Amazfit has announced the Amazfit Helio Ring at CES 2024, a new smart wearable designed for “optimal athletic performance”.
Amazfit is the latest brand to compete with the best smart rings, like last year’s Ultrahuman Ring Air and the Oura Generation 3, and while we don’t know everything about the Helio Ring at the moment, we’re missing a release date and even a price – we do know a few details about the device itself.
Made from a ‘skin-friendly’ titanium alloy and weighing less than 4 grams, the ring is said to offer detailed sleep tracking (after all, its main competitor, the Oura Ring, is considered our best sleep tracker) and athletic recovery metrics. It has a water resistance of 10 ATM, so it’s happy to be submerged up to 100 meters, and provides weekly and monthly sleep reports along with sleep health assessments.
Like the best Garmin watches, the Helio also features a readiness score that incorporates your physical exertion and the quality of your sleep, and if you’re a runner, it offers race prediction times from 5K to marathon – again, just like a little Garmin -watch. However, it appears that only four training modes have been announced so far: running, walking, cycling and treadmill; hopefully others will be announced in due course.
Like seemingly every other wellness device debuting at CES this year, it also has an AI element: the companion app is called Zepp Aura AI and is described as a “rest and wellness service” with an AI chatbot that you can ask about your health.
However, to access this AI chatbot you’ll need to subscribe to the premium version of the app, which also gives you weekly and monthly fitness reports and costs $69.99 (about £75 / AU$105) per year.
Check out our thoughts on smart rings in the video below:
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Analysis: The smart ring revolution is coming
I like the idea of smart rings. A piece of hardware that monitors our health with all the sophistication of a smartwatch, and that can be worn on the finger? More comfortable while sleeping, unobtrusive during the day, much less noticeable than a big flashy screen on the wrist, with NFC payments and advanced fitness tracking? Sign me up. With plenty of competition set to follow the Helio Ring, 2024 looks like the year of the smart ring.
However, the price of this technology appears to be monthly and annual payments. Oura and Ultrahuman have also gone the monthly subscription route, so perhaps we can expect this to be standard for smart rings in the future – although I would certainly welcome a one-off purchase from anyone. I understand that developing wellness apps that are constantly updated requires capital, and that many premium services offer good value for money; but basically I don’t like having my own data sold back to me.
Perhaps the much-rumored Samsung Galaxy Ring will be the one to break ranks; Samsung doesn’t require you to sign up for a premium subscription to fully enjoy the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6, so hopefully that applies to the all-but-confirmed Galaxy Ring as well. I’m curious to see how much Amazfit plans to sell its Helio Ring for, as this could mean the difference between a value-for-money device and one that doesn’t boot up.
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