Smart rings are having a moment. After years as a niche gadget, regular people are starting to see the appeal. They’re thinner, more accurate, and more wearable compared to a decade ago — and for some people, they’re a smarter choice than smartwatches.
Smartwatches may dominate the wearable landscape, but they don’t work for everyone. They can be bulky. Daily charging is a pain. Plus, they don’t always work for people with wrist tattoos or those who participate in more niche sports. (Ever try stuffing a Garmin under a boxing glove? It’s not fun.) Conversely, smart rings are discreet and often have multiday battery life, and your finger can be a more accurate place to gather heart rate data.
But which smart ring is the best? To find out, I called in six smart rings currently on the market: the Oura Ring, Ultrahuman Ring Air, Circular Slim, Samsung Galaxy Ring, RingConn, and Evie Ring. For the past few months, I slept with them. Showered with them. Exercised with them. Compared a crapton of health data until my eyes bled. For a while, I wore all six simultaneously like a mafia don wearing two pairs of smart ring brass knuckles. I now have six ring tans. All so I could definitively tell you which is the one smart ring to rule them all.
Accuracy is a must
Folks, it ain’t the Circular Slim.
On paper, the $294 Circular Slim has a lot of promise. It executes on almost none of it. The big problem was accuracy. While the metrics were generally fine, my step count was occasionally so wrong I couldn’t help but laugh. I’m talking 5,000 steps off compared to my other wearables. And that’s when I had the patience to review my metrics because syncing is an absolute chore. On average, it took two to three minutes, which meant I frequently rage quit the app. It’d be one thing if this was a one-off. It was not. Most people want smart rings for health tracking. If you’re not accurate and syncing is a chore, what is the point?
It’s a bummer because this is the only smart ring with ambitions of being anything other than a fitness tracker. It has a vibration motor for silent alarms. When Circular was still a Kickstarter, that motor was also supposed to alert you to notifications. That feature has been “coming soon” for years — something users are none too happy about. At the moment, the haptics are limited to silent alarms, but even that doesn’t quite hit the mark. You have to tap the ring twice above the logo to dismiss the alarm. In the dark, that logo is nigh impossible to see. Most mornings, I’m so groggy I end up smacking my hand multiple times just to turn it off. There’s also an ambitious AI chatbot that spits out daily recommendations. The problem is it takes 14 days to calibrate, and like other AI-powered fitness features, it wasn’t very helpful. But the real kicker is the charger is an easily misplaced USB stick. It’d be one thing if it had great battery life, but no. I got two to three days with all the features turned on. I also don’t think a nearly $300 ring should feel like it was made of cheap, 3D-printed plastic. Easily my least favorite ring of the bunch.
Eliminated: Circular Ring
Design matters, but so does polish
The next ring on the chopping block is the $269 Evie Ring. It hurts me to write this because it’s the prettiest and most comfortable of the six. Most smart rings tend to be indistinguishable from one another, but the Evie Ring has a clever open-gap design, which means it doesn’t matter if your fingers bloat or gain a few pounds. You’ll always be able to take it off with ease.
If design and comfort were the only factors, this ring would win. But it’s not. The Evie Ring’s main issue is it’s the quintessential first-gen product with first-gen issues. Everything works decently, unlike the Circular Ring, but there’s a distinct lack of polish. Syncing and firmware updates can take a while, and Movano hasn’t figured out the best way to present and contextualize your data — though it makes a valiant effort. The ring has just relaunched to address some of this feedback, but it’s still very much playing catch-up. Hopefully, future versions will smooth out the kinks.
Being ‘fine’ isn’t enough
The $279 RingConn isn’t bad. It simply doesn’t stand out. It has the best battery life of the pack. I reliably got six to nine days on a single charge and it has a neat little charging case. It’s just so… middling. This is the smart ring I’d recommend people get if all they wanted was basic, mostly decent health tracking without any bells and whistles. Syncing can sometimes take a bit, but nowhere near as long as the Circular Slim or Evie Ring. Honestly, the thing that bugged me most about the RingConn was its slightly squarish shape. It can feel a bit odd on the finger, but unless you’re hypersensitive to that kind of thing, you’ll barely notice it after a few days.
The RingConn’s flaws don’t do it a discredit. But this is a battle royale. You can’t win by just being fine if other options are good, nay great.
It’s got to stand alone
For what it’s worth, the $400 Samsung Galaxy Ring nails the hardware. This is the slimmest ring of the bunch and the most comfortable after the Evie Ring, and the futuristic charging case adds to its chic allure. The reason why it doesn’t take the title is because this ring is essentially for Samsung diehards — to the detriment of everyone else.
Case in point, you get the best battery life if you use it with a Samsung Galaxy Watch. The cool double pinch gesture to control the camera or dismiss notifications? Yeah, you need a new Z Flip 6 or Z Fold 6. (It’s purportedly making its way to the S24 but is unavailable as of this writing.) It’s essentially a neat accessory for your Galaxy Watch.
Training shouldn’t be the only focus
The $349 Ultrahuman Ring Air came so close to taking it all. It’s slim and lightweight, and I got compliments while wearing it. Battery life isn’t the best, but it’s decent for the category at three to four days. Where it shines is fitness tracking and training — meaning it caters to athletes above everyone else.
Compared to the Oura Ring, which has a streamlined focus on general wellness, this ring zeroes in on optimization. Say you’re trying to build healthier sleep habits. The companion app will give you a list of drinks with their average caffeine content and flag when you should drink what if your goal is to sleep by a certain time. I’m trying to wake up earlier so I can sneak in runs before the sun starts baking the planet. When I wake up, the ring shows me a “Phase Advance” timer. If I exercise during that time, it’s more likely to shift my natural Circadian rhythm earlier. There are a bunch of “upgrade” widgets called Power Plugs that let you further customize your experience by focusing on other goals, like sun exposure for vitamin D, cycle tracking, Circadian alignment, etc. Some Power Plugs are free. Others, like the forthcoming AFib detection, will cost an extra $4.90 monthly, which I don’t love.
Accuracy is otherwise on par with my other devices, but the way my data is interpreted gives me a little pause. For example, I’m flattered this ring thinks my VO2 Max — a metric used to gauge your aerobic fitness — is 44 ml/kg/min (apparently, that’s superior) and that my resting heart rate is Elite. Based on my years of testing other devices, this is overly generous. Granted, every company uses a different algorithm, but I generally fall in the slightly above average — emphasis on slightly — range.
While I like the Ultrahuman Ring Air a lot, it’s partly because I’m that dork who likes training. All this is a bit much if you’re a more general user.
Eliminated: Ultrahuman Ring Air
Experience is king
Most of the smart rings I tested did one or two things better than the $299 Oura Ring. But as a whole, Oura’s experience in this space keeps it on top of the competition. If you care about accuracy and health tracking, Oura does a lot of work validating its algorithm, working with researchers, and putting out a metric ton of documentation about its features. It’s been putting in the work for several years, and it shows in the final product. The app is polished, syncing and updates are never an issue, and it’s widely available. The best thing about all this new competition is it’s also lit a fire under Oura’s butt to release more features and updates in the past few months than it has in a while. The main gripes I have are the $6 monthly subscription, and its charging dock isn’t my favorite. (Please, please, please let the next version have a charging case.)
Smart rings as a whole won’t be dethroning smartwatches anytime soon. They’re too expensive when a smartwatch can do much more for the same price. But, if you’re going to buy a smart ring, you should get the best one — and that’s the Oura Ring. I gave five other rings every opportunity to dethrone it. Perhaps it’ll happen one day. But until then, the Oura Ring is king.