Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority

iFixit conducted a teardown of the new Oura Ring 5, and it’s all bad news. Unlike older Oura Rings, the new Ring 5 has both its outer and inner casings made out of titanium. The company has also used a lot of epoxy resin to glue the two together. As a result, the folks over at iFixit were unable to open the ring using the usual process of heating the glue and scraping it off.

The iFixit crew had to cut through the titanium outer casing, which was surprisingly easy thanks to its thin design. Then they removed the motherboard from the ring and got a good look at its components.

The Oura Ring 5 uses an Ambic Apollo 3 Blue ultra-low power chipset. That SoC features a Cortex-M4 core clocked up to 96MHz, 384KB of RAM, and a Bluetooth Low Energy 5 (BLE) controller. Powering it all is a tiny 10.5mAh battery.

The bottom line of iFixit’s teardown is that the Oura Ring 5 remains as unrepairable as its predecessors and most smart rings. Once the battery stops holding a charge properly, the ring will become useless, as there is no easy way to swap the battery without damaging the ring. As such, the Oura Ring 5 has a fixed product life.

On the other hand, Oura does have a recycling program in the US, UK, Canada, and some EU countries. However, that simply makes it easier to discard old Oura rings and doesn’t offer any refunds or trade-in value. For consumers, the Oura Ring 5 is a $399 purchase that will basically become useless once the battery degrades substantially.

Oura Ring 5

Oura Ring 5

40% smaller design • Re-engineered sensing system • Advanced practive health tools

The Oura Ring 5 shrinks the company’s design by 40% while adding new proactive health features like Blood Pressure Signals, expanded Health Radar insights, and live activity tracking.

For what it’s worth, Oura did file a patent for a smart ring with a replaceable battery. However, there’s no real information on when (or if) it will be announced.