Oura Ring vs Garmin: I tried these two premium fitness tracker brands at the same time - here's what I learnt

Oura Ring vs Garmin - if you're looking to get to know yourself better through your sleep, movement, and stress habits, chances are that you've considered at least one of these.

As a health and wellbeing journalist, I've spent the last five years putting the best fitness trackers through their paces and reviewing new technology as it comes onto the market. In the last few months, I've worn the Oura Ring Generation 4 and the Garmin Venu 3S, two of the latest models from the respective brands, every day.

While the two are similar in many ways, offering advanced insights that some other brands only hope to have, there are notable differences worth knowing about before investing. To help you find the right one for you, I've put the two to the test side by side, exploring how each wearable works.

Oura Ring vs Garmin

Oura Ring vs Garmin: An overview

First things first, both the Oura Ring Generation 4 and the Garmin Venu 3S record essential data like step count, heart rate, sleep, stress, and recovery levels, with the ring showing the insights exclusively in the app and the watch displaying them on screen and via the Garmin Connect app.

I've been reviewing the Oura Ring Generation 4 for the last few months - and it's quickly become one of my favourite fitness trackers. With its £250+ price tag, it's undoubtedly one of the more expensive on the market, but also the most discreet in appearance. An upgrade to the sensors means it's also now more accurate and versatile than ever before.

The Garmin Venu 3S is undoubtedly one of the best Garmin watches. It's a premium fitness tracker that offers general wellbeing insights with a multi-pronged focus across fitness, sleep, and general health, but it's designed for those who regularly exercise or want to start doing so.

Ultimately, whether you opt for Oura Ring vs Garmin will depend on your lifestyle. Planning to run a marathon or totally rehaul your fitness routine? The Garmin Venu 3S and others will be primed to help. Prefer to keep a balanced approach, focusing as much on your sleep as your steps, and want to keep your regular timepiece? The Oura Ring is a winner.

Oura Ring vs Garmin: Design

The key difference between the Oura Ring vs Garmin is the design. The Garmin Venu 3S is a sleek smartwatch with a circular watch face and silicone wristband, available in neutral tones and glinting colourways equally at home in the gym as at the dinner table. Three protruding buttons on the side control the watch screen - or you can use the touchscreen.

As the name would suggest, the Oura Ring Generation 4 is a ring tracker. It’s sleek, compact and screen-less. It sits on your index, middle or ring finger, and is available in various colours - but it's much more discreet than the Garmin Venu 3S. It sits around the finger, blending in with other jewellery.

Naturally, if you do running or cycling workouts, or you're someone who likes to check their stats while exercising, then the Garmin Venu 3S will be the obvious choice as you'll need that data visible on your wrist. For those looking for a fitness tracker to support their everyday lifestyle, I prefer the Oura Ring.

When wearing a smartwatch, I'm constantly checking my stats throughout the day, so it's refreshing to have a screen-free device that I can use more mindfully in this always-switched-on world. I also find the Oura Ring more comfortable to wear. The silicone on the Garmin watch strap also irritated the skin on my wrist, which isn't unique to this watch, but applicable to watches in general.

Winner: Oura Ring - unless you're a runner or someone who needs to look at stats

Activity tracking on Oura Ring vs Garmin

If you're weighing up Oura Ring vs Garmin, it’s likely that a device that an activity-tracking device is important to you. As with most fitness wearables - from the best Fitbits to the newest Apple Watch - the Oura Ring and Garmin track essential activity metrics - including steps, distance and calories burned, while also monitoring your heart rate.

Garmin is best-in-class for tracking activity - especially for walkers, runners, or cyclists who need accurate GPS. There are 30 pre-loaded GPS and indoor sports apps to choose from, and insights post-workout can reveal how your exercise session affects your body and how much time you need to recover. It's a good choice for those who do just a little exercise and want to do more, or those who exercise multiple times a week and take on fitness challenges.

The Oura Ring takes a more holistic approach to movement. It counts everything from housework and gardening to walking and running as part of your daily physical activity. You can also record exercise sessions, though - anything from swimming workouts to rock climbing, with insights into heart rate variability and performance to rival Garmin's output.

It also automatically picks up a huge variety of workouts and even went so far as to log my speedy morning routine as a session like housework, since it raised my heart rate and stress levels. Where it can do, the Oura Ring will always pick up exercise data from other sensors, like a smartwatch.

However, I'd suggest getting a ring cover or taking it off during strength training as the metal doesn't get scratched.

Though both devices also effectively auto-detect runs, walks, and cycles, the Garmin Venu 3S is better designed for workouts and monitoring your step count accurately. I often find that my step count on my Oura Ring has been overestimated by a fair bit when I'm sitting at home typing. The ring bouncing around my keyboard seems to be picked up as steps.

If adding more movement to your day is a priority, it’s also worth checking out the Garmin Connect app. Here, you can download animated workouts - from strength and HIIT to yoga - to your watch and follow along on the screen. The Garmin Coach is another excellent app to start your journey to a 5k, 10k or half-marathon, with a training plan designed by expert coaches. While there are some similar features on the Oura Ring app, Garmin's offering far outweighs them.

Winner: Garmin Venu 3S

Sleep tracking on the Oura Ring vs Garmin

I've tested a lot of fitness trackers over the years, but nothing comes close to the Oura Ring Generation 4 when it comes to sleep tracking. Not only is sleep broken up into individual stages (light, deep, and REM), but the sensors also track sleep hygiene essentials like latency (how long it takes you to fall asleep) and timing to help optimise your bedtime routine.

You'll also get an AI overview decoding all the data into a neat paragraph, so you can view the topline information at a glance, which I appreciated.

However, the Garmin Venu 3S also excels far more than most fitness trackers in this area. It offers detailed insights into sleep duration, sleep stages including REM and Deep Sleep, HRV, respiration rate and skin temperature to give an overall sleep score for an overview of how well you’re sleeping and how this impacts your readiness the following day (more on this later), which is unique to the Garmin Venu 3S when compared to other devices by the brand.

When testing out the Oura vs Garmin, there were some differences in the sleep results between the devices. For example, the Oura Ring often tracked more REM sleep than Garmin, and overall, I found the Oura Ring to be marginally more accurate. From using both, one thing was clear: I needed to brush up on my sleep score, which had been heavily impacted by travel, a heavy workload and HIIT workouts in the last few weeks. Although I already knew this, as I was going to bed later, getting up earlier and feeling tired throughout the day, it was a good reminder of how it was impacting my overall wellbeing.

Thankfully, both devices offer insights into how to sleep better, from suggested bedtimes to recommended sleep durations, and advice on reducing my daytime stress. Both Oura Ring and Garmin also have a library of meditation and breathwork practices, which I enjoyed using at nighttime to close out my day, and I noticed they did help me nod off quicker.

Winner: Oura Ring Generation 4

Oura Ring vs Garmin: Readiness Score

Getting an insight into how well my body has recovered is one of the best features of any fitness tracker. This feature is known as the 'readiness score' and is available on most fitness trackers under various names, including other Garmin devices, Fitbits, Apple Watch, and more. The score is based on your activity levels, sleep score, and stress response. The device then offers a score (normally out of 100) for how ready your body is for exercise. If the score is low, you should take a rest day or switch your high-intensity workout for a low-intensity one. If your score is high, go for it. Both the Oura Ring and Garmin Venu 3S offer a Readiness Score, but in slightly different ways.

The Oura Ring has a readiness score that considers your resting heart rate, body temperature, sleep and the previous day’s activities. These help you better understand if your body is ready for a day of high-energy activities or needs more time to recover and rest. The Oura Ring will give a Resilience Score, which shows how well you balance stress levels and recovery.

On Garmin, the readiness score is called the 'Body Battery'. It gives an insight into how your energy levels change throughout the day, draining when your body and mind are stressed or increasing when you take time out to recharge, which can help you to prioritise more downtime in your day. Post-workout, it will also share your estimated recovery time.

Overall, the recovery data on the Oura Ring is clearer and more specific, but of course, it's still important to listen to your body. I find it fascinating to learn more about how my body recovers, and these insights really encourage me to tune into what my body needs and honour that throughout the day.

Winner: Oura Ring Generation 4

Health monitoring on Oura Ring vs Garmin

While no fitness tracker can diagnose health conditions, they often have sensors that can help pick up on irregularities in your heart rate, respiratory rate, or body temperature.

Wearing the Oura Ring Generation 4, I was most impressed by the Symptoms Tracker, which takes note of your vital signs and can alert you that there's a problem, signally that you might be getting ill. I had my doubts when the warning flashed up in the middle of the summer, but there I was two days later, tucked up in bed with a summer cold.

As well as prioritising short-term health data, a longer-term view is available in the 'My Health' section of the Oura Ring app. Here, you'll get a detailed overview of your resilience levels (how well you respond to stress), heart age, and sleep health, which all impact how well we age and operate.

The Garmin Venu 3S doesn't have such a wide range of features, but it certainly does the essentials, with readings for body temperature, heart rate, and respiration. The VO2 max technology provides a measure of current cardiorespiratory fitness, which the Oura Ring doesn't do, and it offers details on heart age.

For the globetrotters amongst us, the Garmin also has a Jet Lag Adviser providing personalised insights into how jet lag might impact your body and tips to minimise the effects.

Winner: Very similar - but the Garmin Venu 3S will be better for fitness fans wanting a wider view of their health

Oura Ring vs Garmin: Price

Both fitness wearables are an investment, but the Oura Ring 4 is pricier. As it's newer, it stars at £349 while the Garmin Venu 3S has come down to just shy of £400 from it's RRP of £449.99 on Amazon. Although with both, you're likely to find a deal during peak sales periods.

When buying an Oura Ring, you’ll first need to order a sizing kit to ensure you choose the right size ring. The kit comes with eight plastic rings of different sizes. Once you find your perfect fit, you can then order your Oura Ring from the UK website.

To get the most from the Oura Ring, you’ll need to opt into the brand’s £5.99 monthly subscription. Without it, I don’t think the Oura Ring is worth investing in, as you won’t have access to all your data.

If you're looking for a fitness tracker on your finger that doesn't have the same subscription model, it's worth looking at the Samsung Galaxy Smart Ring. This device is very similar to the Oura Ring in many ways, and all data is available without a subscription.

With Garmin, you don’t need to buy additional apps or subscriptions to access your data or participate in activity challenges.

Oura Ring vs Garmin: Which one is better?

Oura Ring vs Garmin - which one is better? It's a tough question and particularly difficult to answer because it all comes down to personal preference. Whether you’re weighing up the Oura Ring vs Garmin Venu 3S or a Fitbit vs Apple Watch, it all comes down to what you're after from a fitness tracker or smartwatch.

For those who want to focus on balance in life - a mixture of movement, sleep, and recovery, the Oura Ring does it best. It takes a more holistic approach and has a premium feel that fits into any daily wardrobe, without a 'sporty' design.

The Garmin Venu 3S is a smartwatch with all the bells and whistles. It tracks sleep almost as well as the Oura, but it offers more detailed insights into workouts and can guide you through workouts on-screen.

While it doesn't have heaps of smartwatch features (weigh up the Oura Ring vs Apple Watch for that), the Garmin does offer smartphone notifications, allows on-wrist texting with Android devices, supports contactless payments and Spotify connection, and has safety tracking features.