Buying Guide
The Short Version
There is still no single best smart ring, only the best ring for your phone, your budget, and your tolerance for a monthly fee. Oura Ring 5 is the newest and most polished option at $399 in Silver or Black. RingConn Gen 3 is the value pick at $349 with a claimed 14 days of battery and no subscription. The Samsung Galaxy Ring, from $299.99 before trade-in, makes sense if you already live in Samsung Health on a Galaxy phone.
The catch is one most buying guides leave out. Oura won its patent case at the US International Trade Commission against Ultrahuman and RingConn, and that result, not reviews, now decides part of this list. RingConn settled and took a multi-year license, so it keeps selling in the US and pays Oura royalties. Ultrahuman's position is less settled: its US store is taking orders again, including a Ring PRO shipping from October 10, but the company said after the ruling that it was developing a new ring design for the US. Buy on that basis, not on a spec sheet alone.
Smart Ring Prices and Specs, Checked October 3, 2026
Every price below came from the manufacturer's own US store page on October 3, 2026. Battery figures are the manufacturer's claims, not our measurements. Confirm current pricing before you buy, because this category moves fast.
| Ring | Price | Subscription | Claimed battery | US availability | Phone | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oura Ring 5 | $399 Silver and Black; $499 Gold, Deep Rose, Stealth, Brushed Silver | Oura Membership for full features ($5.99/mo or $69.99/yr) | 6 to 9 days | Sold by Oura | iPhone and Android | Newest hardware, most polished app |
| Oura Ring 4 | $349 Silver | Same Oura Membership | 5 to 8 days | Sold by Oura | iPhone and Android | Cheapest route into the Oura app |
| RingConn Gen 3 | $349.00 | None | Up to 14 days | Sold under a license from Oura | iPhone and Android | Battery life with no monthly fee |
| Samsung Galaxy Ring | From $299.99 before trade-in | None | Seven days (about 6 days on smaller sizes) | Sold by Samsung | Compatible Galaxy phone with Samsung Health | Galaxy and Samsung Health users |
| Ultrahuman Ring AIR | $349 | None | 4 to 6 days | Listed on Ultrahuman's US store | iPhone and Android | No-fee tracking with data depth |
| Ultrahuman Ring PRO | $479 | None | Up to 15 days | Pre-order, shipping from October 10 | iPhone and Android | Longest claimed battery in the group |
The Catch: a Patent Ruling Decides Part of This List
Oura asserted its smart ring patents against Ultrahuman and RingConn at the US International Trade Commission. By Oura's own account of the case, an Administrative Law Judge found that both companies' products infringe every element of every asserted claim, and the Commission issued exclusion and cease-and-desist orders covering those rings in the US. Oura's post also says Ultrahuman was criticized in the proceeding over evidence of a manufacturing facility in Texas.
The two companies then went different ways. Oura and RingConn settled, with RingConn taking a multi-year license to keep offering its rings and companion app in the US and paying Oura royalties. The financial terms are confidential. That is why a RingConn Gen 3 is a normal purchase today rather than a legal question mark.
Ultrahuman did not settle on those terms. After the ruling the company said that the "Ultrahuman Ring AIR remains available for purchase through retailers" and that existing owners "will continue to receive full firmware, software, and warranty support without interruption," and reporting at the time said a redesigned ring was in development for the US. Ultrahuman's US store today lists Ring AIR at $349 and takes Ring PRO pre-orders at $479 shipping from October 10, with shipping to the United States and no notice about the case on the page. We are not lawyers and we cannot tell you how that resolves. What we can tell you is that the legal position is unsettled in a way that Oura's and Samsung's are not, and a $479 pre-order is a different kind of risk because of it.
Our fuller timeline of the case, including who settled and who is still fighting, is in The Oura Lawsuits, Explained.
Which Smart Ring Has No Subscription?
RingConn Gen 3, the Samsung Galaxy Ring, and the Ultrahuman rings all give you full features for the hardware price with no required subscription. RingConn's product page states plainly that no subscription is required, and Ultrahuman says there are "no recurring subscription fees for accessing your data."
Oura is the outlier, and it is worth doing the arithmetic. The ring works without a membership, but Oura says that buying, activating and wearing a ring "is the only way to unlock access to all of the daily health insights," and that without a membership your insights "will be much more limited." Oura Membership is $5.99 a month or $69.99 a year, with the first month free. Over two years an Oura Ring 5 in Silver is $399 plus roughly $140 in annual membership, so about $539. A RingConn Gen 3 over the same two years is $349 and nothing else. That $190 gap is the real decision, not the sensor specs.
What Changed Since the Oura Ring 4 Era
Oura now sells both generations. Ring 5 is the current flagship at $399 in Silver and Black, rising to $499 for Gold, Deep Rose, Stealth and Brushed Silver, with a claimed 6 to 9 days of battery and about an 80 minute charge. Ring 4 is still on sale at $349 in Silver with a claimed 5 to 8 days. Both use the same membership, so the choice between them is purely hardware and price. If you want the two compared properly, see Oura Ring 5 vs Oura Ring 4.
RingConn also moved a generation on. Gen 3 is $349 with a claimed 14 days per charge, and RingConn is marketing it around vascular health insights and sleep apnea pattern insights. Treat vendor wellness framing as wellness framing: these are trend features, not diagnostics, and nothing here is a medical device claim we verified.
Ultrahuman's range widened rather than replaced itself. Ring AIR stays at $349 with a claimed 4 to 6 days, and the newer Ring PRO is $479 with a claimed 15 days in standard use.
Picking by Phone and Budget
You have a Galaxy phone. The Samsung Galaxy Ring is the straightforward answer at $299.99 before trade-in with no subscription. Samsung's own page frames it around a compatible Galaxy phone and the Samsung Health app, so treat it as a Galaxy accessory rather than a universal ring. If you are on an iPhone, look elsewhere.
You hate subscriptions. RingConn Gen 3 at $349 is the cleanest pick, and the license settlement means it is a normal product you can buy and keep using.
You want the best app. Oura, and accept the membership. Nothing else in this group has as mature a sleep and readiness experience, and that is what you are renting for $69.99 a year.
You want the longest battery. On claimed figures that is the Ultrahuman Ring PRO at up to 15 days, then RingConn Gen 3 at up to 14. Weigh the Ultrahuman pick against the legal uncertainty above.
What about the Luna Ring? We could not confirm a US purchase route for it this run. The lunaring.com domain now returns a permanent redirect to evu.com, a company whose site describes software ventures and lists no smart ring. Until we can verify a current price and a US seller from the vendor directly, we are not recommending it, and we have removed it from the ranking rather than carry a stale entry.
What Smart Rings Are Good At, and What They Are Not
Rings are good at the overnight job: sleep staging and duration, resting heart rate, HRV, temperature trends, and a readiness or recovery style score built from those. They are comfortable to sleep in, they do not light up your bedroom, and they last days rather than hours.
They are not good at live workouts. Grip-based lifting, cycling and rowing all press the sensor against a moving finger, and none of these rings is a substitute for a chest strap or a watch when you want real-time heart rate, pace, or GPS. If workout tracking is your priority, buy a watch and consider a ring as a sleep add-on rather than a replacement.
One more honest limit: every readiness-style score in this category is the vendor's own recipe over broadly similar raw data. Two rings on two hands will disagree, and neither is a measurement you can audit.
Where Vora Fits
Vora is our app, so we are not going to rank it against the rings above. Here is the practical part instead: what actually reaches Vora from each one.
Oura has a direct Vora connection on iPhone and Android, free on all plans, so an Oura Ring 5 or Ring 4 syncs without going through a middle layer. One limit to know: Vora calculates its own Sleep and Recovery scores and does not import Oura's Readiness and Sleep Scores.
Samsung Galaxy Ring feeds Samsung Health, and Vora has a direct Samsung Health connection on Android 10 and above, free on all plans. The gap to plan around is that Vora does not receive HRV, resting heart rate or respiratory rate from Samsung Health.
RingConn, Ultrahuman and Luna have no direct Vora connection. Their data reaches Vora through Apple Health on iPhone or Health Connect on Android, and only for the metrics each ring's own app writes into those hubs. That is worth checking in the ring app before you buy if a specific metric matters to you.
Food and workout logging, every health data connection, Bloodwork and 10 AI chat messages a day are free. Vora Pro is $12.99 a month or $89.99 a year and raises the AI allowance to 100 messages a day, adds Deep Health Reports, and lets you choose which device powers each health metric, which is the setting that matters if you wear a ring and a watch at once. The full connection list and status for each device is on our integrations page, and features covers the rest.