The Pebble Index 01 smart ring at the 2026 CES Unveiled event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US. Once considered niche, smart rings have lately been catching on with consumers, offering many of the same sleep and wellness insights as smartwatches but with a more discreet design. — Bloomberg
Smart rings are finally going mainstream. It only took a decade.
The category, popularised by the Finnish brand Oura Health Oy, is on track for a 49% jump in shipments in 2025, according to IDC data shared with Bloomberg, far outpacing an estimated 6% gain by smartwatches. And the segment is about to get more crowded in the new year.
Once considered niche, smart rings have lately been catching on with consumers, offering many of the same sleep and wellness insights as smartwatches but with a more discreet design.
Most modern smart rings can monitor sleep, activity and heart rate using hardware that’s lighter and, for most users, less intrusive than watches. They also tend to last longer longer on a charge and offer more accurate readings. That’s due to the fact that fingers have thinner skin than wrists, and that smart ring sensors are positioned close to key arteries.
Some consumers choose to wear both: a watch for workouts and notifications, and a ring for continuous tracking throughout the day and overnight. (While slower growing, IDC estimates there were 163.5 million smartwatches shipped in 2025, compared with about 4.3 million smart rings.)
Oura, which launched its first smart ring in 2015, was valued at roughly US$11bil (RM44.59bil) this fall and was on track for US$1bil (RM4.05bil) in revenue for 2025, chief executive officer Tom Hale said in September. Beside hardware sales, that revenue includes must-have membership fees, priced at US$5.99 (RM24) per month or US$69.99 (RM284) a year. (Its main competitors do not require subscriptions.)
A mix of startups and established tech giants are expected to debut new models this year, with several scheduled to show off their latest offerings at the CES consumer technology conference in Las Vegas this week. One newcomer, the Aivela Ring Pro, will tout unique features that include air gestures and touch commands.
The next frontier in this space is likely to be the integration of bloodwork data, with Oura already offering such a feature in partnership with Quest Diagnostics Inc. RingConn, meanwhile, has tested an artificial intelligence chatbot that allows users to ask questions about their data and identify long-term trends.
Other companies are experimenting with variations of smart rings that aren’t focused on fitness features at all. Pebble, the smartwatch brand that was revived last year as part of a new company, is expanding into rings with the Index 01, a sub-US$100 (RM405) device the company says uses a built-in microphone to help users capture reminders on the go. Unlike most competitors, it does without health tracking altogether, showing how broadly the smart ring category is now being defined.
What you should know
With the category poised for further growth, two Bloomberg reporters took a closer look at four current leading smart rings: the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic (US$499/RM2,023), the Ultrahuman Ring Air (around US$349/RM1,415), the RingConn Gen 2 Air (US$199/RM806) and Samsung’s Android-only Galaxy Ring (US$399/RM2,099 in Malaysia). (The first three models also pair with iPhones.) Although their core features overlap, they differ on design, battery life, software experience and price.
Battery life is a key advantage: The smart rings consistently outlast most smartwatches, which sometimes need a trip to the charger before the day is done. The ceramic Oura Ring 4 lasted more than seven days on a charge, and was still running at the end of the test period. The Ultrahuman model lasted about half as long. One downside: Since these rings don't have a screen, it’s easy to run out of battery life without a visual warning on the device itself.
All four models could pass for a regular ring, though some are thicker than others, with the RingConn Gen 2 Air being the thinnest of the group. Oura’s ceramic edition was designed to better pass for regular jewellery – a possible concession to the company’s majority-female customer base.
That said, one of the reporters added that he’s never been asked if the ceramic ring was a fitness tracker, suggesting it blends in as unisex jewelry. (Oura also sells a titanium model starting at US$349 (RM1,415), and Ultrahuman similarly offers its ring in some premium finishes, such as titanium and gold.)
Unsurprisingly, the ceramic Oura Ring 4 feels heavier than other models, which tend to be made of titanium. Oura claims that the weightier material offers greater scratch resistance. Your mileage will vary, but one of the reporters, who has used most of these rings for at least a week, including the Samsung Galaxy Ring, Ultrahuman Ring Air and both the titanium and ceramic Oura devices, said he’s scratched all of them except for the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic.
Even so, the category still has some persistent design challenges. Like smartwatches, the tiny sensors on the inside of the ring emit a faint glow that can be distracting at bedtime. This is especially obvious on certain models, such as the Samsung Galaxy Ring, which doesn’t have as tight a seal between the hardware and finger. Some users might deal with this general issue by wearing their smart ring on a different finger at night than during the day.
When it comes to fitness tracking, all four rings monitor sleep, daily activity, heart rate, blood oxygen levels and heart-rate variability, or HRV. The RingConn Gen 2 Air also offers sleep apnea detection by checking for breathing disruptions while asleep over the course of a few days.
To assess the accuracy of these devices, Bloomberg compared results with an Apple Watch. Oura’s data most closely matched the smartwatch. Ultrahuman’s ring at one point missed an entire afternoon’s worth of activity from one of our testers. And the Samsung Galaxy Ring ranks somewhere in between. However, all four devices were internally consistent in their measurements, even when they varied from one another.
Sleep quality scores, heart rate and activity levels were largely comparable across devices. The biggest discrepancies had to do with the breakdown of sleep stages, and how each device gauges stress levels. Ultrahuman’s stress-level estimates seemed high compared with Oura and RingConn’s estimates.
Where the smart rings really differ is what they do with all that information - and how they present it to users. Ultrahuman’s app, for example, offers granular behavioral insights, including guidance on caffeine timing to minimize sleep disruption. It was also the only brand of the bunch to detect a slight elevation in skin temperature, flagging the possibility of oncoming illness alongside a lower-than-usual HRV level.
The downside is that while the app is rich with data, it can be difficult to navigate, in part because it heavily promotes other products in the company’s broader ecosystem. Samsung’s user interface, meanwhile, is clean and intuitive. But while it pulls in more workout stats, it offers fewer interpretive insights. It also only works with Android devices, making it a nonstarter for iPhone owners.
Its subscription fee notwithstanding, the Oura Ring 4 remains the best option for most people, regardless of whether you choose the pricier ceramic edition, thanks to its accuracy, design and data insights. While some people might dismiss the segment altogether – opting instead for a smartwatch – smart rings are catching on, and Oura is poised in the new year to lead the category it helped jumpstart. – Bloomberg
