Smart ring wearable branded 'the worst product ever'

By Tara Donnelly

Last updated 02 December 2014

After a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, Logbar’s Bluetooth-powered smart ring looked like a promising, time-saving piece of wearable tech. Unfortunately for Logbar (and over five thousand Kickstarter backers), the Ring hasn’t quite met expectations – in fact, the gadget is being panned by reviewers as ‘the worst product ever made.’

YouTube reviews channel Snazzy Labs has released a video detailing their experience with the product, and to say it’s scathing would be an understatement. According to the review, not only is the Ring bulky, ugly and impractical to wear, it actually doesn’t work 90% of the time – and this from a product with a $269 asking price.

High hopes

The product was designed to allow wearers to control home appliances, write and send text messages, and make contactless payments with a simple wave of the hand. Logbar began the project in 2013, with the hopes of developing gesture-recognition technology that could be incorporated into a small piece of wearable gadgetry.

Tech enthusiasts loved the idea of easily controlling their home environment and smartphone through simple hand gestures, and the company’s Kickstarter eventually raised over $880,000 in pledges. Sadly for eager customers, the final product has apparently failed to deliver on just about every promise Logbar made to its investors.

Epic fail

Snazzy Labs reports that not only do both the Ring itself and the corresponding smartphone app have a less-than-ten-percent success rate when it comes to recognizing gestures, users need to actually have the app open for the ring to work at all.

The time-wasting, glitchy app, combined with the ineffective hardware and overall terrible design of the device, puts the Ring (and any future products developed by Logbar) straight on to our ‘Avoid’ list.

We're excited about the future of wearable technology, but the lesson here is that it takes more than a crowdfunding campaign to get a usable product off the ground - especially when targeting a notoriously picky and unforgiving customer base.

Logbar’s tagline for its smart ring was ‘Shortcut Everything’. But after such a disastrous response to the Ring from critics, we’re wondering if the product’s developers were the ones taking the shortcuts.