Oura Ring 4 vs Apple Watch SE (2nd generation)
🗓️ Release Year
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: 2024
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): 2022
🏃 Activity
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura Ring 4 is a discreet, ring-based health and fitness tracker designed for continuous wear, focusing on holistic wellness and providing nuanced insights into activity levels. It accurately tracks steps, calories burned, and overall daily activity, contributing to its comprehensive assessment of your physiological state.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): The Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) offers the core Apple Watch activity tracking experience, making essential fitness monitoring accessible. It accurately records steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes, utilizing the intuitive Move, Exercise, and Stand rings to encourage daily movement. It supports a variety of workout types with reliable metrics for tracking physical activity.
❤️ Health Monitoring
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: This device is an advanced physiological monitor worn on the finger, capturing highly accurate data on heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate, respiratory rate, and skin temperature. It includes SpO2 monitoring for blood oxygen levels. These metrics are used to generate detailed insights into recovery, sleep quality, and overall readiness, offering a deeper understanding of your body's signals.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): This device provides continuous heart rate monitoring and notifications for high or low heart rates and irregular heart rhythms. While it lacks some of the advanced sensors of higher-end models (like ECG and SpO2), it serves as a capable tool for monitoring foundational heart health and overall daily activity levels.
🔋 Battery Life
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura Ring 4 offers a practical battery life of up to 7 days on a single charge, designed for uninterrupted, continuous wear. The included charging dock allows for simple and convenient recharging, minimizing downtime.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): The Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) provides up to 18 hours of battery life on a single charge under normal usage, consistent with the standard Apple Watch experience. This is sufficient for a full day of activity tracking and smart feature usage, typically requiring nightly charging.
😴 Sleep Tracking
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: Advanced sleep tracking is a central function of the Oura Ring 4. It precisely tracks sleep stages (light, deep, and REM sleep) and provides in-depth analysis of sleep duration, quality, and efficiency. The Sleep Score provides a quick summary, complemented by detailed insights and personalized guidance within the app for optimizing rest.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): Detailed sleep tracking is available on the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation), monitoring sleep stages (light, deep, and REM) and sleep duration within the Health app. This helps users gain insights into their sleep patterns and work towards better rest habits.
📍 GPS Tracking
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura Ring 4 does not have built-in GPS. It relies on connected GPS via a paired smartphone to track outdoor activities and distance, allowing for mapping and pace data when your phone is with you.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): With built-in GPS, the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) accurately tracks outdoor activities like running, cycling, and hiking without needing a paired iPhone. It provides precise route mapping, pace, and distance data, essential for monitoring performance during outdoor workouts.
🏋️ Workout Modes
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: While not offering extensive discrete workout modes like a sports watch, the Oura Ring tracks general activity and can classify various exercises based on movement and heart rate data logged through the app. Its primary focus is on understanding the physiological impact of activities on overall readiness and recovery.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): The Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) supports a wide variety of workout modes, including running, walking, cycling, swimming, yoga, hiking, and more. Users can select specific modes to get tailored real-time statistics and post-workout analysis within the Fitness app.
💫 Exercise Recognition
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The device automatically detects common activities like walking, running, and cycling based on movement and heart rate data, logging them within the Oura app. More complex workouts can be manually tagged or imported from other fitness apps for a complete activity overview.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): The smartwatch features automatic exercise recognition for common activities such as walking, running, and cycling, ensuring that workouts are logged even if the user forgets to manually start tracking, providing a more complete record of physical activity.
🍎 Compatibility
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura Ring 4 works with both iOS and Android devices, connecting via Bluetooth to the Oura app for seamless data syncing and detailed analytics.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): Seamlessly integrating with the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) requires an iPhone 8 or later running the latest iOS version for full functionality. It connects via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, offering tight integration with Apple Health and other Apple services.
📲 App Support
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura app is the central interface for the Oura Ring 4 experience, providing in-depth analysis of sleep, readiness, and activity data. It offers personalized insights, trends, and educational content to help users understand their health metrics, optimize their daily routines, and track their progress over time.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): Leveraging the App Store, the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) provides access to a vast ecosystem of third-party apps, enhancing its capabilities for fitness, productivity, communication, and entertainment, offering a comprehensive smartwatch experience at a more accessible price point.
💡 Smart Features
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura Ring 4 is designed for unobtrusive health monitoring and does not include traditional smartwatch features such as on-ring notifications for calls, texts, or apps. Its functionality is focused on collecting and presenting comprehensive health and performance data through the companion app.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): As a capable smartwatch, the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) provides comprehensive smart capabilities, including on-wrist notifications for calls, texts, emails, and apps. It supports Siri for voice commands, Apple Pay for contactless payments, and offers key safety features like Fall Detection and Crash Detection, providing peace of mind.
💦 Water Resistance
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: With a water resistance rating of up to 100 meters, the Oura Ring 4 is suitable for swimming, showering, and daily wear, making it a durable companion for various activities and environments without requiring removal.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): With a WR50 water resistance rating, the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) is suitable for swimming and showering, making it a durable companion for everyday wear and aquatic activities. It is capable of tracking swimming workouts.
⌚ Display Quality
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura Ring 4 has no display on the device itself. All health and performance data, insights, and analytics are viewed exclusively through the comprehensive Oura app on a paired smartphone or tablet, maintaining its discreet form factor.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): The Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) features a bright Retina LTPO OLED display. While it lacks the always-on capability of higher-end models, it offers sharp resolution and good brightness for clear visibility of notifications and stats when the wrist is raised.
👌 Ease of Use
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The device is designed for effortless, continuous wear on the finger with no on-device interaction needed. The user experience is centered around the intuitive and data-rich Oura app, making tracking and understanding complex health metrics simple and seamless.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): The device offers an intuitive user interface with a combination of the responsive touchscreen, Digital Crown for precise scrolling, and a physical side button for navigation. The watchOS operating system provides a familiar and user-friendly experience with customizable watch faces and complications.
✨ Design and Comfort
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura Ring 4 features a sleek, lightweight, and minimalist design, worn comfortably on the finger. Made from durable materials, it is designed for continuous wear throughout the day and night, blending discreetly with personal style while providing advanced physiological monitoring.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): The Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) features a sleek and familiar Apple Watch design with a lightweight aluminum case. It offers a comfortable fit for all-day wear and comes with a wide variety of interchangeable bands for personalization, providing the core Apple Watch aesthetic.
🩸 SpO2 Monitoring
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: The Oura Ring 4 includes an SpO2 sensor for monitoring blood oxygen saturation levels during sleep. This feature provides valuable data that contributes to the overall sleep analysis and offers insights into respiratory function during rest.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): It is important to note that the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) does not include SpO2 (blood oxygen monitoring) functionality.
💖 ECG Functionality
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: It is important to note that the Oura Ring 4 does not support ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): It is important to note that the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) does not support ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality.
🧘 Stress Tracking
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: While not explicitly labeled as "stress tracking," the Oura Ring 4 provides insights related to stress through its continuous monitoring of heart rate variability (HRV) and its impact on the daily Readiness score. Analyzing trends in HRV helps users understand their body's response to various stressors and improve resilience.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): While not a dedicated stress tracking metric, the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) contributes to overall well-being insights through features like Mindfulness and Breathe apps, heart rate variability (HRV) data (accessible in Health app), and sleep analysis, helping users understand aspects of their physiological state.
🩹 Recovery Tracking
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: Recovery tracking is a core function of the Oura Ring 4. It provides a personalized daily Readiness Score based on key metrics including sleep quality, heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate, and body temperature. This score offers actionable guidance on how prepared your body is for physical and mental demands each day, helping optimize training and rest.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): Recovery is primarily tracked through sleep analysis and insights provided within the Apple Health app based on workout data and heart rate variability (HRV). While it doesn't offer a dedicated recovery score, the collected data helps users gain a general understanding of their body's state.
💳 Subscription
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: ✅ A mandatory paid Oura membership (subscription) is typically required to access the full range of data, insights, and advanced features within the Oura app. While some basic functionality may be available without a subscription, the comprehensive value is realized through the membership.
2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): No subscription is required to access the core features and data tracked by the Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) through the Apple Health and Fitness apps. Optional services like Apple Fitness+ require a separate subscription.
🏷️️ Price
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: $399.00
Check Oura Ring 4 Price *2️⃣ Apple Watch SE (2nd generation): $249.00
Check Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) Price ** If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you