Digital health tracking tech is everywhere. There are monitors to measure your heart rate as you work out, smartwatches to tell you how many steps you take each day and smartphone apps to chart your dietary habits.
But with so much health data already at our fingertips, do we really need another type of device keeping tabs on us? The big tech companies seem to think so, hence the rise of smart rings.
Digital trackers that you slip onto your fingers, smart rings are designed to give you insights into your sleep and daily health statistics. Sound familiar? That’s probably because smartwatches already do all that. So why, you might understandably ask, do we suddenly need the smart rings now pushed by big tech companies? The answer is you probably don’t. At least, not yet.
“Fundamentally, smart rings are the same as smartwatches. They track the same metrics – your sleep, your heart rate and your body temperature changes – and they rely on similar hardware,” Dr Yang Wei, the lead of the Smart Wearable Research Group at Nottingham Trent University, tells BBC Science Focus.
“The big difference is the form. The ring is much smaller, which means it’s less noticeable but also has less space to [contain] tech. Where a lot of the processing is done on a smartwatch, a ring will likely have to send everything off, probably to your smartphone.”
A smaller and more subtle option
Both Samsung and Apple are reported to be working on smart rings, and a number of other companies already have products on sale.
Huge amounts of money are being poured into this new wave of smart tech. This is on the assumption that smart rings will form a significant niche of the wearable market in years to come.
And although it may be difficult to understand the place of smart rings based purely on their spec sheets, they do promise some major benefits.
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Great for simplicity and battery life
This is the big selling point of smart rings. While some smartwatches – the Garmin Fenix 7, for example – can last for weeks, the most common devices (those from Samsung and Apple) require much more frequent recharging. The longevity of smart rings comes down to their simplicity.
Smartwatches are designed to be do-it-all products and need a battery capable of handling a constant barrage of tasks. Smart rings, in contrast, do much less.
“Do I want to [recharge my health tracker] every single day? With a smartwatch, I’ll probably have to. A smart ring, on the other hand, tends to last for at least a few days, but often up to a whole week,” says Wei.
But, for some, size is just as important as simplicity. And being so much smaller makes a ring a lot less noticeable than a watch – great for anyone who wants to keep track of their health without the hassle of a bulky bangle.
“We take a watch off at the end of the day, but a ring always stays on. This has its limitations … but in terms of sleep and heart tracking, it’s a fluid system,” says Wei.
“A smartwatch, however, needs to be charged regularly and it doesn’t feel natural to always wear one, especially to sleep. That’s primarily the focus of a smart ring, to track without being noticeable.”
Could smart rings offer a better sleep tracker?
Having a longer battery life and being easier to wear at night might make a smart ring sound attractive, but it’s not all good news. Being so much smaller makes it harder for smart rings to track as many variables that bigger wearables like watches do.
A smart ring is a serviceable way to keep tabs on your heart rate and sleep, but they struggle to track exercise activity – a pretty important metric when it comes to your health. Even the cheapest of smartwatches are usually capable of timing workouts and tracking run distances. In fact, the ability to do stuff like this is one of the major selling points of smartwatches.
Smart rings can’t (for now, at least) so tend to put a greater focus on sleep, which is usually less of a priority for watches due to the need for frequent charging and their bulkier form making them uncomfortable to wear while sleeping.
The other thing smartwatches can do is store large amounts of data. Smart rings are mainly trackers and only store a limited amount of information, instead passing data to your smartphone. You can't, for instance, see your heart rate during a workout without your smartphone. There are no notifications, no GPS navigation and no option for seeing data at a glance with a smart ring.
Wearable devices are generally intended to reduce your interaction with your smartphones. But without a screen to display information, a smart ring simply can’t offer that facility.
A niche market
This isn’t to say that smart rings don’t have a future. Using finger gestures, smart rings could one day be used as a method of controlling your smartphone when not in your hand. Imagine flicking the finger you’re wearing the ring on to answer a call or skip songs.
The problem is that, with their smaller size, that’s all smart rings can be for now: an extension of a smartphone. They’re just not different enough from a smartwatch or health tracker to warrant their high price (most smart rings available now cost somewhere between £250-£350, and some, the Oura Heritage and Horizon rings for example, require a monthly membership fee to pay on top of that).
If you really worry about the quality of your sleep and want to gather as much data as you can on the shuteye you’re getting, a smart ring could help you get all the detail you want. But for the time being, a smartwatch might be a more versatile option.
Read more:
- How does a smart watch measure your stats?
- Google Pixel Watch review: Plenty of style, slightly less substance
About our expert, Dr Yang Wei
Wei is an associate professor in the department of engineering at Nottingham Trent University. He also leads the Smart Wearable Research Group focusing on innovative wearables solutions.
