Smart rings have a pricing problem. The technology is brilliant — passive, discreet, genuinely useful — but the entry fee has been sitting somewhere between “considered purchase” and “absolutely not”, and then there’s usually a subscription stapled to the back of it.
Sekonda has just walked into that gap with a £79.99 smart ring and no monthly fee.
The Sekonda Smart Ring launches today, 21 September, in gold and silver, and it is the British watch brand’s first move into the fastest-growing category in wearables. It tracks sleep, heart rate, HRV, blood oxygen, stress signals, skin temperature trends and your menstrual cycle — and it syncs straight into Apple Health and Health Connect, so you can keep using whichever app you already trust.
The Price Is The Story
Let’s be direct about why this matters. The smart ring market is projected to grow by 29%, and the reason it hasn’t grown faster is that most of the good ones cost several hundred pounds and then charge you again every month to read your own data.
Sekonda’s proposition is the same core metrics, one payment, and a ring you can buy in Argos.
Stockists at launch include H Samuel, Argos and Amazon, alongside sekonda.com. That distribution is arguably as significant as the price. Smart rings have so far been a thing you research, order online and wait for. This is a thing you can pick up on a Saturday.
What It Tracks
The ring works passively, day and night, building a picture rather than demanding you check in. On the list:
- Sleep quality
- Heart rate
- Heart rate variability (HRV)
- Blood oxygen (SpO₂)
- Stress signals
- Skin temperature trends
- Women’s cycle tracking
Cycle tracking being on the standard spec sheet rather than an afterthought is worth flagging. Temperature-based cycle tracking is one of the genuinely strong use cases for a ring over a watch, and it has historically lived behind the premium tier.
Data syncs with Flo, Clue, Natural Cycles, Balance and others, which means you’re not being forced into a proprietary app you’ll resent.
It Is Trying Quite Hard To Look Like Jewellery
This is a watch brand, so the design brief was never going to be “small computer”.
The ring is premium stainless steel, available in six sizes (7–12), with a slim profile designed to be worn day and night without announcing itself. Battery life is five to seven days. It’s water resistant to 50 metres, so swimming and showering are fine.
In the box: a charging case, a USB charging cable, and — a nice, practical touch — a silicone protective cover to stop you scratching it to pieces during weight training or anything else involving a barbell and regret.
If you like the idea of tech that reads as jewellery, it’s worth a look at our guide to the best smart ring jackets and tech jewellery too.
What Sekonda Says
“We’re seeing growing demand for wearable technology that fits effortlessly into people’s lives,” said Pete Ogley, CEO at Sekonda. “The Sekonda Smart Ring offers health insights in a beautiful, discreet piece of jewellery, without the premium price tag or ongoing subscription. It is wellness made simple.”
Sekonda has been the UK’s best-selling watch brand for 30 consecutive years, which is the sort of statistic that explains the strategy. This isn’t a startup trying to invent a category — it’s a high-street incumbent deciding the category is now mainstream enough to sell at volume.
The Honest Caveats
Cheaper hardware usually means compromises somewhere, and the launch information doesn’t tell us where they are.
Sensor accuracy is the obvious question — HRV and SpO₂ readings vary enormously in quality between devices, and the premium players have spent years and a lot of money on validation. Sekonda hasn’t published comparative accuracy data, and there’s no mention of clinical validation.
Six sizes is also a relatively narrow range. Smart rings are notoriously fussy about fit — too loose and the optical sensor loses contact, too tight and you’ll take it off — and the brands that do this well ship elaborate sizing kits first.
And “no subscription” is genuinely good, but it also means there’s no ongoing revenue funding the app’s development. The long-term quality of the software is the thing to watch.
Why We Care
Because the interesting frontier in wearables right now isn’t better sensors — it’s access.
A £400 ring plus a monthly fee is a wellness product for people who already have wellness products. A £79.99 ring on the shelf in Argos, tracking your cycle and your sleep and feeding it into the app you already use, is something else: it puts passive health tracking within reach of an enormous number of women who were never going to spend £400 to find out why they’re tired.
If the sensors hold up, this is how the category actually goes mass-market. If they don’t, it’s a lovely ring that tells you slightly wrong things — which, to be fair, is also what a lot of expensive ones do.
We’ll be testing it.
The Sekonda Smart Ring is available from 21 September in gold and silver, in six sizes, RRP £79.99, from sekonda.com. Stockists include H Samuel, Argos and Amazon.
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