Ahead of CES 2022, I spoke with Movano CEO John Mastrototaro about his ambitious idea for a smart ring that could one day monitor chronic disease. The renderings show a sleek, slim ring with an open notch at the top. It will be designed with women in mind. Accuracy is critical, and eventually, the ring will receive FDA approval as a medical device. It was an impressive pitch. It just needs to leave the showroom.
More than two years later, I have a $269 Evie ring from Movano on my finger. It’s not as remote as originally designed, FDA approval is still pending, and it’s not really meant to monitor chronic disease.but it yes A practical ring of wisdom you can buy—the beginning of a comeback in a shrinking field.
I’ve been waiting for something comparable to Oura Tamaki for a long time. Evie Ring hasn’t quite done that yet, but I hope to one day.
Clever design
Compared with smart watches, smart rings are smaller, lighter, more discreet, more comfortable for sleep tracking, and more accurate for heart rate measurement. But there’s one major drawback: your fingers swell. I’m worried about my large hoop ring dying because I risk dislocating my knuckles every time I take it off. In the summer, I often have no choice but to wash my hands in cold water to get the ring off.
That is no way Happened to the Evie Ring. To be clear, I’ve felt bloated multiple times while testing this ring. It doesn’t matter. I can always take it off easily.
It’s not witchcraft – it’s design. The ring’s signature gap not only looks chic, but also functionally gives the ring extra flexibility. You can gain a few pounds without having to think about whether you need to buy another smart ring. That’s the clutch, because I haven’t seen any smart rings come in half sizes or offer a way to resize as your body changes. (The Evie ring is available in sizes 5 to 12.) It’s small, but it greatly improves comfort – and when it comes to wearables, comfort is king.
It’s also sturdy enough to withstand showers, dishwashing, and dunks in the pool. I would consider taking it off and lifting weights, though. After about a month, I developed some deep scratches on my bottom. It’s not really noticeable at first glance, but it’s more wear than I’ve ever seen on a large pull tab.
Battery life is one of the most challenging aspects of smart ring design. A fully round ring requires a flexible battery that is small enough to still power all the essentials while being worn. The Evie Ring’s open gap adds another engineering hurdle, so it’s encouraging that battery life is decent. I get about four to five days of use on a single charge. While it’s not exciting for the category, the charging case is another nice touch. It can hold up to 10 charges, the ring magnetically attaches to the internal grooves and, best of all, is securely enclosed within it. I can keep it in my purse or nightstand without worrying about the ring falling out.
Overall health tracker
In Movano’s initial pitch, the Evie Ring combines accuracy with a streamlined app that lets you see what all your health data actually means. Now, I would say Evie Ring allows you to taste this, but not the entire meal.
Take the design of an application as an example. It’s fresh, fun, and emphasizes overall wellness. Instead of asking you to close a bunch of rings, the main tab shows your daily health factors as a single ring. It reminds me of a sleeker pie chart, and it provides a refreshing visual representation of how factors like sleep, active minutes, steps, and calories burned affect your overall health. It’s also a good thing that the app acknowledges that you can only pursue so many goals at once. Limiting it to just three at a time will help you stay focused and build new habits sustainably.
In terms of accuracy, with the exception of sleep tracking (more on that below), everything is consistent with the results I got with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Oura Ring. You can keep an eye on your heart rate trends, menstrual cycle, and overall activity and exercise. Sleep tracking has its own tab, with data divided into sleep stages and metrics like resting heart rate, heart rate variability, SpO2, respiratory rate, and skin temperature changes. In the diary, you can track your cycle and the various symptoms and emotions you experience – or you can choose to track your emotions (excluding your period).
It’s fairly typical, but lacks some extra context that I was hoping for. Is it good that the Evie Ring can track my body temperature? I guess. But I couldn’t see the history of my temperature over time or see how it related to my cycle. There’s some brief introduction to why certain data points are important, but not that much insight into what data points are important. mine The data tells me. To be fair, this is a problem with most fitness tracking platforms. I’m shouting here because contextualization is supposed to be what makes Evie special.
first generation quirks
While the Evie Ring is a refreshing take on smart rings and fitness trackers, it’s still a first-generation device. Like any first-generation product, it has some kinks to work out.
My biggest problem is synchronization.I open the Evie app first thing in the morning and it takes a while Every minute Have it sync with my phone. By 2024, I can scroll through four or five entire K-pop TikToks before I get out of bed.Thanks to some firmware updates, it got a lot of Things have gotten better in the last week, but if I don’t sync first thing in the morning, it sometimes doesn’t record my sleep the night before. Nonetheless, the ring can store up to 7 days of data between syncs.
Sleep tracking accuracy also varies. While the duration generally corresponds with my Oura Ring and countless sleep trackers, it repeatedly reports that deep sleep times are much shorter. One weekend, I fell asleep for 10 hours. About an hour of deep sleep is reported.
So far, Evie Ring only supports iOS. This isn’t unusual – I’ve seen plenty of other health tech companies prioritize iOS first and then launch an Android version later. This is just a bummer.
A good start
I know a lot about the Evie Ring, especially its design. It’s more comfortable and easier to charge due to the gap, and overall it offers a similar experience to the Oura Ring.And it does it for less money No Monthly subscription.
But we’ll have to see if Movano’s bet on FDA approval and its medical prowess help it stand out. It’s about to gain real competitiveness in the smart ring space. RingConn, Circular, and Ultra human have begun to chip away at Oura’s dominance. Amazfit makes a ton of great budget smartwatches and will launch a fitness-focused smart ring later this year. The biggest highlight is Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Ring. Samsung is a big name, and if it succeeds here, it’s only a matter of time before other tech giants follow suit. I think even Oura is feeling the pressure, let alone a smaller company like Movano.
Even so, I’m rooting for Evie Ring to stick with it. The thoughtful design is refreshing and sets a solid foundation here. I just hope it gets a chance to build on that.
