The Best Smart Rings for 2025

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Fitness trackers come in all shapes and sizes, with smart rings leading the way in diversifying the category from strictly wrist-based options. At PCMag, we’ve been covering smart rings since the Ringly and Kovert Designs Altruis launched roughly a decade ago, well before anyone knew the name Oura. Smart rings are obviously smaller and can thus feel more comfortable to wear day and night than a smartwatch, but a growing variety of choices yields confusion about which one to pick. After extensive testing, the Oura Ring 4 earns our top recommendation thanks to its accurate and detailed activity, sleep, and stress tracking and its emphasis on long-term holistic health. That said, if Oura’s monthly subscription cost rubs you the wrong way, we offer several compelling alternatives below, so read on to find the best smart ring for you.

What Is a Smart Ring?

At a glance, a smart ring looks like a simple piece of jewelry. Remove the ring, and you’ll see the telltale signs that the metallic band has more going on than a sense of style. Most smart rings have red and green LED sensors that are visible on the inner band. Other than the blinking lights, the sensors take different physical forms.

Most have sensor bumps that jut out slightly from the interior. These tiny bumps against your finger can help rings calibrate the signals from their sensors. While they might sound uncomfortable, the bumps are generally small enough that you won’t notice them.

These sensors measure a wide variety of health-related metrics. Variation exists from model to model, but most smart rings track blood oxygen, heart rate, respiration, and skin temperature. They generally have some form of accelerometer built in to calculate movement. The heart rate sensors can also usually calculate heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of your nervous system activity and an indicator of stress and recovery.

From these measurements, smart rings can track general activity, exercise, sleep, and stress. None have a display, so you’ll need to check collected data in the associated app, where most smart rings also offer charts to track each category over time, as well as assessments of each metric and recommendations to improve your health.

Aside from the discontinued Amazon Echo Loop, we’ve yet to test a smart ring that vibrates or does anything else to send you an alert using the actual hardware. They’re meant to be unobtrusive measuring devices collecting info quietly in the background. That said, most can send notifications to your phone through the app if you allow them, letting the ring tell you of an abnormal heart rate or low battery, depending on the app.

While the form factor looks the part of ordinary jewelry, in terms of function, they’re quite similar to wrist-based fitness trackers. Smart rings are wearables meant to help you track your health over time.

Smart Rings vs. Smartwatches

Given that smart rings serve a similar function as wrist-based wearables like fitness trackers and smartwatches, you might wonder which form works best for you. Each has pros and cons, of course, and you can always get both. With some, like the Samsung Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch 7, the tracker on your finger and on your wrist can work together to calculate more precise data while helping the other conserve power on overlapping tasks.

Generally speaking, wrist-based trackers are better than smart rings at measuring exercise. And if you’re trying to check your heart rate or elapsed time during a run, having a device with a screen is more convenient than a ring, which makes you pull out your phone and open the relevant app. A built-in screen also enables wrist-based trackers to offer extra niceties that aren’t available on smart rings, such as apps, games, and lifestyle features like texting and mobile payments.

On the other hand, smart rings are smaller, lighter, and less obtrusive. Since they don’t have a screen, they won’t do anything to bother you during the day unless you look at your phone as well. While most smartwatches and fitness trackers look high-tech, smart rings can blend into your outfit for a night on the town, allowing you to break out your favorite analog watch without missing out on your health data for the evening.

The small form factor also has its advantages when tracking sleep. You don’t have to worry about turning on a sleep mode or stopping a screen from illuminating. It’s also more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time than a wrist-based wearable, especially during sleep.

Battery life is generally better on smart rings than on fitness trackers, and much better when comparing rings to smartwatches. All of our favorite smart rings last five to seven days on a charge. Our favorite fitness tracker, the Fitbit Charge 6, lasted 4.5 days in testing with the always-on display mode disabled. All of our favorite flagship smartwatches last just over a single day on a charge.

Between the comfort level and the longer battery life, smart rings are better than wrist-based trackers at holistic health tracking by measuring similar criteria with fewer gaps in data. Simply put, since you’ll be wearing the device more often (and removing it less often for charging), it will gather a more complete picture of your data.

Smart Ring Sizing: How to Find Your Fit

When ordering a smart ring, you can get a sizing kit from the company in advance. These kits include plastic bands in all available sizes, so you can try them on and find the one that fits best. Most companies advise wearing the trial ring for a day or two to confirm that it fits and feels comfortable before ordering a ring in that size.

Expect the sizing kit to be free, or essentially free, if you go through with the purchase. Samsung charges $10 to order its sizing kit, for example, but then discounts the purchase of the ring by $10. Announced at CES, the Circular Ring 2 will look to improve on the current process with a digital sizing kit, so the app will assess the shape of your finger and make a recommendation.

Smart Ring Prices and Compatibility

Other than the Samsung Galaxy Ring, all of our favorite smart rings work with both Android and iOS phones. The Galaxy Ring is Android-only, and you really need a Samsung phone to get the most out of it. For the others, you’ll get the same experience regardless of your phone brand.

The price range for smart rings is relatively narrow. The RingConn Smart Ring is the most affordable at $279, and the Samsung Galaxy Ring is the most expensive at $399. The Oura Ring 4 and the Ultrahuman Ring Air both sit in the middle at $349. The Oura is the only model on this list that requires a fee ($5.99 per month or $69.99 per year) for access to your health stats.

For more ways to improve your wellness, be sure to check out our guide to health and fitness tech and our roundup of the best sleep gadgets to get a better night's rest.