RingConn Gen 2 review

There’s no question that 2024 has been the year of the smart ring. The Samsung Galaxy Ring has brought all-new attention to the form factor, while industry-leading Oura has released a huge raft of software updates and – just this week – a Gen 4 ring.

Even startups like Ultrahuman have begun to show their might.

Yet, in all the commotion, the crowdfunding success story RingConn may have produced the smart ring that has left me the most impressed. After only shipping the Gen 1 ring to backers earlier this year – a first outing in which we praised the design, battery life, and overall accuracy – the Gen 2 is already available. Speedy work.

Almost impossibly, the Gen 2 ring boasts double the battery life of its predecessor while also being thinner and lighter – an engineering feat I’m sure has left the design teams at Oura and Samsung scratching their heads.

But there’s much more to smart rings than design. Much of what makes Oura the industry’s key player is its polished platform, and a major brand like Samsung has plenty to offer via its broad wearable ecosystem. How does the RingConn Gen 2 stack up? Let’s find out.

Price and competition

At the time of writing, the Gen 2 isn’t quite as accessible as many of its smart ring rivals. It’s only recently made it through its crowdfunding campaign, and shipments for orders from its site will only be shipping in mid-October. Still, given what we saw with the Gen 1 ring, it’s safe to assume it will pop up on third-party retailers like Amazon over the next few months.

And though the early-bird offers have passed, it’s still a considerably cheaper smart ring than you’ll find from Samsung and Oura. At just $299 for one of its three finishes – matte black, silver, or gold – and no subscription to pay, I think this is superb value for a ring that works with iOS and Android.

Oura’s release of the Gen 4 has ensured its Gen 3 models have been slashed to $299, too, and that does squeeze RingConn slightly, but it’s still the most affordable current-gen ring from the major players. And, again, there’s no subscription (though there is an argument that subscriptions are powering platform boosts, which, as I’ll explore below, RingConn could perhaps do with).

Design and comfort

After wearing an Oura Gen 3 Horizon ring over the past couple of years, I was pretty gobsmacked when I put RingConn’s second effort on my index finger.

It’s an incredibly impressive titanium alloy design, with the company dropping the weight from 3-5g to 2-3g (depending on the ring size) and the thickness down to an industry-leading 2mm. For reference, the Galaxy Ring sits at 2.6mm and the Oura Ring Gen 4 is at 2.88mm. It may not sound much, but you feel that difference in a place like your finger.

I can’t stress enough the extent to which this is a completely different feel from those other options. Whether it’s sleep tracking, making a fist, or holding items that push up against it, the Gen 2 is nowhere near as noticeable to wear – even in a relatively large size 12 that I had for this review.

Partly that’s down to the new inner edge of this square-ish circle ring, as well, which has been refined so that the sensors dig in less, but it’s mostly the slimline specs.

Our only major design worry is durability. Not the more traditional durability specs – they’re all above board, with the Gen 2 slapped with an IP68 waterproof rating that RingConn believes makes it capable of surviving submersion of up to 100m depth. That’s more than enough for most people.

Instead, I’m concerned about the ring’s PVD coating finish. Like with most matte black smart rings (and we tend to get sent this finish from manufacturers), I’ve noticed the palm-side edges very slightly showing signs of wear even after just two months of daily use.

This is super-difficult to photograph, as the RingConn Gen 2’s design has a barely perceptible glossy run-off section on the edge, but you can (sort of) see the scratches on the above image.

As you can also see from the comparisons with Oura’s nearly black ‘Stealth’ finish, what starts as initial wear on the edges can quickly manifest into scratches and more noticeable deterioration.

Though I’m always sure to avoid wearing the ring in the gym and take it off when moving heavy furniture, for example, I think it could look pretty rough after, say, a year of use.

Health and sleep tracking

As with the previous generation, the core of the Gen 2 experience is in health and sleep tracking. Not much is new besides the sleep apnea assessment feature, which was in beta for Gen 1 and is now fully available with claimed – but not medically-backed – 90.7% accuracy.

It’s an impressive headline feature, to be sure, and I quite like the presentation of it. The app will use three nights of sleep/SpO2 data to assess your breathing disturbances, then works by charting your risk of sleep apnea based on the total number of apnea events.

I didn’t see any abnormalities during testing, with no major blood oxygen drops registered during my tracked sleep. This would be consistent with similar assessments from devices like the Google Pixel Watch 3, but I’d still say it’s a feature to take with a pinch of salt. After all, 90.7% accuracy is good, but it’s not exactly diagnostic.

The core sleep tracking – stages, scores, efficiency, that kind of thing – remains excellent. Over an entire month, it loosely correlated with Oura’s sleep scores (the RingConn Gen 2’s average was 80, and its competitor’s was 82 for the same period), and fall-asleep times were always logged within 5 minutes or so of the Whoop 4.0, Garmin Fenix 8, and Oura Gen 3. It also negotiated those mid-sleep trips to the bathroom and the occasions when you can’t fall asleep with aplomb.

Wake-up times are a little trickier. I like how RingConn does it – registering when you actually wake up rather than when you get out of bed, like Oura – but it does mean the two differ slightly on total time in bed and such metrics.

Elsewhere, the health tracking data is about as comprehensive as it gets on any wearable. You can look at any number of graphs, trends, and scores for pretty much every conceivable tracked metric.

Want your SpO2 from the last seven days? Sure. What about HRV averages from August? You got it. Can I interest you in your maximum stress scores from the early morning (different from the morning, I should note) from this year? That ain’t nothing but a thing for the RingConn app.

It’s hard to argue with the sheer volume of data, but, my word – a few days of using the app were enough to overwhelm and put me off checking it consistently. And I do this for a living.

The main dashboard feature, Wellness Balance, condenses this tsunami of numbers and stats related to stress, sleep, activity, and vital signs somewhat (and almost all align with gold standard trackers, I should be clear). Still, the RingConn platform is crying out for more toplines and friendlier summaries.

If it can improve the presentation, and perhaps make room for things like improved women’s health features, I think it will take a crucial step forward in its quest to become the undisputed smart ring champion.

Activity tracking

I’m loathed to dive too deep into activity tracking on any smart ring due to their inherent accuracy issues. And that’s especially true when the Gen 2’s exercise function remains in beta.

But, I have begrudgingly logged several workouts with the ring, and it’s performed as well as I’d expect: better when there’s virtually no movement (like on an indoor bike) but pretty spotty when there’s lots of hand movement (like running). Our advice is always to pick up a watch or HRM chest strap if accuracy is important in this area, because you won’t get it consistently from any ring.

This issue is compounded by RingConn’s lack of integrations. You can sync it up with another factory of inaccessible graph sadness – the Apple Health app – but that hasn’t cut it for me over the last few months.

For example, Oura’s Strava integration (which syncs up with my Garmin and Whoop) is something I rely on for the rival smart ring to grasp activity levels. Yet, such a partnership isn’t available for RingConn owners.

So, that means you’re left with the basics – steps and calorie burn. Steps are sometimes underreported compared to Garmin and Oura, but, generally, the picture is as shown above. Calorie burn, meanwhile, sometimes struggles without that true ability to track workouts, though our basal metabolic figure being correct goes some way to getting it in the right ballpark.

Battery life and charging

Battery life was already a strong point for RingConn, but it’s playing the hit again for the Gen 2. This time, the brand estimates users will get 12 days of life from a single charge.

When you compare that to Oura (whose Gen 4 ring is slated for eight days but will probably come in just under that in our full testing if its previous form holds) and Samsung (which we consistently got around five or six days from), it’s toying with the competition.

Without the sleep apnea feature turned on, I found that 10-11 days was consistently achievable in this admittedly bigger ring size. That does drop considerably – to roughly around five-ish days – if you have it enabled all the time.

With that charging case as a backup, though, you’ll still be doing pretty well if you run the Gen 2 dry. It’s a little on the chunky side to carry around all the time, but, if you want to, it’ll be on hand to deliver a frankly mind-blowing 15 or more full recharges. Compared to Samsung – which can probably give you 2-3 – it’s laughable stuff.

The app’s suggestions of when to charge, and how many days and hours you have left, are also a handy touch and help add up to a battery experience that’s truly freeing.

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