Tech I Love and Hate
Welcome to my write ups on tech that I’m using/traveling with! Here you will find all the latest updates and tech reviews.
The Oura Ring 5- Worth the Upgrade?
I’ve been wearing an Oura Ring 4 for a while now, mostly for the sleep and stress data, so when the Ring 5 landed, I wasn’t looking for a reason to upgrade, but as I have tiny hands, (ring size is a 4.5) my interest was piqued. Turns out the process of making the switch was one of the smoothest tech transitions I’ve had in years.
The size difference is real, not marketing. Oura says the Ring 5 is 40% smaller by volume than the Ring 4 (6.09mm wide and 2.28mm thick, down from 7.90mm and 2.88mm) and on my finger, that’s not a subtle spec-sheet number. The Ring 4 was always bulky, but the Ring 5 genuinely feels comfortable now. It sits lower, looks more natural on my hand, and doesn’t announce itself as “tech” the way the 4 did. If you’ve been on the fence because of bulk, that’s solved.
The surprise wasn’t the size, but the migration. As someone who’s spent decades untangling messy tech migrations for a living, I was braced for problems. I expected data loss, connectivity issues, maybe a forced re-onboarding, but none of that happened.
The whole process was:
1. Pair the new Ring 5 in the Oura app.
2. Watch all of my historical data, including sleep trends, readiness scores, and two years of history, to show up immediately, because the membership and data live with my account, not the physical ring.
3. Was able to disconnect and factory reset the old Ring 4 in a couple of steps, right from the same app.
That was it. There wasn’t any parallel accounts, no manual data export, no “please allow 24–48 hours for your history to sync.” And it was there instantly, fully intact, on the new ring.
As someone who spends a lot of my professional life dealing with frustratingly bad end user tech, I genuinely didn’t have high expectations. It was, honestly, a joy and I’ve told others who were on the fence about an upgrade to consider doing so now. With as much tech as there is out there that makes the user suffer through the “upgrade,” this was a breeze from start to finish.
SCORE 1-10: 10