The Circular Ring Slim is a skinnier, smarter wearable

Nothing marks you out as a tourist in a strange city like staring at your smartphone every 30 seconds as you try to follow Google’s guidance to your Airbnb. If you want to blend in with the locals, the new Circular Ring Slim uses haptics to help you navigate unknown streets, so you can find your way around without taking your phone out of your pocket.

If the journey still stresses you out, it can also use vibrations to lead you in guided breathing exercises to bring your heart rate back down. You can even use the haptics to wake you up in the morning.

Circular reckons it’s the thinnest and lightest smart ring ever, at just 2.2 mm and weighing only 2 grams. It’s subtle in matt black titanium, so shouldn’t stand out like rival wearables, and the button seen on previous-gen Rings has been ditched now that haptics are fully integrated.

There’s still room inside for a three-axis accelerometer, surface temperature sensor and three-wavelength PPG sensor, to monitor your heart and respiratory rates, blood oxygen level and skin temperature, plus tracking for day-to-day movement and sleep.

The built-in battery is good for six days of 24/7 wear, collecting data every 2 minutes and with on-board memory for 20 days of health data. It ties in to Circular’s Kira+ smart assistant, which analyses your daily habits and sets health goals through the smartphone companion app, which doesn’t need a monthly subscription. It’ll spit all the accumulated data out to Google Fit and Apple HealthKit too.

The Circular Ring Slim is up for pre-order right now on the official circular.xyz website, with the first customers getting one on their fingers from the 15th of December. Anyone ordering early can bag one for £199; the official retail price is set at £225.

• Related: What are the best fitness trackers? Fitbit, Garmin, Withings and more tested