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Smart rings claim 'continuous' heart rate monitoring. The physics of photoplethysmography and a 20 milliamp-hour battery make that impossible. Here is the duty cycle nobody talks about, and why Pulsyn shows the gaps instead of hiding them.
When Intel shut down Basis in 2016, the devices did not break. The servers did. The cloud model turns your health history into a loan, and the company owns the vault. Pulsyn stores everything on your phone because your phone is the only hardware you actually own.
Most smart rings stop holding a full charge after 18 to 24 months, and the companies that sell them know it. The battery is sealed inside a titanium shell, glued shut, with no replacement path. That is not an accident. It is a business model.
Most smart ring manufacturers advertise 7-day battery life. That number comes from a test mode where the heart rate monitor is off and the wearer is asleep. In real use, the gap between marketing and physics is about 40 percent.
Most hardware startups take VC money before they know if anyone wants their product. Pulsyn's $500K Kickstarter campaign is a demand test with no safety net.
The smart ring market is splitting into three species: premium health platforms, single-purpose tools, and subscription-hungry AI wrappers. Pebble's Index 01 proves the divergence is real.
Smart rings sell for $300 to $500. The parts inside cost roughly $30. That 90% gross margin is not a secret, but nobody talks about it because the real product is not the ring. It is your biometric data stream.
