Oura Ring 4 vs Garmin Forerunner 955
🗓️ Release Year
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: 2024
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The Garmin Forerunner 955 is a top-tier GPS smartwatch designed for multisport athletes, offering extensive tracking of steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes with daily goals. It provides advanced running dynamics, cycling metrics, and swimming data crucial for comprehensive performance analysis across disciplines.
❤️ 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: This device features continuous heart rate monitoring, advanced physiological metrics including VO2 max estimation, training status, training load pro, and heat and altitude acclimatization. It also tracks respiration rate and Pulse Ox for blood oxygen saturation, offering deep insights into an athlete's health and recovery status.
🔋 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 offers exceptional battery life, providing up to 15 days in smartwatch mode and up to 42 hours with continuous GPS tracking, making it suitable for ultra-endurance events and extensive training blocks.
😴 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: Advanced sleep monitoring is included, meticulously tracking sleep stages (light, deep, and REM) and utilizing the Pulse Ox sensor to monitor blood oxygen levels during sleep. This provides valuable data for assessing recovery quality and informing training decisions.
📍 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: Equipped with multi-band GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo), the Forerunner 955 provides superior accuracy for outdoor activity tracking, even in challenging environments, without requiring a paired smartphone. It offers detailed route navigation and mapping capabilities.
🏋️ 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 supports a vast array of multisport and individual workout modes, including running, biking, swimming, triathlon, trail running, strength training, and more, with extensive real-time statistics and customizable data screens.
💫 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The device includes automatic exercise detection for common activities like walking and running through its Move IQ feature, ensuring seamless recording of basic movements within the overall training log.
🍎 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 is compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones, connecting via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for seamless data synchronization and smart notifications.
📲 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: Synchronization with the comprehensive Garmin Connect app is essential for the Forerunner 955, providing in-depth analysis of all tracked data, performance metrics, training insights, and recovery recommendations. The app allows for creating and syncing detailed training plans and courses.
💡 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: Beyond its extensive sports features, the Forerunner 955 includes practical smart functionalities such as on-wrist notifications, Garmin Pay for contactless payments, and on-device music storage with support for streaming services, allowing for phone-free training with connectivity.
💦 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: With a water resistance rating of 50 meters (5 ATM), the Forerunner 955 is suitable for swimming and showering, making it a reliable device for tracking pool and open water swimming activities as part of a multisport training regimen.
⌚ 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 features a sunlight-visible, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP) color display with optional touchscreen. This display technology offers excellent readability in direct sunlight and is power-efficient, crucial for extended outdoor activities.
👌 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The device offers a dual interface with traditional buttons and a responsive touchscreen, providing flexible and easy navigation through menus, data screens, and mapping features during both activities and daily use.
✨ 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 features a lightweight and comfortable design with a soft silicone band, optimized for a secure fit during intense training sessions and suitable for all-day wear, balancing durability with comfort.
🩸 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: An integrated Pulse Ox sensor allows for on-demand spot checks and continuous monitoring of blood oxygen saturation levels, particularly valuable for acclimatization at altitude, monitoring sleep quality, and assessing overall recovery.
💖 ECG Functionality
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: It is important to note that the Oura Ring 4 does not support ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: It is important to note that the Garmin Forerunner 955 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 tracks stress levels throughout the day based on heart rate variability and offers guided breathing exercises to help athletes manage stress and optimize their mental recovery alongside physical training.
🩹 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: The device provides advanced recovery insights, including a daily readiness score, recovery time advisor, training status, and training load focus, offering detailed guidance to help athletes understand their recovery needs and optimize their training schedule to prevent overtraining and improve performance.
💳 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 Garmin Forerunner 955: A significant benefit of the Garmin platform is that all features and data tracked by the Forerunner 955 are accessible through the free Garmin Connect app, requiring no additional subscription fees for core functionality or advanced training analysis, providing comprehensive value out of the box.
🏷️️ Price
1️⃣ Oura Ring 4: $399.00
Check Oura Ring 4 Price *2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: $699.99
Check Garmin Forerunner 955 Price ** If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you