Depending on the parent company’s software integrations, a smart ring can inform other areas of your health such as fertility. Again a smart ring is a way to get the kind of health information you’d normally get from a smartwatch, but in what some people would consider a more approachable package.

What is the Oura Ring?

The Oura Ring (more specifically, the Oura Ring Gen 3) is currently the most popular smart ring available. With sophisticated sleep-tracking metrics and recovery guidance, Oura takes a truly holistic approach to helping you understand your health.

Whether you want to tackle sleep apnea, monitor stress or track menstrual cycles, Oura Ring can give you the information you need. Wearing an Oura Ring even helped one of our editors learn that she’s pregnant. 

Oura’s advantages lie in the brand’s major partnerships and integrations. Think: Equinox, Therabody, Strava, Natural Cycles and Peloton. Last year, Oura Ring became available at Best Buy and more recently, the smart ring popped up on Amazon as well. Apple Watch complications for Oura Ring mean you can wear an Oura Ring in conjunction with a smartwatch if you’d like, too.

What about the Samsung Galaxy ring and others?

There are a few Oura Ring alternatives, though of them, the Ultrahuman Ring Air is the clear winner. This smart ring accurately tracks your sleep, recovery, movement, heart rate, skin temperature and even more metrics — and all while being smaller and lighter than competitors. If you’re not looking to break the bank, the Amovan Smart Ring is one of the better budget alternatives, except it has mixed reviews when it comes to data accuracy. 

But number of smart ring options available is changing quickly. Amazfit is coming out the athlete-focused Helio Ring, while all eyes are on the Samsung Galaxy Ring launching this summer. We got an up-close look at it earlier this year, plus have some ideas on how the Galaxy Ring vs. Oura Ring should stack up.

That’s not all — Apple is also rumored to be working on a smart ring. We don’t know much about this so-called Apple Ring, but it would certainly be an exciting launch.

What to know before buying a smart ring

The key thing to know when buying a smart ring is that you’ll need to purchase the right size. Just like you want a pair of running shoes in your exact size for them to perform properly, finding the best smart ring fit for you is extremely important.

Most smart ring brands offer a sizing a kit to help you find the ideal fit; however, just because you know your ring size for one brand doesn’t mean it’s the same for another one. You’ll want to use the sizing kit made for the specific brand of ring you’re buying. 

As is the case for most kinds of gadgets you buy these days, you’ll also want to research whether the smart ring requires a subscription. For example, Oura changes $5.99 per month in order to access all the fitness metrics available through its smart ring. We don’t know yet whether Samsung will adopt a similar system for the Galaxy Ring, but it would be a big deal if it avoided additional fees. 

Either way, based on the growing competition among smart rings, we should see quite a few more advancements in the space soon. 

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