If you’ve ever complained that a typical wearable is too big for your life, the latest take is about as small as the category gets.
Wearables are everywhere and they’re all different, offering varied screens, battery life, and shapes and sizes galore. They’re typically a square like with the Apple Watch, a circle if you’re looking at Samsung’s Galaxy Watch, or a long rectangular bar wrapped around your wrist slightly like in the Fitbit Charge 3 and bands like it, but it’s pretty clear the options are there if you want to consider a wearable in your life.
And yet if your biggest complaint for not incorporating a wearable isn’t that either you don’t need it or you prefer something classic, but rather that wearable devices are just too big, there’s not a lot of choice at that points. Wearable devices such as smartwatches and smart bands tend to be sized for a wrist, and so if you don’t like that form-factor, you don’t always have a lot to choose from.
This week, however, French company Circular is trying something a little different, launching a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to get people behind its tiny take on the category, arriving in a wearable smart ring that can do similar things to a fitness wearable, but without the size.
Launched as the Circular smart ring, it is more or less what it says on the label, with a small piece of jewellery that tracks activities and sleep, and incorporate a heart rate sensor to better understand what its owner is doing.
Built to be smaller than your typical wearable, the smart ring is designed to fit over one finger and offer a lightweight health monitoring solution without the need for a screen telling you the time.
As such, there’s no time and date available on the Circular smart ring, though there is information about your life through the app, which the company says includes a virtual assistant named “Kira” to help you understand your information and improve your health accordingly.
The regular staple of smart wearable features are there, too, such as a silent alarm clock, notifications from your device, and even a small button to trigger functions on your phone.
“At Circular, the idea was to create a device that would be your every life companion, from the beginning of the day by waking you up smoothly with a smart alarm, to a sleep analysis at the end of the day,” said Amaury Kosman, CEO of Circular.
“We also wanted a device that could help combat sleep intertidal, to help with a user’s sports sessions with deep activity metrics and unique insights, to even getting notifications directly on your finger.”
The result is a smart ring, but it’s open with a minimal battery life, working for what is apparently two days before needing a 90 minute charge once more.
We’re told the Circular smart ring is at least waterproof, and while it looks metal, the inside of the ring where all the technology sits has been crafted from plastic and is covered with a scratch-resistant polished titanium ring cover, effectively making it a two part device: a ring-shaped wearable with a cover that turns it into a fashionable piece of jewellery that weighs just 4 grams.
“We wanted a wearable that would fir seamlessly in everyday activities and that would help users reach their goals,” said Kosman.
Pricing on the Circular smart ring is presently set from $199 USD, with no word on local Australian availability. Like many other devices, you can order this one online and the company will ship to Australia, but Circular doesn’t anticipate delivery until at least August 2020, with no word yet on local release in Australian storefronts.
