If you're hoping to buy your first smart ring this holiday season, early Black Friday sales present an excellent opportunity to do so.
You'll find a ton of smartwatch deals available right now. There's a great Garmin BF sale on all our favorites, while Fitbits have dipped to tempting prices and the Galaxy Watch 6 is at an all-time low. But the fact is, watch deals are pretty common! Smart ring discounts are rarer, and worth paying closer attention to.
You can find cheap, unreliable rings on Amazon anytime, but for the best smart rings — especially Oura — deals are infrequent and more likely to sell out. Unlike one-size-fits-all smartwatches, smart rings often sell out in certain ring sizes and finishes — especially if you have to wait for a ring sizing kit first.
At the moment, some of our favorite last-gen smart rings are discounted, including the RingConn Gen 1 for $169 (39% off) or Oura Ring Gen 3 for $249 ($50 off). For the latest and greatest models like the Oura Ring 4 or Galaxy Ring, it's harder to find discounts, and you have to snag them when you can. Hopefully when the real Black Friday arrives, your smart ring of choice will still be available in your size; you may not want to risk waiting, though!
Now that Black Friday smart rings deals have begun to arrive in earnest, you shouldn't hesitate because they're genuinely rare to find at these low prices — and some of the best like the Oura Ring 4 still haven't gone on sale.
With Oura as the most popular pick for a lot of people, we've written an Oura Ring 4 vs. Gen 3 guide that'll explain whether or not you should take advantage of the Oura Black Friday deal or hold out for the newer version, even if it costs more.
A smart ring won't replace your smartwatch; it's a luxury
If the point of Black Friday deals is to splurge on something you normally wouldn't, then a smart ring fits that theme better. People need smartwatches for notifications, workouts, maps, and the like. If you compare smartwatch vs. smart rings, you'll find they cover a lot of the same ground for features and health tracking.
So why buy a smart ring? They ensure you don't have to wear an uncomfortable watch at night to get 24/7 data on your sleep quality, stress, and heart health; and if you buy the right smart ring, it'll look sleek and stylish doing it.
That won't be enough to appeal to everyone, but smart rings have become increasingly popular for a reason. People who prefer non-smart luxury watches to smartwatches can still get the basic health data they want; and since basic watches outsold smartwatches this year, I'm guessing there's a lot of you out there who'd benefit from one.
Smart rings aren't perfect. We've found that they're very accurate for normal at-rest HR data but can struggle with workout results, and while they're shockingly good at step counting when you're out and about, they tend to generate a lot of false steps when you're just sitting at your desk typing or gesticulating.
In other words, smart rings are still in their early stages, improving their accuracy and usefulness over time. And since so many companies are trying to establish themselves in the smart ring market, they're all charging a high amount to break even on their R&D.
That's why Black Friday is the right time to buy one, if you're going to: it's the rare moment when smart rings won't be a bit overpriced for what they can do, so you can jump in on the trend without breaking the bank.
What about fitness bands vs. smart rings?
Smart rings can't replace smartwatches, but they basically exist to replace cheap fitness trackers like the Fitbit Charge 6 or Xiaomi Smart Band 9.
These devices may have screens for notifications, but in other respects they have few of the smarts of a traditional smartwatch. They're there to track your health and workouts, aligning with smart rings' main purpose.
Because fitness bands have more space for health sensors and your full wrist instead of a tiny strip of finger skin to work with, they tend to be more accurate for workouts. But like smartwatches, they're less comfortable for sleep tracking and more liable to get dislodged from your wrist by a bad sleep position, while your well-fitted smart ring stays comfortably in place.
And unlike smartwatches, fitness bands honestly aren't particularly attractive. They're "sporty" at best and cheap-looking at worst, which gives smart rings the edge.
Still, a fitness tracker lets you check notifications, can buzz you awake without a traditional alarm, and costs significantly less even before Black Friday deals come into play. So if you're more concerned about function than looks, a fitness band may be the better option for you.
