Grades: Smartwatches (B+), smart rings (C), smart glasses (A)
It’s been a dramatic 2025 for wearables. Some trends were predictable, like smart glasses continuing their exponential growth and smartwatches adding more AI and health features. But I didn’t anticipate some things, like Oura lawsuits strangling its smart ring rivals or the impact of tariffs.
Then, I’ll look at the biggest wearable and fitness watch brands and grade their 2025 performance — where they succeeded and how they could have done better.
Judging my 2025 predictions for smartwatches, rings, and glasses
As expected, Garmin tested “loyal users’ willingness to buy pricier status-symbol smartwatches.” The Garmin Fenix 8 Pro ($1.2–2K) and Venu X1 ($800) are clear examples, but even mid-rangers like the Venu 4 ($550) have become more high-end.
Add in the $800 Apple Watch Ultra 3, $500 and $650 Galaxy Watches, and the $1,000 Polar Grit X2 Pro, and you can see brands normalizing phone-level prices (and offsetting tariff costs).
It was also expected that there would be “more options” for thrifty consumers. The Apple Watch SE 3 qualifies, sticking to its old $250 price, but it’s the exception. We saw cheap trackers from Xiaomi and CMF, but very few cheap Android smartwatches besides discounted last-gen models. Even Amazfit sold as many $300+ watches as $100 ones.
Tariffs have interfered with budget options, making it more profitable to attract wealthier hobbyists.
Meanwhile, Google, Samsung, and Apple started pushing the idea of smartwatch AI in 2025. But it’s still mostly on-phone processing of queries and health data analysis.
The Pixel Watch 4 and Apple Watch S11 have on-watch AI tools like smart replies or live translation, and I appreciate how Gemini on Android watches syncs well with Google apps. I expect a bigger AI push in 2026, particularly with the Fitbit Personal Health Coach AI.
Again, companies clearly want smartwatches to become medical devices, but we’re still in the predictive “wellness” phase. For example, Samsung added virtual doctor’s visits and prescription management while giving its watches vascular health and antioxidant index analysis, with heart failure warnings coming soon.
That said, my analyst’s prediction of direct blood pressure monitoring on watches in 2025 didn’t happen. But Apple started offering hypertension alerts, while Fitbit and Oura launched hypertension studies — so at least we’re getting warning signs for high blood pressure.
As for smart rings, I don’t have hard figures for 2025 yet, but IDC’s current estimates show it’s a tiny but growing sliver compared to fitness trackers, and growing much more slowly than smart glasses.
Sales have grown, but I’m expecting the category to stagnate. Oura has leveraged its patents to demand royalty payments from every major smart ring brand, bringing Circular and RingConn to heel, successfully banning Ultrahuman from the U.S., and currently challenging Samsung.
The current rumor is that Samsung won’t make a Galaxy Ring 2, and there’s little hope for competition and innovation in the space if brands like Fitbit and Apple decide it’s not worth the legal hassle — or giving Oura a cut of the profits — to make a smart ring.
Finally, IDC’s Jitesh Ubrani wasn’t bullish on smart glasses’ future last year, saying that “most consumers don’t need” the photo/ video/ music/ AI combo and that sales would only climb from 2.5 million to 3.5 million in 2025.
Turns out, IDC’s current forecast is 9.4 million glasses sold in 2025, Meta’s Ray-Ban/Oakley partner EssilorLuxottica has ramped up production to 10 million per year, and Ubrani is much more enthusiastic about smart glasses’ future.
That said, 10 million sold may not qualify as “mainstream,” compared to 200 million smartwatches and trackers in 2025. The Samsung AI and HUD glasses coming in 2026 should help the category continue to grow, especially internationally.
Garmin in 2025: B
Garmin launched a series of successful, high-quality watches this year: the Instinct 3 for hikers and campers, the Vivoactive 6 for thrifty indoor athletes and daily step-counters, the Forerunner 570 for runners and triathletes, the Forerunner 970 for pro-level athletes and trail runners, and the Venu 4 as the all-around best option.
Unfortunately, Garmin raised watch prices across its entire lineup for extra revenue, delivering strong earnings but making them less accessible to everyday athletes. As much as I love the Venu X1, I can’t recommend people spend $800 on one.
From an economic standpoint, Garmin has become a top-5 brand for worldwide smartwatch sales. Despite that, Garmin’s stock plummeted because its uber-expensive Fenix 8 Pro couldn’t compete with last year’s massive Fenix 8 sales, undoing all its gains.
The new Garmin Connect+ subscription, which launched this year, may have earned some profits, but Garmin fans have never embraced the feature, especially when it’s required for features like Garmin Trails, extra badges, and their Year in Review summary.
Unrealistic shareholder expectations aside, Garmin has had a strong year, but its tendency to price-lock the best features to Fenix-level watches is harder to stomach when the “cheaper” models are still expensive. And you never know when there’ll be a major blue triangle crash.
COROS in 2025: A-
I won’t grade every fitness watch brand, but I’m highlighting COROS because it’s had a strong 2025 as a foil to Garmin. The COROS Nomad, Apex 4, and Pace 4 have each impressed me with their accurate GPS and HR data, weeks of battery life, affordable prices, and fast performance for trail and street maps.
COROS gained some ground on its rivals with vital features: media playback controls, move alerts, undo laps, flashlight mode, cycle tracking, mid-activity voice alerts, street names and POIs on maps, and an adventure journal.
Equally important, COROS updates its entire lineup, rather than price-lock features to the flagships. It makes models like the $300 COROS Pace Pro feel like a great value, because you get tools like offline maps and Strava Live Segments that only $600+ Garmin watches have.
It’s no coincidence that COROS is the “fastest-growing watch brand year-over-year on Strava” in the app’s 2025 end-of-year report. It won’t catch up to Garmin (2nd overall) anytime soon, but COROS has earned a reputation for budget quality with serious athletes — stealing Garmin’s customers.
COROS’s main 2025 blemish was an IT exposé revealing major security vulnerabilities on all COROS watches, letting hackers potentially access your account, snoop on notifications, and worse. COROS says it has resolved these issues, thankfully.
Oura in 2025: A
Oura reports selling 5.5 million rings so far, with half those sales in the past 12 months. It also has a new U.S. DoD contract, which requires them to build a manufacturing facility in Texas. This deal also caused some backlash over fears Oura would share private data with the Trump administration, but CEO Tom Hale has reassured otherwise.
The Oura Ring 4 continuously received new features in 2025. The LLM-powered Oura Advisor is the centerpiece, giving advice and coaching based on your ring stats. The AI Meals tool gives you a nutritional summary of your plate with a photo. Your Oura Ring can now track pregnancy and premenopause symptoms. Its Preventive Health data studies signs of cumulative stress. The list goes on!
Oura also launched the Ring 4 Ceramic, a more expensive model with premium zirconia ceramic materials. While our tester praised how “incredibly soft” it feels to wear, he’s also noticed areas where the finish has been “scratched off” from wear and tear, and that the new finish makes it “noticeably thicker and a bit heavier” than the normal Ring 4.
Overall, Oura kept users happy with new features, made record-breaking profits, and weaponized patents to scuttle its biggest rival (Ultrahuman) and demand royalties from the rest. That’s a good business position to be in.
Meta released three pairs of smart glasses in 2025, which is a significant accomplishment. Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) is the centerpiece, and while it isn’t significantly different from the original, the extra hours of battery and 3K video do make it easier to recommend.
The Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses cater specifically to the athletic crowd, particularly with the Garmin integration, and while I loved them, it’ll take time to see whether they resonate because of the weight and price.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses have struck a chord with the tech niche, with some impressive HUD features that have started to live up to the Google Glass idea people have waited a decade for. They’re too thick, heavy, and expensive to break out of that niche, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Hardware aside, Meta has done well with software updates in 2025. It added Meta AI support for several apps (Audible, Spotify, Google Calendar, Outlook, and Weather), released Live AI and Live Translation, sped up camera captures, and brought Gen 2 features like improved stabilization to the Gen 1 glasses.
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