Smart rings took a big step towards becoming mainstream products in 2024. Major OEMs like Samsung entered the fray, while older players like Oura and Ultrahuman made strides to show us how far the form factor can be pushed. The category moved in the right direction, and the momentum will likely be maintained in 2025 if it is not accelerated.
There was also a general consolidation of what consumers can expect from smart rings: about a week of battery life, minimal thin and light designs, a handful of metallic colorways, and basic fitness and wellness tracking. Most mature product categories go through similar homogenization processes, getting boiled down to a few distinct but generally accepted form factors. Think how foldable phones have seen varying approaches, but the book-style inward-folding design is considered the best.
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Why smart rings are better fitness trackers than smartwatches for most people
Especially if you’re looking for general fitness improvement
The smart ring category
Nailing the essentials
As smart rings approach maturity, now is when OEMs and suppliers move away from experimentation and towards the tried and tested. Having used many smart rings over the years, I feel most manufacturers are on the right track with what they are trying to achieve in terms of design and functionality. The ring form factor doesn’t leave much literal and figurative room for experimentation, but it’s good to see them move from an early adopter phase.
For me, smart rings have replaced smartwatches and other fitness trackers. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is that rings can track bodily functions and metrics without being distracting or obtrusive. They don’t buzz or ring when I get a notification. I can choose when I want to see what’s up with my body, and they can last for over a week on a single charge. As a minimalist who cares about fitness, I find rings to be the best solution to track my progress without being overwhelmed.
Enter Rogbid
When I thought everything was going well, I came across a new smart ring from an obscure brand called Rogbid. While I love innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, the Rogbid SR08 Ultra’s proposal is baffling. Every product decision seems to have chosen the wrong trade-off.
I generally don’t have a problem with strange ideas, but at a crucial time for the smart ring segment, like now, when many people will use one for the first time, a wrong first impression could lead them to write off the entire category. It’s like petrolheads trying an underpowered electric vehicle for the first time in the late ’90s, leading them to conclude all EVs are slow and boring and basically a glorified golf cart.
The Rogbid SR08 Ultra is the world’s first smart ring with a display. It has a tiny ticker screen that can cycle between displaying the time, step count, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), or sleep metrics. According to the product listing, it seems the screen needs to be switched on via a dedicated touch key. There’s no mention of notification monitoring or auto-wake of the screen.
The wrong trade-offs?
There’s probably no always-on display option, and that’s the first major issue I have with the product. For wearables like these, glancing at information is crucial to their utility proposition. The only time the Rogbid can remain on is during fitness tracking to show vitals such as heart rate. There’s likely some use for that, but without onboard GPS tracking, users need to have their phone along for most outdoor workouts anyway, reducing the package’s portability.
The main reason for this hampered functionality is battery life. Smart rings have tiny batteries in the range of 20 mAh. The screen on all electronics is the component that consumes the most power. When you combine the two, it’s easy to see why this will create more problems than it solves. I guess the battery life with the screen on would be only a few hours. This also explains why the SR08 Ultra doesn’t have any notification monitoring. It would consume too much power to process and display notifications as they come. While that absence makes the ring more distraction-free than other wearables with a screen, it’s difficult to be impressed by it.
Hopefully, the last of its kind
Priced at $190 but usually found at $90, the Rogbid SR08 Ultra has more gimmicks up its sleeve. It has smart gesture control, where certain swipes can click pictures or scroll through TikTok. This feature has practical potential and makes great use of the touch input panel exclusive to the smart ring. There might be a market for cheaper purpose-built smart rings that excel at a few unique features. A good example of such a product is the 7 Ring, a contactless payment ring that doesn’t need to be charged.
The Rogbid SR08 Ultra seems like an average smart ring with less than five days of battery life. While the ideas it brings to the table are cool, I don’t see them making their way to other smart rings. I expect most 2025 smart rings will be more refined with quantitative improvements and not a reinvention of the wheel.
Rogbid SR08 Ultra
If you’ve been looking for a unique smart ring or wearable that stands out, you might want to check out the Rogbid SR08 Ultra. In some ways, it is the coolest product of its kind.
