Tag Archives: rings

Wearable chess set turns one of the oldest games into a fashion statement

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Although video games today have become a multi-billion dollar industry, there are analog games that have existed for centuries and continue to be a beloved pastime and sport today. Chess, for example, is still going strong across peoples of all ages, but it isn’t just players who find the game to be a treasure trove of inspiration.

The variety of chess set designs shows how the game is so open to interpretation, much more than most video games, resulting in products ranging from artistic to technological. This rather unusual take on the classic strategy game takes chess in a slightly different direction, presenting a game you can literally wear and take with you anywhere, ready to set up a match at a moment’s notice.

Designer: Louis Le Joly Senoville

We’ve seen many interpretations of the classic chess set design, from minimalist to brutalist to self-playing technological marvels. Most of these sets are designed to be installed in one location, while portable chess sets are sometimes too small because they’re meant to fit inside bags. They still take up space, of course, so that means giving up room that’s meant for your other, equally important stuff.

Ha Mat, which is short of “eched ha mat,” (“checkmate” in Breton) solves this problem by turning the chess set into something completely inconspicuous when not in use. In this case, the chess board becomes a scarf, the pieces become rings, and the timer becomes a watch. It’s literally a chess set you can wear as a fashion piece, allowing you to play anywhere there’s a flat plane to place everything on.

Of course, Ha Mat needs to actually look fashionable to qualify as a fashion statement, and it definitely fits the bill. The “board” takes inspiration from silk maps and military training scarves on antiquity, and the color scheme even tries to pay homage to luxurious hues used on chess boards in the past, particularly leather and wood. The watch that’s part of the set is quite peculiar because it can split in half and act as a timer for both sides.

The most interesting designs, however, are the chess pieces themselves. They have flat bottoms so they can stand on the “board,” but they have holes in the middle to wear as rings on your fingers. The pieces have tops that are more symbolic and iconic to identify their position on the board, simplifying their identity in order to fit the need to have flat pieces.

Of the 32 chess pieces, you can wear 16 on eight of your fingers if you pair similar pieces together. These would make you look like you’re wearing knuckle dusters, so they might not exactly be safe to wear in public. Still, the concept is quite intriguing, as it transforms one type of product into a completely different kind, without losing either one’s identity. In fact, it elevates the chess set from a game to something that’s an integral part of your life.

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Amazfit Helio Ring joins the fray with a focus on athletes’ well-being

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Now that smartwatches have more or less become more acceptable in society, it seems that the wearable tech market is setting its eyes on less conspicuous and less distracting designs for monitoring one’s health and fitness. And just like smartwatches in their early years, smart rings just aren’t resounding yet with people, though that could only be a matter of time. There hasn’t been much variety yet in this nascent market, which isn’t surprising given the physical limitations of a ring. Wearable tech brand Amazfit, however, believes it has something unique to offer, at least to athletes and very active people who are just as concerned with their mental health and recovery as they are with their steps and heart rate.

Designer: Amazfit

The niche that smartwatches have found themselves in seems to revolve around fitness and health, with features like activity tracking, health monitors, and the like. While those are indeed important metrics, they only represent a part of one’s overall well-being. Mental health is just as important, and giving your body and mind time to rest and recover is critical as well. Those are the points that the Amazfit Helio Ring is trying to emphasize in order to differentiate it from the likes of the Oura Ring, currently the leading name in this very young and small market.

In a nutshell, the Amazfit Helio Ring takes the same data collected by sensors inside the ring but interprets them in a slightly different way. Of course, it still records your steps, tracks your blood oxygen levels, and even monitors your sleep, but it frames that information in light of stress levels, your mental health, and most importantly, how well you’re taking steps to recover from those. Amazfit will propose actionable steps to guide you toward recovery, which unsurprisingly include getting enough sleep and meditation.

As for the device itself, the Amazfit Helios Ring is a bit of an outlier in that it doesn’t try to masquerade as a piece of jewelry. The dotted pattern on its surface is a dead giveaway that it is anything but luxurious, giving it a more rugged appearance that its target audience won’t mind anyway. In fact, it is intentionally designed for this group of people, using “skin-friendly” titanium alloy and ensuring water resistance of up to 10ATM, for those times when you need to take a swim.

The Amazfit Helios Ring can be used on its own, with or without an Amazfit smartwatch. Of course, you will need to pair with the mobile app, but you will also need to subscribe to the Zepp Aura rest and wellness service to really use the data it gives. A purchase of the ring will include a three-month free trial, but there are no pricing details available yet.

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This lightweight smart ring helps you snooze so you don’t lose

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Smart wearables and activity trackers are en vogue these days, but with few exceptions, most of them seem to be hyper-focused on the “activity” part of our fitness. Sure, being active and burning calories is always a good thing, especially considering the sedentary lifestyles that most people adopt, but these aren’t the only factors that will keep you living healthy and enjoying life longer. Sleep and recovery, stress and relaxation, and even the coffee you drink all contribute to your overall health, and the Ultrahuman Ring AIR provides a window into those metrics with a stylish wearable that’s so lightweight and comfortable that you might even forget you’re wearing one.

Designers: Apoorv Shankar and Yogansh Namdeo

Click Here to Buy Now: $348. Hurry, only 3/405 left! Raised over $250,000.

Activity trackers, which evolved from single-purpose pedometers, are nothing new. They come in different forms, from smart bands to smartwatches to the new breed of smart rings, but they have many common characteristics. They’re designed to detect your activity and your body’s vitals as they’re related to those activities, sometimes with some sleep tracking on the side. The latter, unfortunately, doesn’t get as much attention as sweating it out during the day, which further feeds the misunderstanding that sleep is something you can cut down if you need more hours in a day. The Ultrahuman Ring AIR, however, takes a very different approach, one that places sleep above all to provide a more holistic view of your current health so that you can take the necessary steps to improve it.

Sleep Index – Derived to help you understand the various sleep stages such as Deep sleep, REM sleep, Light sleep and being Awake.

Circadian Phase Alignment – A way to sync with your body’s natural rhythm. Analyse temperature minima, align your lifestyle and optimise your sleep-wake cycle for improved cognitive function, energy levels, and hormone balance.

Recovery Score – Derived from a blend of key metrics, including Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Heart Rate, and Skin Temperature, this score provides insights into various signals your body sends throughout the day, enabling a deeper comprehension of its needs.

Movement Index – The score is based on metabolic equivalent (METs) and depends on how much you move throughout the day rather than just your workout for a specific duration during the day.

Stimulant Window Recommender – Designed to optimize your stimulant consumption for enhanced productivity and sleep management.

The Ultrahuman Ring AIR gives due importance to your sleep index, which gives insight not just into your sleep length but also to sleep efficiency, restfulness, consistency, and other markers that indicate the quality of your rest. It also gives you a Recovery Score, using body signals like heart rate variability (HRV) and skin temperature to detect your levels of stress. Of course, it doesn’t just tell you that you’re stressed but also offers concrete ways to calm down, harnessing a huge library of premium content from athletes and experts available on the Ultrahuman app. Ultrahuman even has a “Stimulant Window Recommender” that tells you the best time to drink your favorite coffee blend to have the best effect on your productivity. It also features a revolutionary Circadian Phase Alignment that helps you sync with your natural body rhythm, optimizing your sleep-wake cycle for improved cognitive functions and more balanced health. There’s also Phase Advance that nudges you to move and enjoy healthy sunlight to help shift your sleep schedule earlier. There are even more features coming, including respiratory rate and that oh-so-desirable blood pressure measurement.

Water Resistance – Provides reliable water resistance up to ~330 feet.

Of course, none of this valuable information would matter if your smart ring didn’t make it to the end of the day or didn’t make it out of the swimming pool. Thankfully, the Ultrahuman Ring AIR is not only elegant but also long-lasting, both inside and out. It has an advertised battery life of 6 days, ensuring that you get the most out of all the metrics that it can collect 24 hours a day. The tungsten carbide that coats the titanium outer shell provides a double layer of durability, while its water resistance enables you to wear it for a swim or a shallow dive to a depth of 330 meters. Despite all this toughness, the smooth, hypoallergenic inner shell and lightweight construction make it a joy to wear all throughout the day, especially when you’re sleeping at night.

Being more aware of one’s health is a great thing, but it’s easy to overlook or even take for granted how sleep and recovery play a critical role in our well-being. With the Ultrahuman Ring AIR and the Ultrahuman app’s extensive wealth of knowledge and content, you can get a more holistic grasp of your body’s state and take well-informed steps to make sure that you’re living your healthiest so that you can live life to the fullest.

Click Here to Buy Now: $348. Hurry, only 3/405 left! Raised over $250,000.

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Casio Watch Rings are a tiny wearable tribute to the Japanese timekeeping legacy

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Imagine if you could wear your favorite Casio watch on your finger, capturing the essence of timeless style in a tiny, wearable form? Enter the enchanting realm of miniature watch rings designed as part of the Casio Watch Ring Collection.

This is a result of a delightful collaboration between Casio and creative minds at Toymaker Stasto Stand Stones in Japan. The Casio watch rings are no ordinary trinkets: these are meticulous reproduction of the watchmaker’s larger wrist-bound counterparts.

Designer: Casio  and Stasto Stand Stones

These shrunken pieces of horological art are nicely encased as wearable treasure. To that accord, they carry the iconic digital display, have intricate dials, and other notable complication such as calculator elegantly scaled down to ring size 18 for your finger.

Whether you’re a Casio fan, a fashion aficionado, or simply someone who loves a touch of whimsy, Casio x Stasto Stand Stones give a chance to wear time on our fingers but for an aesthetic appeal only. They look functional, but the watch rings are a playful homage to horology and capture our imagination while adding a dash of style to the fashion statement.

The Casio Watch Ring Collection has been available since the mid of July, 2023, through retail outlets, toy stores, and home-appliance shops in Japan. Interestingly, the watch rings are also available through vending machines across Japan.

So, a few coins and a touch of anticipation are all it takes for one of these tiny treasures to drop into your grasp. Once you have them, these watches will keep you enchanted one glance at a time!

The post Casio Watch Rings are a tiny wearable tribute to the Japanese timekeeping legacy first appeared on Yanko Design.

Circular Ring puts a finger on your health to help you make smart choices

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Keeping track of our body’s health and state of fitness has become somewhat of an obsession for some people. A decade ago, this wouldn’t have even been possible, but the dawn of wearables like smartwatches has made it almost too easy to keep tabs on different aspects of your health. Unfortunately, these tech accessories aren’t always designed like fashion accessories, and their style often comes second to their functions. Even worse, not everyone who is interested in monitoring their health is equally keen on wrapping a smartwatch around their wrist and saying goodbye to their favorite timepiece. Enter the new generation of smart rings like Circular, enabling the same or even better health tracking without cramping your style.

Designer: Circular

While smartwatches have the advantage of giving you quick and easy access to the information you need at a glance, including the time, they aren’t always the most discreet pieces of technology if you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re wearing one. While there are now smartwatches that do masquerade as luxury watches, most people probably have a favorite piece they don’t want to give up. A ring that keeps track of the same metrics might be a more subtle accessory to wear, and the Circular wellness ring delivers the best of both worlds without taking away too much from the smartwatch experience.

Circular offers the standard lineup of activity tracking and health monitoring and adds a little more on top. A smart alarm, for example, wakes you up in the most effective way at the best time, depending on your habits and sleep cycles. It also analyzes your bio-signals to keep track of your sleep quality and to offer recommendations on how to improve it. Since you don’t have to take it off at night, you can be assured that your data is continuous and uninterrupted.

Going beyond just physical well-being, Circular is adding guided breathing exercises utilizing subtle vibrations of the ring to also improve your mood and mental health. An upcoming update to its mobile app will improve the overall user experience and add team monitoring to help coaches and employers keep an eye out for athletes’ and employees’ health. With Circular, you can get a more holistic view of your health and take back control, allowing you to make smarter choices in life.

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Enso Silicone Space Rings: Celestial Digits

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Enso makes a line of celestial themed rings printed with cool space patterns like the phases of the moon, a solar eclipse, and what I assume are some sort of alien glyphs. Maybe if we can decipher them, we’ll discover the secrets of interstellar travel! They’re made from comfortable silicone, so you don’t feel like the ring is suffocating your finger like a traditional wedding band (maybe I’m just projecting),

The rings are available in whole sizes 3 to 14 and, just like all Enso silicone products, come with a lifetime guarantee. So if you somehow do manage to destroy your ring, they’ll replace it. And, God willing, you’ll learn not to do whatever it was you were doing when you destroyed it in the first place because it’s probably dangerous. I just hope you still have your finger.

I actually bought a silicone wedding band to wear whenever I’m exercising or working in the garage, which is still in the package it came in because I haven’t been to the gym, and I don’t have a garage. I’m prepared, though; that’s the important thing.

[via The Awesomer]

Blood Bath and Skinny Dipping Rings Feature a Tiny Swimming Pool for Your Finger

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Because high fashion is something I probably won’t ever understand, Studio Cult is selling rings that resemble tiny swimming pools. Available in Blood Bath and Skinny Dipping varieties, the $375 silver rings feature little resin-filled pools, complete with a ladder and diving board. And just $375 apiece? I only wish I had twelve fingers so I could wear more than ten.

I’m not sure about the Blood Bath version (it’s a little morbid for me), but I could see myself wearing the Skinny Dipping one and daydreaming about it being summer in the middle of winter. I keep telling my wife we should move somewhere warmer, but she keeps reminding me moving costs money, and I refuse to part with my Beanie Baby collection. They’re going to make a comeback; you just watch.

Different strokes for different folks, that’s my motto. Maybe you’ve been waiting your whole adult life for a little $375 swimming pool ring filled with blood. Who am I to judge? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I totally am, but who am I to? I’m just a guy waiting for them to make a hot tub version.

The Five Tilted Rings LEGO GBC Looks Like a Fun Amusement Park Ride

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Constructed entirely of LEGO Technic pieces by builder Akiyuki, this is ‘Five Titled Rings,’ an incredibly impressive LEGO Great Ball Contraption (GBC) consisting of five tilted rings that continuously pass balls up from one ring to the next higher one in the tower. My mind is blown. Granted it doesn’t take much, but still.

In the video, Akiyuki slowly builds the two bottom rings of the tower and adds balls to demonstrate the movement of the rings and the mechanics of their ball-passing, then finishing constructing the rest of the tower. The amount of ingenuity it must have taken to build something so impressive – I can’t even imagine. For reference, I still struggle with the LEGO sets sold in the little plastic bags in the checkout lanes at Target.

Nicely done, Akiyuki. If only passing basketballs was so soothing to watch in the actual game of basketball, then maybe I could take a nice relaxing nap while watching a game instead of yelling at the television and foaming at the mouth. My doctor says sports could kill me. Watching them, not playing them, just to be clear.

[via The Awesomer]