Smart ring shoppers have always had to pick a lane. You either got a ring built for serious health tracking, or one designed for tapping to pay, never both. Circular says that tradeoff ends today with the Ring 3 Pro and Ring 3 Slim, unveiled at IFA 2026. These are the industry’s first smart rings to merge the two features in one device.
The Ring 3 Pro brings premium health features and tap-to-pay
The Ring 3 Pro is Circular’s most complete ring yet. It includes an FDA-cleared ECG for AFib detection, blood pressure trend tracking, glucose tracking, and detailed sleep analysis, alongside NFC payments that work with Visa and Mastercard.
Circular is also bringing back haptic vibrations, a feature from its original ring, for silent wake-up alarms, medication reminders, and health alerts you can feel without checking your phone. Battery life nearly doubles from its predecessor, jumping to roughly 12 days, and the ring is built from titanium with 50-meter water resistance.
However, cuffless blood pressure tracking remains a tricky problem few companies have solved reliably, so Circular’s claims here are worth watching closely once real testing begins.
The Ring 3 Slim focuses on everyday essentials
For users who prefer a simpler wearable, Ring 3 Slim offers NFC payments alongside sleep, heart rate, HRV, SpO2, skin temperature, and activity tracking. However, the ECG, blood pressure monitoring, and haptic vibrations found on the Pro are left out. In exchange, it’s noticeably thinner and roughly half the weight, with battery life reaching about 10 days.
Both rings share the same titanium build, wireless charging, and sizes 6 through 14. Everything syncs through Circular’s updated Kira app, which uses AI to turn your data into personalized insights over time.
However, Circular’s software has faced criticism before, with one of our writers calling the earlier Ring Slim one of the worst smart rings he had reviewed. Pricing and availability aren’t set yet, though Circular expects both rings to arrive sometime in early 2027.
