I like the concept behind Ringly: A Bluetooth-enabled notification ring that connects to your smartphone and retains you in the loop about incoming texts, calls, and emails by way of colored LEDs and vibrating patterns. And I love the fact that Ringly is clearly trying to make "Herz P1 Smart Ring" jewellery engaging sufficient to be worn as, effectively, jewelry. After taking the Ringly for a spin over the past two weeks, I even love the way it really works as a tech product. It sets up in seconds, wearable health tracker customizing the device by way of its companion app is a breeze, and it comes with a cute ring box-shaped charging case that charges the ring inductively (and holds a charge of its own, for as much as 10 days). But I don’t love the Ringly as jewelry, and that’s form of a big downside. I mean, the purpose of the Ringly is to combine tech and elegance-if it’s not going to do this, I could as nicely purchase a smarter, less fashionable tech product.

The Ringly at present comes in eight totally different variations, wearable health tracker which vary in price from $195 to $260, depending on the kind of stone used. The most expensive variation, "Into the Woods," sports an opaque, cushion-reduce emerald and a matte 18-karat gold-plated base. All Ringly rings have roughly the identical rectangular form, however some stones have completely different cuts. My overview unit was the "Opening Night" Ringly-a cushion-minimize black onyx stone in a shiny, gunmetal-plated brass setting. Here’s the Ringly, in "Opening Night. See how large its band is? At first look, the Ringly is fairly unimpressive for a chunk of jewellery that prices $200. It’s not significantly stylish, nor does it look or really feel like a weighty, costly piece of costume jewelry. I’m not a huge fan of onyx to start with, however the cushion-cut stone seems to be a bit of plasticky, whereas the gunmetal plating is cool but very prone to fingerprints. I spent a number of my time with the Ringly cleaning it off with my shirt.

The Ringly is water-resistant, however not waterproof, which suggests it should be advantageous getting wet once you wash your arms (just don’t immerse it in water). The Ringly is an attention-grabbing, type of in-between size. It’s not small and delicate (gotta put the tech and battery somewhere), but it’s also not that large-definitely not big enough to make a style assertion. This is admittedly going to come right down to private taste, however I like my cocktail rings to be huge sufficient to cover my whole finger-and I've relatively slim fingers (my largest finger is a dimension 5). The Ringly’s stone awkwardly almost covers my finger, but doesn’t fairly make it. Not sure how I really feel about the dimensions, however here’s the Ringly in comparison with other jewelry. The Ringly isn’t one thing I can see fashionistas lusting after, and it’s certainly not something I’d look twice at on a shelf. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like what the Ringly does, even when it’s not going to revolutionize runways.

It may not look the part, but the Ringly does numerous things right. For one thing, it’s tremendous comfortable. The band is slim, which is a bit cheap-looking, but extremely easy to put on (if you’ve by no means worn a ring with an uncomfortably thick band, consider yourself lucky). I’m easily distracted by uncomfortable jewelry on my fingers and wrists, and I discovered myself forgetting concerning the Ringly as I went about my day. In case you squint, you would possibly have the ability to see the LEDs. The Ringly has a pinprick-sized LED mild on one facet, which emits 5 totally different colours (blue, green, yellow, purple, and pink/purple) for notifications. The Ringly additionally has an internal vibrating motor, and the Ringly app permits you to customise your notifications using the five colors and four different vibrating patterns. Here are some of Ringly’s notification options. For example, you possibly can set up your Ringly to vibrate once and flash pink for a new electronic mail, but vibrate twice and flash pink for a brand new textual content.

Or vibrate thrice and flash blue for Fb, however vibrate three times and flash yellow for Twitter. This sounds a little difficult, however I found it very simple to get the cling of. Ringly works with greater than eighty completely different apps, together with Line, Gilt, Uber, Instagram, and Tinder, and will also be set up to notify you when you get a text or phone name from a specific particular person. All Ringly does is notify you-if you want to reply to a textual content or reply a phone name, you’ll want to choose up your phone. It’s positively not an Apple Watch, performance-clever, however it works well if you’re ready for somebody to call or textual content and you’re in a social setting (comparable to a bar or club) where you can’t continuously be checking your telephone. For essentially the most part, a fast buzz to your finger is all the knowledge you want if you’re waiting for a friend to show up. Due to its measurement, the Ringly doesn’t have wonderful battery life-the ring will final 24 to 48 hours on a single cost, relying on how typically you utilize it (how many notifications you get).