So I was scrolling on Instagram like any responsible adult would at 1 am, and an ad showed up for a shiny new smart ring called the Halo Ring. And I mean, at first I thought this thing looked eerily similar to something that starts with an O and ends with an A, but then again, most smart rings do, so I brushed it off and carried on to their website.
Same soft muted tones, same titanium finish, same… Butterfly? Except this one is $59 and not $299. My first thought wasn’t “wow what a steal”, it was “why does it look exactly like a ring I already own?”. So I went down a rabbit hole and I need to talk about what I found.
But let’s start from the top.
What Is the Halo Ring?
Ok, now, like they’ve pointed out, there are many impersonators, so don’t “waste your money” on them. Pot calling the kettle black? This is about tryhaloring and here’s the pitch: a titanium smart ring tracking your sleep, resting heart rate, HRV, SpO2, skin temperature using some sort of technology they dub “Nano Chip”. With a 5 days battery life, waterproof up to 100 meters, at just $59 with a 30 nights free trial and a money-back guarantee.
Sounds too good to be true? I thought so too.
The site looks like any other site built from one of the Shopify templates. With the soft color palette, shots featuring hands wearing the product, customer reviews from those who describe themselves as “Wellness coach” or “Trail runner” and the product itself has 4.9 out of 5 stars according to 2,847 reviews.
But the problem is that apart from the reviews linked on their Reddit page, I couldn’t find any of these 2,847 happy customers anywhere online.
The Trustpilot Reality Check
It gets complicated here because tryhaloring has its very own page on Trustpilot. And it’s not remotely a 4.9 rating. Just a few reviews and all of them are one-star. Talk about rings not charging, lack of support for weeks, no shipping and refund policies that exist mostly on paper.
One reviewer complained about a ring that charged for six hours and was still showing red. Another purchased two rings, only one worked. In order to get any help, he had to provide a video of it. Another reviewer noticed that there’s no such thing as a 30-day warranty, instead, there’s a “restocking fee” of 20% if you want to return it.
What People Are Actually Getting
From complaints made on Trustpilot, BBB’s Scam Tracker and even TikTok (there is now a “SmartRingScam” tag), the story is the same in every place:
- Items arriving that do not charge, dying in a day or two, when promised at least a 5 day battery life.
- Orders that never arrived at all and tracking numbers that stopped updating.
- Customer support asking for videos and pictures “for review” and going silent afterwards.
- Refunds that do not materialize, or that include a restocking fee about which nothing was said at the point of sale.
- Comments on social media being removed, or the account blocking those making a public complaint.
- A BBB complaint tells this exact same tale, charging the person the day they purchased the items and telling them that “because of the shipping delay, the website has been changed”.
Halo Smart Ring vs the Rings That Actually Deliver
Now that you’ve seen the theory and what it would mean in real life, let’s break down where it stands when compared to smart rings that actually have a track record.
| Features | Halo Ring | Oura Ring 5 | Ultrahuman Ring Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $59 | $399 | $479 |
| Claimed battery | 5 days | Up to 9 days | Up to 15 days |
| Sensor validation | None disclosed | Backed by independent research | Backed by independent research |
| Company transparency | Support email, phone number, one Austin suite address, no team page | Full company info, funding history, press coverage | Full company info, funding history, press coverage |
| Independent reviews | Almost entirely 1-star outside its own site | Mixed but verifiable, real user base | Mixed but verifiable, real user base |
Why This Doesn’t Hold Up Next to an Actual Smart Ring
Having worn the Oura Ring for over a year, I can tell what an experience of using a real smart ring looks like. A real HRV and sleep monitoring smart ring is supposed to include a validated sensor, an app that has undergone extensive testing by thousands of users and a company about which one can get some information.
Whereas the description of Halo includes terms such as “Nano Chip”, there are no details on the exact type of sensor that is used, there is no evidence of any kind of validation and it is impossible to verify any numbers that the company claims to provide. On the contrary, there are at least some references to external scientific studies in relation to the sleep monitoring and HRV of the Oura Ring. As for Halo, there is nothing. It provides only the vibes and an awesome picture of the product, blatantly copied btw. Somewhere it looks like Oura Ring 4 ceramic, somewhere Oura Ring 5 and somewhere the Galaxy Ring!
There are no names of the founders of the company, there is no page of the company’s team and no press mentions either.
So, Is Halo Ring a Scam?
It would be wrong to claim that all buyers were scammed since some reviewers stated that they got a ring that was working fine. But the pattern is clear enough and you should stay away from it. A company that constantly changes the domain name due to the high number of complaints, asks for video evidence prior to refunding and doesn’t have any verified reviews except those on its official website is a company to avoid.
In case you need a ring that really collects the data, $59 spent on it could go to a product proven to work. Oura, despite all the problems related to the subscriptions, shows real stats. The same applies to Ultrahuman, which I wear every day. None of them is changing the website name every few months.
