Nova Ring — the cheapest smart ring from Aliexpress— first impressions

I heard voices calling for a review of a cheap smart ring that can be bought on Aliexpress. It’s called the Nova Ring.

FITNESATOR

28 Mar 2024 — 5 min read

I heard voices calling for a review of a cheap smart ring that can be bought on Aliexpress. It’s called the Nova Ring.

My expectations were not high. After all, it is a ring that costs about a quarter to a third of the price of a “real smart ring”.

Ordering and sizing

When you order a Nova Ring you will most likely have to make 3 decisions; where from, what size and what colour.

Where from

The Nova Ring can be found in several places, from several manufacturers, on several marketplaces. I personally chose this link:

https://fitnesator.link/novaring

Which, at the time of writing, gives a price of around $100–110

Sizing

Nova Ring, unlike most other smart ring manufacturers, does not work with a sizing kit, a set of plastic rings to try on. It is therefore necessary to choose the size based on the “inner diameter”, i.e. the inner circumference.

I took the size chart here for the Oura ring (which is my main ring and still the market leader) and tried to find the equivalent for the Nova ring. So, for my size 10 Oura ring, size 8 was a +- fit:

Unfortunately, I don’t know who made the mistake, but this size is much smaller. This doesn’t bother me too much, as the ring fits on my ring finger instead of my index finger (but just barely, I sometimes have to use soap to get it off).

So my recommendation is to go for the larger size rather than the smaller.

The colour

You have a choice of three colours — black, silver and gold. I chosed black.

Delivery date

I ordered on the 2nd of February 2024 and the ring arrived to Europe on the 26th of February 2024. There were no additional payments, duties or anything like that.

Hardware

As for the ring itself, it’s actually a very similar ring to the Oura ring. It’s very light, the body is mainly plastic and the finish is supposedly a titanium blend.

The main difference from the Oura is the absence of the 3 little bubbles that cover the Oura’s sensors (so the inside is actually more even) and the presence of a small round magnetic pin. Which brings me to the charger.

The charger

The charger is in itself unique in the field of smart rings. It’s a stand on which you place the ring and, thanks to the magnets, it stays in place.

You plug the USB-C connector into the charger, and you have to find something on the other side of the charger to plug the USB-A into.

Battery life

I received the ring on Monday, charged it to 100% and it lasted until Friday, so let’s say about 4 days. That’s not a bad result.

Sensors

The ring has an accelerometer, mainly for calculating steps, and an optical PPG sensor to measure heart rate (HR) and blood oxygen (SPO2). These sensors are very prominent, especially the green LED, which glows brightly:

Further information

Dust and water resistance is IP67, i.e. fully dust and water resistant for 30 minutes at 1 meter.

📲Software

The Nova Ring app is available for both iOS and Android. It communicates with the ring via Bluetooth.

The app is divided into 4 basic tabs:

Today — with information on step count, sleep, exercise logs, HR, SPO2, HRV and stress measurements, and menstrual cycle information. Measurement of the underlined metrics can also be manually activated and you will get instant readings.
Activity — a tab that provides a daily, weekly and monthly view of activity through the lens of steps, calories, Metabolic Equivalent Task (MET) activity volume and isolated workouts.
Sleep — a sleep tab similar to the activity tab. Here you can find data primarily related to sleep, i.e. total sleep time, sleep scores, sleep phases, etc.
Profile & Settings — this is the tab where you can make basic settings.

Findings & Interesting Facts

I won’t go into great depth in these initial impressions, just highlight the highlights. Deeper insights and validation of data accuracy will be part of the “full” review.

Goal setting — the app allows you to set goals for steps, calories burned and time spent exercising. The app notifies you when you reach your goal. You can even split goals by day, so you can have different goals for different days. For example, you can set a different goal for the weekend.

Exercise — quite a wide range of exercise types, even including badminton, jumping, climbing.

Other findings

This section summarises other findings beyond the application or ring itself.

Customer Support

My assumption about customer support was that I would get a ring and never get any support, warranty, etc. again. But to my surprise, there is an option in the app to contact customer support directly in the form. What’s more. I checked to see if it was Potemkin support, but it wasn’t. I received a reply within the next day.

Data & Warranty & Returns

A question you may also want to consider is who you are entrusting your data to and whether you are comfortable with that. I’ll leave it up to you.

As far as returns go, I noticed information in the Amazon reviews about a return (due to wrong size) for $66, which is more than half the value of the ring…

Conclusion

Frankly, I was expecting crap. A crap in terms of hardware and application. But the Nova Ring is actually a pretty decent smart ring that costs a fraction of what today’s smart rings cost. In the words of the classic “Well, don’t buy it if it’s that cheap”.

Sure, it probably can’t compete with the Oura and its top-notch insights and measurement accuracy, the Ultrahuman and its biohacking superstructure and ecosystem, the RingConn and its measurement depth and advanced graphs, or even the Circular and its vibration alerts. But that’s probably not even the point.

A comparison comes to mind. The Nova Ring is the Xiami Band of rings. It’s a device that can compete in looks with more premium products. And it can measure basic metrics, which may be enough for a wide range of users. Or it can be an entry-level product in this segment of wearable electronics.

If I were to summarise the absolutely essential features of the product in a table of pros and cons, it would look like this: