RingConn (Gen 2 / Gen 3) at China, Asia

RingConn, a Shenzhen-based Chinese smart-ring maker, is the subscription-free anchor of the biometric ring market and a deliberate counterpoint to Oura and Whoop, recorded in the biometric form factor. Its Gen 2 ring sells for about $279 with a 10-to-12-day battery and a charging case extending to about 150 days, pairing PPG, skin-temperature, blood-oxygen, and accelerometer sensors with sleep, heart-rate, and a deep-learning sleep-apnea screening feature, and all standard features are free for life with no membership, the core positioning of the brand; the Gen 2 raised about $4.4 million on Kickstarter and the Gen 3 launched in late May 2026 with more than $10 million in pre-orders in about twenty days.

Two corrections to common priors are load-bearing. First, RingConn's sleep-apnea and apnea-hypopnea-index feature is not FDA-cleared but wellness and pre-diagnostic: the company's own launch release says it is actively pursuing clearance and carries a not-intended-to-diagnose disclaimer, and the widely repeated claim that RingConn received FDA clearance for blood oxygen or sleep apnea appears only on aggregator sites and conflates it with the Happy Ring, the genuinely FDA-cleared sleep-apnea ring, so RingConn is recorded as not cleared with its 90.7-percent accuracy a vendor claim.

Second, RingConn is not subject to an active US import ban: although it was a co-respondent found to infringe in Oura's International Trade Commission case over patent 11,868,178, it settled and Oura granted it a multi-year license to keep selling in the US, so only Ultrahuman's Ring Air carries the active ban. Its clinical-validation posture is wellness-grade and claim-heavy, and its founder identity, funding, and cumulative unit shipments are not reliably verified.