The Oura Ring is the smart ring to beat when it comes to wellness tracking, especially sleep and menstrual health. Now in its third iteration, the Oura Ring comes in four styles and a wide range of sizes.
For
- Unobtrusive, durable design
- Thorough sleep and recovery tracking
- Best-in-class women's health tracking
- Long-lasting battery life
Against
- Monthly subscription fee of $5.99
The Amazfit Helio Ring is a newcomer to the smart ring party, offering many of the same features and health sensors as the Oura Ring. However, it doesn't come with a monthly subscription cost.
For
- Comfortable, lightweight design
- Sleep, recovery and stress tracking
- Long-lasting battery
- No subscription fees
Against
- Scratches fairly easy
- Limited sizes at launch
- A first-gen product
The Oura Ring Generation 3 is the most popular smart ring available and the best fitness tracker for sleep, but it's far from the only show in town. The Amazfit Helio Ring, announced at CES 2024 and released in spring, offers many of the same features as its better-known competitor, without a recurring subscription cost.
I'm still making my way through a complete review of the Helio Ring — read my first impressions — but I've already spotted several notable differences between it and the Oura. Here's how the two stack up in terms of price, availability, health features, design and battery life.
Oura Ring vs. Helio Ring: price, availability and compatibility
The Oura Ring Gen 3 is available now in four finishes, Gold, Silver, Black and Stealth, for $299 for the Heritage model, but you could spend up to $399 for the Horizon model. The ring comes with a free six-month Oura Membership which will run you $5.99 a month after the trial period ends. Note: A membership is necessary to use the device.
The Helio Ring is also available now in only silver for $299 with no subscription cost for the companion Zepp Health app, which is fairly comprehensive in its insights. The device includes three months of the premium Zepp Aura app, for a deeper dive into sleep insights, and six months of the Zepp Fitness app, where you can access additional workout data and recommendations.
Both devices' companion apps play nicely with Apple and Android devices.
Winner: Helio Ring — the Helio Ring is a one-and-done affair with no reoccurring costs to contend with. Of course, if you find the additional data offered in its premium apps useful, you're more than welcome to shell out some extra dough. The Zepp Aura app is $69.99 a year (after the free trial expires), while the Zepp Fitness app is $29.99 a year.
Oura Ring vs. Helio Ring: design and fit
The Oura Ring Gen 3 comes in eight sizes ranging from six to 13. To help you determine which is best for you, Oura offers a free sizing kit with your purchase, including plastic dummy rings you can try on. This kit can be mailed directly or picked up at participating Best Buy stores.
Even if you know your standard ring size, it's a good idea to try the kit as it's not uncommon to need one size larger because of the sensors on the inner ring side.
The Helio Ring is presently only available in sizes 10 and 12 but Amazfit says more options will be available later this year, including sizes seven through nine, 11 and 13. As of present, there is no Helio Ring sizing kit.
Both rings look unassuming while worn, which is to say, you'd never know either was packed with health tracking sensors along the inside of the band. They are also quite comfortable and ultimately, unobtrusive once you get used to having them on. Intended to be worn on a user's index finger, the Oura and Helio also work on a middle or ring finger.
The Helio Ring is made from titanium alloy and is 2.6mm thick, with a weight of 4 grams. The Oura Ring Gen 3, also titanium, is between 2.5 and 2.9mm thick and weighs between 4 and 6 grams depending on size.
Both devices promise a scratch-resistant exterior. However, the Oura Ring Gen 3 seems to initially hold up against abrasion a little better than the Helio, from our field testing. One of our writers has been wearing the Oura for a few years and has experienced a lot more wear and tear than expected.
The Oura Ring Gen 3 and Helio Ring each charge wirelessly via similar-looking docks that plug into USB-C. Battery life and charging times are essentially a match. You can expect around five days/nights of use on a charge and roughly two hours for a full juice-up.
Winner: Oura Ring Gen 3 — with far more sizes to choose from, a dedicated try-on process for finding the correct fit, and a more scratch-resistant exterior, the Oura Ring wins this category.
Oura Ring vs. Helio Ring: Wellness and activity tracking
Smart rings are all about health monitoring and both the Oura Ring Gen 3 and Helio Ring keep tabs on your sleep quality, physical activity, workout recovery, stress and menstrual health.
Oura and Helio each offer similar suites of wellness monitoring tech, including heart rate, skin temperature, SpO2 and EDA sensors. The latter checks for changes in your skin's eclectic properties — or, more simply put, it measures sweat — to assess stress levels.
Neither smart ring sports onboard GPS nor a screen for that matter, so you'll probably want to stick with one of the best fitness trackers or best smartwatches for monitoring hardcore workouts or outdoor adventures.
Both have gyroscopic accelerometers for keeping tabs on daily movement, though. And, you get similar stats about minutes active, calories burned, heart rate, distance and total steps taken from either smart ring.
The Oura Ring Gen 3 automatically detects and tracks more physical activity and workout types — 29 in total —than the Helio Ring, which presently registers only walking, running, cycling and treadmill workouts. Meanwhile, Oura Ring users can easily go into the app and edit logged activities, and the Strava integration with Oura means users can upload activities from another device.
Helio users don't have either of these options, though the ring does play nice with a small selection of high-end Amazfit smartwatches, like the Amazfit Cheetah Pro and Amazfit T-Rex Ultra.
Winner: Oura Ring Gen 3 — the Oura Ring automatically detects when you're doing physical activities, including sports like pickleball and boxing, and everyday movements, like cleaning up your house. Activity data is easy to edit and easy to import from other devices.
Oura Ring vs. Helio Ring: sleep and menstrual tracking
Sleep data is comprehensive with Oura and Amazfit, with details on overall quality, breathing, sleep stages — including REM and deep sleep insights — and resting heart rate. Insights are arranged in easily digestible graphs and tables within either's respective app. You also get a daily readiness and sleep score from either ring, as well as workout recovery time recommendations.
Menstrual cycle tracking on the Oura Ring Gen 3 is a standout feature. The Skin temperature sensor helps provide period predictions, while data from the ring plays nice with the popular birth control app, Natural Cycles, to keep users informed of their fertility status. The tech is so accurate, that it knew our fitness editor was pregnant before she did.
The Helio Ring also promises menstrual cycle tracking, along with period prediction but presently, the data can't be used in conjunction with other women's health apps.
Winner: Oura Ring Gen 3 — the Oura Ring is a third-generation product proven to be a capable and reliable holistic tracker for thousands of folks. While first impressions of the Helio Ring and its accuracy are positive, further assessment is needed. Also, the Helio Ring doesn't support data integration with other popular wellness apps, like Natural Cycles.
Oura Ring vs. Helio Ring: which one wins?
The first Oura Ring was launched in 2015, with the second and third-gen rings arriving in 2018 and 2021.
In that time, Oura has had a lot of time to refine its approach to wellness monitoring, both in the form of new product releases and firmware/app tweaks. And even though an Oura Ring Gen 4 is likely right around the corner, the Oura Ring Gen 3 still wins this showdown against the Amazfit Helio Ring, despite the former's subscription cost.
It's not that the Helio Ring is a lousy product, but it is Amazfit's first stab at a smart ring, and inevitably, things will need fine-tuning. What are they? We may not know until the device sees a more widespread launch in a complete range of sizes, at which point, user feedback will play a crucial role in improving the product.
Ultimately, if you want a tried-and-true finger-based holistic tracker, the Oura Ring Gen 3 is still the best game in town.
