From London: As Australians woke this morning, one of the wearables industry's more compelling product launches was quietly going live on the other side of the world. Ultrahuman, the Bengaluru-based health tech startup, has officially unveiled the Ring Pro, its third-generation smart ring, priced at US$479 with pre-orders open globally and shipments beginning in March. For Australians interested in tracking their health without strapping a screen to their wrist, this is worth paying attention to.
The headline number is straightforward: 15 days of battery life on a single charge. That figure triples the roughly four-to-five-day runtime of Ultrahuman's previous model, the Ring Air, and is nearly double the seven-to-eight days that reviewers have consistently measured on the category-leading Oura Ring 4. For a device worn around the clock, the difference is not trivial. The charging ritual that turns an unobtrusive health tool into a chore has long been cited as the primary reason people abandon smart rings after the novelty fades.
Ultrahuman has paired the longer battery with a redesigned charging case, the Pro Charger, which adds a further 45 days of power when used in rotation with the ring. Unlike competitors' minimalist ring boxes, the Pro Charger is built for the nightstand: it includes an LED charge indicator, a speaker, haptic feedback, and the ability to diagnose and resolve firmware issues remotely. As reported by Engadget, having seen a prototype of the charger in January, the device is described as the most aesthetically considered charging accessory yet seen in the smart ring category. The case is included in the purchase price, a point of competitive distinction given that Oura sells its own charging case separately.
The internals represent a more substantial upgrade than battery figures alone suggest. According to Ultrahuman's Bhuvan Srinivasan, the older hardware had been pushed to its processing limits. The Ring Pro addresses this with a dual-core processor capable of running machine learning models directly on the device, removing the need to constantly offload calculations to a paired smartphone. Storage has also grown substantially: the ring can hold up to 250 days of health data before requiring a sync, a meaningful improvement for travellers or those who simply do not want their health insights tethered to their phone's proximity.
Launching alongside the hardware is Jade, Ultrahuman's new "real-time biointelligence AI." The company describes Jade as capable of generating actionable health insights on the fly, triggering breathwork sessions, initiating atrial fibrillation detection, and eventually connecting with third-party services to do things like adjusting room temperature or flagging potential health concerns before they become symptoms. Jade draws on data from the ring, Ultrahuman's M1 continuous glucose monitor, and environmental readings from its Ultrahuman Home product. Critically, as reported by TechCrunch, Jade will be available to all Ultrahuman users without a subscription fee, including owners of the older Ring Air.
A Strong Device, A Complicated Story
The Ring Pro's omission from one market tells a story that matters as much as the hardware itself. The device is unavailable in the United States because of a ruling by the US International Trade Commission in October 2025, which found that Ultrahuman had infringed on patents held by Finnish rival Oura. The ruling blocked Ultrahuman from importing new ring inventory into the country. The US represented roughly 45 per cent of Ultrahuman's approximately 700,000 daily active users worldwide, according to the company's co-founder and CEO Mohit Kumar, as reported by TechCrunch. That is a commercially painful exclusion.
Ultrahuman has responded on two fronts. It filed a counter-complaint against Oura in the Delhi High Court in August 2025, and has engineered the Ring Pro with a redesigned internal architecture specifically intended to sidestep the contested patents. The device has been submitted to US Customs and Border Protection for clearance, with the company hopeful that the new design removes the legal basis for an ongoing ban. Whether that hope proves well-founded remains to be seen. The patent dispute is not unique to Ultrahuman: Wareable reports that Oura is also actively pursuing Samsung, Zepp Health, Reebok, and Nexxbase over similar allegations, raising questions about whether the legal strategy is narrowly protective or more broadly territorial.
For consumers outside the US, and that includes Australians, these legal skirmishes are largely beside the point. The Ring Pro is available to pre-order now at US$479, with existing Ring Air owners eligible for a trade-in discount. The device comes in four finishes: Bionic Gold, Space Silver, Aster Black, and Raw Titanium, in sizes five through fourteen.
What Competitors Offer and Where the Trade-offs Lie
The smart ring category has shifted from niche curiosity to a genuine consumer market with some speed. Australian health data increasingly shows that consumers are investing in preventive wellness tools, and the global smart ring market is projected to grow from around US$378 million in 2026 to US$3.1 billion by 2035. In that context, Ultrahuman's positioning is pointed: the Ring Pro's battery claim of three to four times the competition, no mandatory subscription, and a bundled premium charger all sit in deliberate contrast to Oura's model, which starts at US$349 but requires a US$5.99 monthly fee for full functionality.
Critics of the subscription-free approach raise legitimate points. Oura's recurring revenue model funds continuous software development and a more mature analytics platform, and reviewers consistently rate its app as the most polished in the category. The counterargument, of course, is that consumers buying a US$479 device should reasonably expect full access to everything it offers without ongoing charges. Both positions reflect genuine values: the market will arbitrate between them over time.
What the Ring Pro's launch actually reveals is that the smart ring category has reached a point of genuine technical competition. Battery life, processing capability, and AI-driven health interpretation are all improving at pace. For health-conscious Australians considering a wrist-free alternative to their smartwatch, the options in 2026 are more compelling than they have ever been. Whether Ultrahuman's ambitions fully materialise will depend as much on courtrooms as on consumer sentiment, but the hardware itself makes a serious case for serious consideration.