer on my wrist I can use instead of pulling my phone out of my pocket every two seconds. The Oura Ring is a stylish ring I forget about until I open the app and start diving into my health, sleep and fitness data.
I've been wearing both for most of 2025 — here's what you need to know.
Oura and Apple sell a few different wearables and I've tested all of them. The two that are most similar from the brands are the Oura Ring 4 ($349) and Apple Watch Series 10 ($399). They are the brand's latest wearables, and are priced similarly.
That said, they are very different products with very different users in mind. But when people ask me what wearable or fitness tracker to buy, Apple Watch and Oura Ring are the two they mention first and most often.
I've worn both at the same time for nearly all of 2025, comparing them to each other and other wearables I've tested throughout the year.
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My experience using the Oura Ring and Apple Watch
The Oura Ring 4 and Apple Watch Series 10 are both excellent wearables. Both are comfortable, easy to use, and provide accurate and easy to understand information about your health, sleep and fitness activity. Below, I outline some key differences between each wearable.
Design
Oura Ring
The latest Oura Ring 4 is the best looking and most comfortable Oura Ring yet. It is made of titanium, comes in six finishes and is available in sizes four to 15. While it is a bit big compared to a non-smart ring, I got used to wearing it on my ring finger after a few days. What helps is the long battery life: the Oura Ring 4 lasts up to eight days on a single charge, longer than most of its competitors.
Unlike the Oura Ring Gen 3, which had three round sensor bumps on the inner side of the ring, the Oura Ring 4 is basically smooth all around, inside and out. This makes it much more comfortable than the previous version, and in-line with my experience wearing other smart rings like the Ultrahuman Ring Air and Samsung Galaxy Ring.
Apple Watch
The latest Apple Watch Series 10 is similarly the most comfortable Apple Watch I've worn, and I've tested a lot of them over the years. It's thinner and lighter than the Apple Watch Series 9, but has a bigger screen that reaches further into the edges of the case. The screen is also brighter and easier to see at off-angles, meaning I can check the time or a notification at a glance much easier than before.
The Series 10 also charges faster — it can get up to 80% battery in 30 minutes of fast charging, up from 45 minutes on the Series 9. Battery life is still a bit lackluster though at up to 18 hours. I end up charging mine every night before bedtime to make sure it doesn't die overnight.
My take: This is a toss up that largely comes down to personal preference. Aside from battery life, where the Oura Ring is a clear winner, the deciding factor is whether you find rings or watches more comfortable. Generally, I prefer watches over rings, and the Oura Ring is bulkier than the usual non-smart ring sizes I gravitate towards. But I know many folks can't stand the look and feel of the square, shiny Apple Watch, and you might be one of them.
Day-to-day
Oura
Using the Oura Ring daily is a comfortable and largely passive experience. Most days, I forget that I am wearing it, which makes checking the Oura app feel fun instead of like a chore. It tracks most health and fitness basics for you — think steps, walks, sleep, readiness and stress. But not everything works automatically. Oura doesn't always automatically detect and track lower intensity workouts such as strength training and yoga, in my experience. For cycling tracking, you need to be diligent and consistent about manually inputting each day of your cycle to get the most accurate information, says NBC Select updates editor Mili Godio, who has worn her Oura Ring 4 for over 5 months.
Apple
You can do as much or as little as you want with the Apple Watch. It can act almost like a smartphone — you can check all your notifications, send texts, use contactless payments, take calls, store your favorite podcasts and music, navigate with a maps app, the list goes on. You can also turn off all notifications and do none of the things I just listed and turn the Apple Watch into a more passive fitness tracker and digital wristwatch. It has such robust settings and options that it can really be whatever you want it to be, especially when you consider all the watch face and watch band options.
My take: This one is all about taste. Do you want something you can wear and forget about? That's the Oura Ring. Do you want easy access to a ton of information, right on your wrist? That's the Apple Watch.
Tracking and metrics
Oura Ring
The Oura Ring's greatest strength is its health and sleep tracking. It offers detailed and accurate graphs, charts and trends for tons of different metrics like sleep stages, bedtime and wake-up time, heart rate variability, respiratory rate and body temperature. All of these put together, combined with the Oura app's intuitive and friendly design, means I get a good understanding of my health at a glance and a deeper understanding of my trends if I feel like diving a little deeper.
The Oura Ring has also accurately assessed when I am sick. I have been sick a few times so far this year, and each time the Oura app notifies me of health metrics being out of their typical range, and suggests entering rest mode. I appreciate this approach much more than some fitness trackers that focus exclusively on consistently hitting streaks and goals.
Apple Watch
The Apple Watch shows metrics across two apps: the Apple Health and Apple Fitness app. The health app shows similar stats to the Oura Ring, with a focus on health, fitness and sleep trends over time, while the Fitness app shows all your individual workouts. It can similarly predict or tell me when I am sick through the Vitals feature, and has largely caught my illnesses as they have happened.
Fitness is where the Apple Watch has more to offer than the Oura Ring. The Apple Watch has built-in GPS, making it more accurate for outdoor exercises like running and cycling compared to the Oura Ring. With outdoor running in particular, the Apple Watch shows more detailed stats like average cadence, stride length and more. It also has the Training Load feature, which can help track your weekly and monthly fitness.
My take: Another tossup. Both Oura Ring and Apple Watch do a great job tracking and showcasing health, sleep and exercise metrics. Oura is a little more accurate when it comes to sleep data and predicting when I am sick, but the Apple Watch is always a close second, in my experience. The Apple Watch is better for fitness, as it has built-in GPS, more detailed stats in certain workouts and a screen that can show you live stats as you exercise.
Oura vs Apple Watch: The final verdict
The Apple Watch Series 10 and Oura Ring 4 are arguably the best smartwatch and best smart ring you can buy. One isn't better than the other, but one might make more sense for you personally.
The Apple Watch is a smartwatch. It's like having a tiny phone on your wrist. It's a wearable you check all the time: you check the time, incoming texts, the weather, your pace during a run, etc.
The Oura Ring is a passive smart ring. You check the Oura app usually during downtime, when you aren't too busy. Unless you are manually starting and stopping a workout, it's meant to work in the background, and be available when you feel like checking in on your stats and trends.
If you want a tiny phone on your wrist that can do a little bit of everything, you want a smartwatch, and the Apple Watch is one of the best. It's better than the Oura Ring for checking live exercise stats while running and biking. It's also a better value than the Oura Ring, as it does almost everything the Oura Ring does (and more) without a subscription fee
If you want to track your health, fitness and sleep but don't want something on your wrist peppering you with information, you want a smart ring, and the Oura Ring is the best on the market right now. It's got much better battery life than the Apple Watch, and is a little more accurate for sleep and illness tracking, in my experience.
Why trust NBC Select?
I am a reporter at NBC Select who covers technology and fitness including recent stories on smartwatches, running shoes, workout earbuds and more. I've tested the Oura Ring Gen 3 and Oura Ring 4 for over a year, and have tested various Apple Watch models, including the latest Series 10, for years.