You don’t necessarily have to empty your wallet to get a smart ring. Several manufacturers offer them at much more reasonable prices than Samsung.
Without a doubt, with its Galaxy Ring launched last July, Samsung has given a serious spotlight to an accessory that was until then quite confidential: the connected ring. The Korean is not the first to launch on this field, but the other brands that have gotten there before it, such as Oura, UltraHuman or Ice Watch, do not benefit from the same popularity and marketing firepower of the giant to make this concept known.
However, Samsung, with all its technological mastery and its talents to seduce, did not go there with the back of the spoon on the prices. It markets its Galaxy Ring for the trifle of 450 euros! A prohibitive price which is enough to calm the ardor of all those who wanted to equip themselves well. It was without counting on the reactivity of several other manufacturers.
In the aisles of the IFA show, which is being held until September 10 in Berlin, we came across several manufacturers, mostly Chinese, who were offering connected rings for much less elitist prices. The lowest was set at 25 euros. Let’s not kid ourselves, for this price, the manufacturing quality remains very light, the finishes rather crude and the accuracy of the data to be proven. Nevertheless, we were also able to find products with more serious technical specifications and a fairly neat design from two manufacturers who are not unknown but who we did not necessarily expect on this market.
The first connected ring that caught our eye is from the German company normally specialized in audio: Blaupunkt. Its RingGo, that’s its name, looks quite a bit like the Ice Ring that we tested a few months ago. It comes in two materials (steel and titanium), three matte colors (silver, black and gold) and seven sizes.
It offers more or less the same functions as the Ice Ring but differs in the frequency of measurements taken by the sensors. Whereas with Ice it is necessary to manually trigger the SpO2 or stress analysis, the RingGo takes care of it regularly and automatically. In terms of price, expect to pay 99 euros for the steel model and 169 euros for the titanium model.
The second player that seduced us is none other than Aukey, famous for its backup batteries of all sizes and capacities but which in recent years has opened up to other areas of activity such as smartwatches, headphones and most recently, smart rings. The manufacturer thus offers two models, the Smart Ring SR-10 and SR-12.
While the first offers fairly basic functions (heart rate, sleep monitoring, etc.), the second brings a few extra little things. There is a vibrator and a mini speaker. They allow you to receive notifications such as reminders to encourage you to move, for example. Above all, the ring has a small touch zone. This allows you, for example, to control the scrolling of a web page on your smartphone or the playback of a multimedia file. Available in five sizes and five finishes, the Aukey Smart Ring SR-10 should display a price around 30 euros while the SR-12 should not exceed 80 euros.
Even if they do not benefit from the same media and advertising coverage as Samsung’s Galaxy Ring, these connected rings already prove that this new type of high-tech product could soon become much more affordable. An essential condition for true democratization.