Here’s What’s Happening (and Not Happening) With Smart Rings in 2026

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Smart rings are already having a strange year. In January, I saw smart rings taking on all kinds of tasks at CES, looking like some kind of wave of the future. Then I came home and discovered that the brand-new Luna smart ring I was reviewing had already been pulled off the U.S. market. I think it’s time to take a look at why the smart ring market is so weird, where I see its potential, and what I miss about the earlier days of this technology. 

The lawsuit that’s keeping some smart rings off the U.S. market

To understand why some rings have disappeared (or aren’t launching here), you need to know about a U.S. International Trade Commission verdict from 2025. Oura sued two of its competitors, Ultrahuman and RingConn, claiming they infringed on a patent it had for the design of a smart ring. The ITC agreed, and those companies had to pull their rings from the U.S. market by October of 2025. Ultrahuman did so; RingConn instead made a deal to license Oura’s patent and pay them royalties. 

The patent at issue is this one. It describes a smart ring in such general terms that Oura is able to claim that pretty much all smart rings violate it. I’m no patent lawyer, but it seems strange to me that a company should be able to use a 2024 patent to force competitors off the market in a product category that’s been around longer than that. 

Oura called the ITC ruling a “decisive legal victory,” and published this blog post explaining why they won. Ultrahuman published its own blog post detailing why it thinks the decision was a mistake, giving some background on the patent at issue. I’d recommend reading both of those if you want to get up to speed on who is claiming what. 

Oura then brought legal action against yet more smart ring makers, including Noise (which makes the Luna ring), Amazfit, Reebok, and Samsung. Ironically, Samsung had tried to get a judgment before all this saying that its patents don’t infringe on Oura’s, but that suit was thrown out because Oura had not yet tried to sue Samsung. 

I’ve asked several of these companies about where the legal action stands from their point of view, but understandably they’re all guarded and don’t want to say much. Here’s my best understanding of the current state of the market for the major brands I’ve reviewed or that I personally find interesting: 

• Oura: The Oura ring is still going strong, of course. Here’s my review of the Oura Ring 4.

• Ultrahuman: Not available in the U.S., but there’s a chance that could change. Here’s my review of the Ring Air, and my announcement about the new Ring Pro. The Pro uses a different design than the Air, and Ultrahuman has hinted that it hopes to be able to bring it to the U.S. market legally. 

• RingConn: Reached an agreement to keep selling its rings in the U.S. by making royalty payments to Oura. I’m working on a review of RingConn 2, and there is a RingConn 3 coming later this year.

• Luna: The ring is not available in the U.S.; here is my review of it anyway. The company seems to be bringing the same software features to a smart band due to launch this year. 

• Samsung: The Galaxy Ring is still available in the U.S. as far as I can tell. I’ll be reviewing it soon. 

• Amazfit: The Helio Ring still seems to be available as well.

Oura Ring 4 – Silver – Size 8 – Size Before You Buy

$349.00
at Amazon

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Shop Now

$349.00
at Amazon

Why rings are exciting right now

I’ve been following the smart ring market since 2018, when I found the Motiv ring (now defunct) to be the “perfect minimalist fitness tracker” except for the teensy problem that it didn’t capture heart rate very well during workouts. (Motiv was bought in 2020 by Proxy, and Proxy was bought in 2023 by Oura.)

Oura first got around the heart rate accuracy problem by marketing the ring for sleep; it’s a lot easier to get good measurements when a person is lying completely still. But the technology has improved, and now all of the products I listed above can get mostly-plausible heart rate readings in a variety of contexts, although none of them let you look very closely at the graphs. Smart rings now also have blood oxygen sensing, better battery life, and more options for colors and finishes. They don’t all have sensor bumps on the interior anymore. In short, smart rings have been working better and looking nicer over time. 

So now we have sleek, decently accurate wearables that you can slip on your finger and pretty much ignore. That ability to ignore the ring while you go about your day is why I’ve managed to use my Oura ring for so long. It becomes a part of you like a wedding ring does—you wear it all the time, whether you’re thinking about it or not, and it feels weird not to have it on. 

It’s impressive how many more features companies have been putting into rings. RingConn’s next ring will have haptic alerts. Ultrahuman’s new ring packs features like alarms and diagnostics into its charging case. But even though the hardware is getting better, and many companies are developing more and more software features (especially Oura and Ultrahuman), it’s arguable whether the experience of using a ring has actually gotten better, or if it’s just more complicated. 

Where rings still struggle

Rings have some inherent issues, and I’m going to lay out my standard list of complaints here. First, smart rings are just not good workout trackers. They’re too chunky to allow for a proper grip in weightlifting workouts, and they’re not comfortable for exercises that require you to grip or pull anything with your hands (deadlifts, the rowing machine, even chores like shoveling snow). 

Since rings don’t have their own display, you need to use a phone app to start and stop workouts or to monitor your data. Auto-detection of workouts is an OK way to bridge that gap, but it’s not good. You’ll get plenty of workouts detected at the wrong time, or of the wrong type, or your hair brushing session will get tagged as a swim. Meanwhile, smart rings may measure heart rate better than they used to, but they still don’t give reliable, exportable heart rate data. 

Sizing will probably always be an issue. You need to get a sizing kit to know what size ring to buy, and makers tend to only offer rings in whole sizes within a certain range. Our fingers swell and shrink from hour to hour and season to season, so there isn’t necessarily a single reliable size that will always fit. There’s no ring equivalent to a watch band you can adjust and tighten. 

Finally, one of the biggest issues with smart rings, and one that I don’t think gets talked about enough, is battery lifetime. Not how long you can go between charges, but how many years you can use the ring before it stops holding a charge. 

I’ve had multiple Oura rings die right around the two-year mark. No smart ring company wants to go on the record with an estimate of battery life, but whenever I’ve mentioned that my smart rings have all died after about two years, I tend to get nods of agreement. Sometimes on social media you’ll see a couple exchanging smart rings in place of traditional wedding rings. I always wonder how they’ll feel about replacing them in a few years.

Ring companies are running out of ideas for things we actually want

Despite all the innovation in recent years, the smart ring I liked the most was Oura’s gen 2 (RIP, 2018-2021). And you know why? Besides the Oura app not having a subscription fee at that time, the best feature was that the LEDs used infrared rather than visible light. There was no green glow from your finger at night. It was beautifully ignorable.

I didn’t use it for workouts, and the app didn’t support workout tracking or even step tracking at that time. It just gave me data on my sleep and HRV. If I wanted to know what heart rate zones I hit during workouts, I could use another device for that, or just go without knowing. 

But in the years since, Oura has tried to be more things. It’s now a fitness tracker, a blood oxygen sensor, a tracking app for your continuous glucose monitor, and more. All wearables seem to be heading this direction, trying to swallow up their competitors’ features the same way every social media app is trying to also be Snapchat and TikTok in addition to whatever it was in the first place. 

I’m not sure if we all want this plethora of features from our smart rings. A smart ring is never going to be an Apple Watch. I miss the gen 2 Oura ring that just tracked my sleep without shining lights in my face. I want that back, and I’d love for it to be inexpensive since it doesn’t need to do all that much. 

But the companies aren’t going to go that direction, and I get why (capitalism). Instead, they’re looking for features and services they can add to justify charging more. Oura added a subscription in 2021, then in 2025 rolled out new colors of rings and “multi-ring support” in hopes you might want to buy two $500 rings. 

Other ring companies have figured out that being “subscription-free” is their best counter to Oura’s business model. That said, they’re still competing in the same world. So Ultrahuman’s main features are free to use, but you’re invited to pony up for a number of mini-subscriptions that provide extra features. Smart ring companies are also looking to other offerings, especially services you can pay for more than once. 

Both Oura and Ultrahuman will sell you a panel of blood tests, and recommend repeat testing. Both of these companies also have partnerships with the makers of continuous glucose monitors (which themselves run about $100/month) so you can use the smart ring app to monitor your blood glucose throughout the day—a controversial offering for people without a medical need. (CGMs are, of course, incredibly valuable to people with diabetes.) 

So the inexpensive, unobtrusive smart ring of my dreams isn’t likely to occur anytime soon. It may be what I want, but it doesn’t seem to be a viable business model. Looking to the future, I hope to see more rings on the U.S. market, with more of a variety in what they offer. I’m excited to see where Ultrahuman goes with its superpowered charging case. But it’s hard to imagine smart rings coming up with many more features that are actually worth paying for.