There’s set to be a new smart ring in town in 2022, with Movano announcing it's to launch a brand new device.
The Movano Ring is aimed at women and comes loaded with health sensors, which put it in the same conversation as the new Oura Ring, and devices such as the Fitbit Charge 5 and Whoop 4.0.
The smart ring market has been garnering interest from consumers, but there have been a few high profile misfires that has left the segment a little cold.
Motiv was an early flag-bearer for smart rings but sold out to enterprise, and we saw Amazon try out the space before mothballing its project.
That’s essentially left Oura to play all by itself, bar a host of payment rings.
But Movano is doing things slightly differently.
First it’s aimed at women, so it’s way more stylish that anything we’ve seen before. Oura isn’t a bad looking device, but it’s noticeable and chunky on the finger – and it’s harder for women to wear.
We'd need to see Movano Ring being worn to get a real sense of what the company has achieved in terms of design, but the incomplete loop looks way more interesting than some other rivals.
And it’s no slacker under the hood.
The Movano Ring will measure heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep, respiration rate, temperature and blood oxygen.
That will put it head-to-head with the Oura Ring, although some elements might need FDA approval.
But the company has said it’s out to make its data more actionable, and early screenshots have shown it's slicing and dicing its sleep data to show the relationship between sleep and exercise.
Movano has also pledged its interest in non-invasive glucose tracking, raising funding back in July – so this could just be the first step onto more advanced wearables on the finger.
In fact, Movano CEO Dr. John Mastrototaro told The Verge that the company was looking to get certified by the FDA as a Class II medical device – although that would be done in stages.
The device will get properly unveiled at CES 2022, but won’t be released until the second half of the year. As we’ve seen many times, a lot can go wrong between CES and release dates, so we’re not betting the house the Movano ring will come through unscathed.
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James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.