An FCC filing surfaced on March 23 showing what is almost certainly the Oura Ring 5. New color option. More curved band profile. Repositioned sensors. This wasn’t supposed to be public yet.

I’ve been wearing the Ring 4 for over a year now. It’s part of my morning routine — wake up, check Readiness Score, decide whether today is a hard session or an easy spin. So when the Ring 5 leak dropped, my first thought wasn’t excitement. It was: should I tell people to stop buying Ring 4?

After digging through the filing, cross-referencing Oura’s IPO timeline, and running the actual cost math, here’s where I landed.

Quick Decision Table

Factor	Buy Ring 4 Now	Wait for Ring 5
Need recovery data today	Yes	—
Tight budget	Lock in current pricing	Risk higher launch price
Already own Ring 3 or older	Strong upgrade now	Reasonable to wait
No wearable currently	Good entry point	6-12 month gap with no data
Care about aesthetics	Ring 4 looks great	Deep Rose color, curvier profile
Worried about subscription costs	Lock in $5.99/mo before IPO	May face higher post-IPO rates

Short answer: If you need a recovery wearable now, buy Ring 4. The improvements in Ring 5 look incremental, not generational, and Oura’s IPO could raise prices across the board before Ring 5 even ships.

What the FCC Filing Actually Shows

FCC filings are boring documents. That’s what makes them useful — companies can’t spin regulatory paperwork the way they spin press releases.

The March 23 filing reveals:

• New “Deep Rose” color option. Oura has been expanding finish choices with each generation, and this tracks. Ring 4 launched with Heritage Gold and Brushed Titanium. Deep Rose targets the same audience Samsung went after with the Galaxy Ring’s rose gold variant.
• More curved band profile. The filing sketches show a rounder cross-section compared to Ring 4’s flatter inner surface. If Oura is smoothing out the sensor housing, that could mean better comfort during barbell work (my one consistent gripe with Ring 4 during deadlifts).
• Repositioned sensors. The optical heart rate sensor array appears shifted compared to Ring 4’s layout. This could improve contact consistency on different finger sizes, or it could mean new sensor types. Hard to tell from regulatory drawings alone.
• Same general form factor. It’s still a ring. Similar width, similar thickness based on the diagrams. Don’t expect a radical redesign.

What the filing doesn’t show: software features, subscription changes, battery specs, or pricing. Those details won’t surface until Oura is ready for an announcement.

The Timeline Question

Before this leak, the consensus estimate for Ring 5 was late 2027. That just moved up by roughly a year.

FCC filings typically appear 6 to 12 months before a product ships. Sometimes less for iterative products. Ring 4 went through the FCC in early 2024 and shipped in October 2024. If Ring 5 follows a similar cadence, we’re looking at a late 2026 to early 2027 release window.

That’s a meaningful difference. Waiting 18 months for a maybe-better ring is one decision. Waiting 6 to 9 months is a different one entirely.

But here’s what matters more than the hardware timeline: Oura’s financial timeline.

The IPO Factor (This Is the Real Story)

Oura is in active IPO negotiations at a reported $11 billion valuation. The company is also building a U.S. manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, expected to come online in 2026. That’s the kind of capital expenditure you make when you’re about to have public market money to spend.

Why does an IPO matter for your buying decision? Because I’ve already documented the pattern: fitness companies that go public raise prices. Peloton did it. Fitbit did it. The incentive structure changes from “grow the user base” to “grow revenue per user.”

Oura’s subscription is currently $5.99/month after a 6-month free trial. That’s $71.88 per year. Post-IPO, that number goes up. Maybe not immediately. But within 12-18 months of going public, expect $7.99 or $9.99/month. That’s not pessimism. That’s what the data shows across every fitness company that’s made this transition.

Run the numbers:

The Real Cost of Waiting

Scenario	3-Year Total Cost
Buy Ring 4 now ($349 + $5.99/mo)	~$529 (6-month trial, then 30 months at $5.99)
Buy Ring 5 at launch, same pricing	~$529+ (assuming $349+ hardware, same subscription)
Buy Ring 5 at launch, post-IPO pricing ($7.99/mo)	~$589+ (assuming $349 hardware, higher subscription)
Buy Ring 5 at launch, premium pricing ($399 + $7.99/mo)	~$639+

The first scenario is the only one where you control the variables. Everything else involves assumptions that all trend in one direction: more expensive.

And that $349 Ring 4 price? Oura hasn’t discounted hardware between generations. Ring 3 was $299. Ring 4 jumped to $349. Ring 5 at $379 or $399 wouldn’t surprise me at all, especially with a new U.S. manufacturing facility to amortize.

What Ring 5 Probably Won’t Fix

I’ve worn Ring 4 through marathon training blocks, strength cycles, and one nasty bout of bronchitis it caught 18 hours before I felt symptoms. I know what works and what doesn’t. A sensor repositioning and curved profile probably won’t fix these:

The subscription model itself. Oura isn’t going to drop the subscription. Not pre-IPO, not post-IPO, not ever. The no-subscription alternatives like Garmin’s new CIRQA band and the $75 Pebble Index 01 exist precisely because people are fed up with this model. Ring 5 won’t change the business model. If anything, the IPO will entrench it.

Algorithm accuracy at the margins. Ring 4’s Readiness Score is good. Really good. I trust it more than WHOOP’s recovery score for day-to-day training decisions. But the occasional weird morning — where I slept great, feel great, and Oura says I’m at 62 — still happens. New sensor positions might improve raw signal quality, but the algorithm is the bottleneck, and algorithms improve through software updates that Ring 4 will also receive.

The app’s learning curve. The 2026 app redesign made things better. But Oura still surfaces more data than most people know what to do with. A new ring won’t simplify the software.

What Ring 5 Might Actually Improve

Based on the filing and where the wearable industry is heading:

Comfort during training. That curved profile isn’t cosmetic. A smoother inner contour means less pressure point during gripping exercises. If you’ve ever felt Ring 4 dig into your finger during heavy pulls, this matters.

Sensor contact reliability. Repositioned sensors could improve readings for people with smaller fingers or unusual finger shapes where Ring 4’s sensor placement doesn’t make great contact. I’ve heard from readers who get inconsistent overnight HRV because their ring shifts during sleep. A new sensor layout targeting this problem would be meaningful.

New biometric capabilities. This is speculation, but the sensor repositioning could accommodate new measurement types. Blood glucose estimation (non-invasive) is the white whale of the wearable industry. Oura won’t crack it with Ring 5, but electrodermal activity sensing or improved SpO2 accuracy are realistic additions.

My Recommendation: Three Scenarios

Buy Ring 4 now if:

You don’t have a recovery wearable and you want one. Every month without data is a month of training decisions made on vibes instead of metrics. Ring 4 is a proven product with 18 months of refinement since launch. The app redesign addressed most of the software complaints. You’ll get Ring 5’s software improvements through updates anyway.

You’re also hedging against post-IPO price increases. Locking in the current hardware price and $5.99/month subscription rate now could save you $100+ over three years compared to buying into whatever pricing structure exists in early 2027.

Wait for Ring 5 if:

You already own Ring 4 and it’s working well. There’s no reason to upgrade from a product that’s giving you useful daily data. Ring 5 looks like an iteration, not a reinvention. Unless the sensor improvements enable genuinely new capabilities (not just refinements), Ring 4 owners should sit tight.

You’re also fine waiting if you have another wearable covering recovery tracking. If you’re using a WHOOP or Garmin with Body Battery and you’re just curious about rings, you can afford to see what Ring 5 actually delivers before committing.

Skip Oura entirely if:

You refuse to pay subscriptions for your own biometric data. That’s a valid position, and the market is finally offering real alternatives. The Garmin CIRQA gives you recovery tracking with no monthly fee. The Pebble Index 01 does basic sleep tracking for $75, period. Samsung’s Galaxy Ring has no subscription. You have options now that didn’t exist a year ago.

The Bigger Picture

This FCC leak is interesting hardware news. But the real story is financial. Oura is about to become a public company. Public companies behave differently than private ones. They optimize for quarterly revenue growth, not user satisfaction. Every fitness company that’s made this transition has raised prices within 18 months.

Ring 5 will launch into that environment. Which means Ring 5 buyers will likely pay more for hardware, pay more for the subscription, and face a company with less flexibility to offer promotions or grandfather rates.

Ring 4 buyers who lock in now are buying a known product at a known price before the financial incentives shift. That’s not the exciting choice. It’s the practical one.

And practical is usually how you make good decisions with fitness tech — not by chasing the next shiny thing, but by using what works while it’s available at a price that makes sense.

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Based on FCC filing from March 23, 2026, current Ring 4 pricing, and publicly reported IPO valuation data. I’ve worn the Oura Ring 4 since January 2025.