I tested 5 of the best smart rings of 2024 – my favourite finally helped me understand why I struggle to sleep
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JENNIFER Aniston, Prince Harry and even the England football team are said to swear by the technology.
But are smart rings something reserved for the super-rich or sporting elite, or can us regular folk get involved too?
For years, Oura was the only device on the market.
It offered a whole host of health-tracking features, promising to monitor activity, sleep and stress, and was regularly seen on the fingers of celebrities worldwide.
But after several launches from brands like Ringconn, Ultrahuman and Samsung, there are now dozens of smart rings on the market.
While not cheap, they cost no more than many smart watches, making them far more accessible to the everyday user.
READ MORE ON SMART RINGS
I tested six of the most popular to find the best one.
What is a smart ring?
A smart ring is a lot like a smart watch - except you wear it on your finger!
It’s an electronic device that can track things like your activity, heart rate and sleep.
They look a lot like regular rings, but tend to be slightly bulkier.
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And unlike smart watches, they don’t have screens.
You therefore need to connect them to your phone to access your data.
What are the benefits of a smart ring?
One of the biggest selling points of a smart ring is that it can track your sleep.
It looks at your SpO2 (peripheral oxygen saturation) and heart rate readings to determine the quality of your slumber.
From this, most rings can then make recommendations, like the best bed time for you.
Other benefits include fitness tracking (step counts, calories and so on) and heart rate variability (the variation in time between each heartbeat which can indicate current or future health problems, including heart conditions and mental health issues).
Some devices can also track your menstrual cycle, skin temperature, recovery and ‘readiness’ - a measure of your capacity for the day.
My test
I put five of the top smart rings to the test to find my favourite.
I wore each for at least two weeks to gather enough information on their comfort, tracking abilities and battery life. Here are my thoughts.
Famous faces who swear by smart rings
- Jennifer Aniston
- Gwyneth Paltrow
- Prince Harry
- Miranda Kerr
- Kim Kardashian
- Gareth Southgate
- Lewis Hamilton
- Will Smith
- Richard Branson
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Sofia Richie
- Men's England football team
Oura Gen 3
- Score: 5/5
- Price: From £249
- Sizes: 6-13
- Weight: 4-6g
- Thickness: 2.7-2.9mm
- Width: 7.9mm
- Battery life: Up to 7 days
- Subscription: £5.99 a month or £69.99 a year
- Pros: Sleep tracking, overall health data
- Cons: Expensive, further costs
This is the king of smart rings, and overall, I love it.
Firstly, it’s sleek. The Oura Gen 3 is available in two styles (Horizon, a standard circular design, and Heritage, which has a flat top).
At £299, the Heritage used to be significantly cheaper - but both rings are now available from £249.
Both come in silver, black, stealth (grey) and gold, but the Horizon also comes in brushed titanium and rose gold.
I went with the silver, and I think it's the ideal shade - it went perfectly with all my other silver jewellery!
The apps often told me I woke up too much in the night
Alice Fuller
But away from the design, it’s also a great health tracker, and probably provides more data than any other ring.
It can actually be a bit overwhelming logging into the app each day and being hit with so many numbers and graphs!
But the Oura is incredibly insightful, especially when it comes to sleep. As an insomniac, this was valuable.
I particularly loved checking my HVR and recovery index (how long it takes for your resting heart rate to stabilise during the night).
It often told me my body hadn't fully recovered overnight, which I then used to influence how hard I worked in the gym later in the day - the lower the score, the less I pushed it.
However, like many rings, I don’t know how accurate it is.
The Oura, which comes in sizes six to 13, regularly thought I was asleep when I wasn’t.
It recorded me having a nap when I went to the theatre to see Mean Girls: The Musical (and I was very much awake and applauding), and it often told me I had fallen asleep within four minutes of getting into bed when I knew I was still fully awake 30 minutes later.
That said, it was great to get an idea of roughly how much sleep I was getting each night in comparison to how I felt, and how much this varied based on how late I'd eaten, exercised or socialised.
I noticed that on the nights that I'd been out for dinner or to the pub, it took me far longer to nod off than when I'd been chilling in front of the TV at home - perhaps not surprising, but it was great to see numbers back this up, and have it charted.
It really made me think about the days of the week I made plans, and subsequently helped me prioritise sleep.
It is also really handy that the Oura tracks your workouts automatically - you haven’t got to mess around selecting your form of exercising and pressing ‘go’.
The battery life is decent (though not the best), lasting between four and six days between charges.
Oura Ring 3, from £249
Amazfit Helio Ring
- Score: 2.5/5
- Price: From £169.90
- Sizes: 8-12
- Weight: 3.65-3.82g
- Thickness: 2.6mm
- Width: 8mm
- Battery life: Up to 4 days
- Subscription: None
- Pros: Lightweight
- Cons: Limited sizes, no stress tracking
This is the first smart watch-smart ring hybrid, pairing nicely with Amazfit watches.
It means you can collect data whether you're wearing your ring or watch - perfect if you remove one or the other to charge or play certain sports.
For me though, I don't own an Amazfit watch, so this benefit was lost on me.
However, I was a fan of how lightweight the ring was.
It also requires no subscription, and the app is simple and easy to use.
Data is concisely divided into four categories - overview, readiness, sleep and exertion - with each subsection providing further health insight.
Like many of the other rings, I was most interested in my sleep data and daily readiness score.
The Helio Ring provides an overall sleep score out of 100, as well as information about your sleep stages, heart rate, variability, and how much you woke up throughout the night.
Generally, I found it was pretty accurate at estimating my sleep and wake time, but like all rings, I think it overestimated it slightly.
One of the major downsides is that it only comes in three sizes.
I have pretty small fingers, so even the smallest size (8) was a bit too big for me and I had to wear it on my middle finger with another ring above it just to keep it in place.
It also only comes in one colour - titanium - which I'm not a huge fan of (I'd much prefer a silver version), and it has a dotted texture (whereas I'd rather have a smooth, sleek design).
The Helio Ring also has no automatic activity tracking, so you have to manually track your workouts (which I always forgot to do!).
Finally, the battery doesn't last long enough. It's advertised as lasting up to four days on a full charge, but I found it needed plugging in after just three days.
It also doesn't give you any real warning before it dies.
Amazfit Helio Ring, £149.90
Samsung Galaxy Ring
- Score: 3.5/5
- Price: £399
- Sizes: 5-13
- Weight: 2.3-3g
- Thickness: 2.6mm
- Width: 7mm
- Battery life: Up to 7 days
- Subscription: None
- Pros: Sleep tracking, comfort
- Cons: Only works with Android
As a lifelong Apple user, the setup process was a bit lengthy.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is only compatible with Android phones, so I had to install several apps onto my work device before I could even get started.
These took a while to download, and were quite glitchy when opening to begin with.
But this didn’t matter once I’d got going.
In fact, I think Samsung’s sleep tracking might actually be my favourite.
Like most rings, it gives you a daily sleep score and individual percentage scores for metrics like restfulness, but they’re presented clearly.
The app often told me my sleep "needed focus" in order to feel rested as I "wake up too often in the night".
But it offers a sleep coaching programme to try to address this, which is a nice touch - though I can't say I always took the recommendations (like not going on my phone in bed) on board.
Daily steps, active time, and calories are also displayed in an easy-to-digest way.
After wearing it consistently for several weeks, there are no obvious scratches - something I did find when testing the RingConn ring.
And that was the case even when wearing metal rings directly next to it, which Samsung advises against.
Like RingConn, it comes with a compact case - perfect for charging at home and on the go.
I got this one in gold, which I’m not as keen on, but the style and shape of the ring is one of my favourites.
It’s slimmer than the Oura, which I found bulged into my adjacent fingers, and it feels smoother and sleeker.
And it has a pretty epic battery life, lasting almost a full week between charges.
Samsung Galaxy Ring, £399
RingConn Gen 2
- Score: 4/5
- Price: From £249
- Sizes: 6-14
- Weight: 3-5g
- Thickness: 2.6mm
- Width: 7.8mm
- Battery life: Up to 7 days
- Subscription: None
- Pros: Sleep tracking, battery life, charging case
- Cons: No notifications
My two favourite things about the RingConn Smart Ring were its battery life and charging case.
They may seem insignificant, but I can’t tell you how nice it was not to have to remember to charge mine every few days.
I think it actually lasted up to eight days a couple of times, which really is incredible.
Although I will say, it wasn’t the best at reminding me! So a push notification would have been helpful to avoid it dying completely.
The compact black case is also great. It means when you’re charging at home, you don’t run the risk of the mount flipping over.
Plus, it can allegedly keep your ring charged for up to 150 days on the go.
The RingConn app is a little more basic-looking than the likes of Oura and can get a little cluttered, but it still provides you with similar data - sleep, activity, stress etc.
It felt slightly more accurate than some of the others - I felt when it told me I’d slept for six hours, I probably had - but of course, we’ll never know for sure.
I particularly liked how it compared last night's sleep to previous nights, and your week's average.
For example, on October 29, it told me I had slept for six hours and 47 minutes, which was one hour and one minute shorter than my previous week's average of seven hours and 48 minutes.
This was great at getting me to think about what I'd done differently, and how I could improve things.
And the charts explaining how much you spent awake and in REM, light and deep sleep were also presented really nicely, clearly showing how far you were from the optimal amount.
Overall, I was very impressed, and I'd say the Ultrahuman ring was my second favourite to Oura
Alice Fuller
Instead of a more traditional round ring shape, this one is slightly squared-off, but I really liked that.
I was aware that it was on my finger, but it didn’t feel excessively clunky.
At £249, it is slightly cheaper than some others on the market and there’s no subscription needed.
As it still offers many of the same health tracking features and has a comfortable design, I’d say it’s a decent, more budget-friendly option.
Be warned though, it did tarnish a bit after several weeks of wear!
RingConn Gen 2, from £249
Ultrahuman Ring AIR
- Score: 4/5
- Price: From £329
- Sizes: 5-14
- Weight: 2.4-3.6g
- Thickness: 2.45-2.8mm
- Width: 8.1mm
- Battery life: Up to 6 days
- Subscription: None
- Pros: Lightweight, sleep tracking
- Cons: Limited fitness tracking
Depending on the size you go for, the Ultrahuman Ring AIR is the lightest ring on the market.
It weighs between 2.4 and 3.6g, compared to 4 to 6g for the Oura.
And I think you could tell. I barely felt it on my finger, and the smooth, rounded design meant it felt flush against my other fingers.
One of the best things about it is that it doesn’t require a monthly or yearly subscription - so once you’ve forked out for it, there are no other surprise fees.
Plus, it has an incredibly quick and easy set-up process, and great sleep tracking capabilities.
Like most rings, it measures your time in bed, total sleep, efficiency, heart rate and heart rate variability.
Each morning, you then get a score out of 100 based on how well you slept, and it highlights which areas need attention.
My app often told me I wasn't getting enough restorative sleep (surprise surprise), but it offered helpful tips like exercising earlier on in the day, avoiding food three hours before bed, and trying a magnesium supplement to increase this.
I can't say I always stuck to these recommendations, but it was great that they were there rather than dumping all this data on you and not offering any kind of solution!
However, there were some obvious downsides to the Ultrahuman, which comes in five colours (raw titanium, aster black, matte grey, bionic gold, and space silver) and 10 sizes from five to 14.
Firstly, it needed charging a lot more often than the Oura.
I could just about make it last five days, but mostly I think it needed plugging in every three to four.
Also, after a week or so, it started to tell me that I needed to get nine hours and 45 minutes of sleep a night in order to feel rested.
While that may well be the case, that seemed impossible and left me feeling like a failure every time I didn’t hit the target (which let’s be real, was every night of the week).
The app also took some getting used to.
I think the developers have tried to make it stereotypically more masculine - so it’s very dark.
This wasn’t a huge deal, but it didn’t feel as light and clean as some of the others.
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Overall though, I was very impressed, and I'd say it was my second favourite to Oura.
Ultrahuman Ring AIR, from £329
