Ex-Meta employees launch a smart ring called Stream

Two former employees of Meta are betting on a different type of wearable. Their new startup, Sandbar Products, is coming out of the gate today with the first of these products: a smart ring called Stream that emphasizes frictionless note-taking and gesture-based media controls rather than fitness or always-on AI. The ring is on preorder for $249, and the company says shipments are projected to start in the summer of 2026.

What Stream actually does for notes and media control

The idea is to never let another thought fly away after it strikes.

Touch your ring to jot down a note on the fly, get it transcribed, and watch as it pops up in the companion app tagged as reminders, calendar items, or more simply as notes. Sandbar describes the experience as “fast, private and effortless,” cutting down the number of steps people might otherwise hurdle to open an app, locate a note, and start dictating.

To control playback, Stream takes cues from hand signals — picture a pause, a skip in the track, or the twist of a volume dial without having to reach for your phone or earbuds. It’s not a fitness tracker and it’s not being pitched as an AI wearable in the camp of experimental assistants; it is a utility ring, for capture and control.

A separate bet from health wearables and AI rings

Sandbar’s launch comes at the intersection of two turbocharged trends. On one side are fitness-minded rings such as the Oura, Ultrahuman, RingConn, and the impending Galaxy Ring from Samsung that are concentrating on sleep readiness and biometrics. On the other are AI-forward wearables that promise conversational assistance; Amazon’s acquisition of Bee was another sign of growing interest in this category.

Stream deliberately sidesteps both lanes. There’s no heart-rate sensor or step counting, and it isn’t built to be an ambient AI agent. Instead, Sandbar is making a more modest promise: capture inspiration on the fly while keeping media controls at your fingertips. That narrowed focus could also help the team prioritize reliability and battery life, two perennial headaches with small-form wearables.

Design and interaction details for the Stream ring

The ring is made with an aluminum exterior, resin inner surface, and glass touchpad for input. It’s good for both rain and handwashing, Sandbar says, but that should be taken as “everyday durability,” rather than exercised in rugged sports. While the company has not described its sensor arrays, ring-based gesture control generally uses a combination of touch input and motion sensing to differentiate intentional commands from unintentional movements.

In theory, the use case is straightforward: you can record a note while you’re walking the dog, commuting, or cooking — times when phones are clumsy and earbuds aren’t always in your ears. If transcription turns out to be accurate and organization is automatic, then Stream could turn into the kind of soft productivity hack that doesn’t make headlines, merely quietly improves people’s lives.

Pricing and subscription model for Sandbar’s Stream

Sandbar is planning a freemium software sales model. The company says the free level includes unlimited notes and limited in-app chats, while a $10-a-month Pro tier gives you advanced organization and features. The hardware is $249 in preorder. That playbook reflects the broader wearables economics, wherein device margins are bolstered by software services — think Oura’s membership or Whoop’s subscription-first strategy.

It will have to show that the value of long-term note-taking is more than something consumers can get for free in phone applications or with built-in voice assistants. How fast the ring wakes, how consistently it transcribes amid background noise, and how well the app promotes fleeting musings to structured tasks without manual cleanup will determine (at least in part) if it’s a hit.

Founders and development timeline for Sandbar Products

Sandbar was started by former Meta employees Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, according to TechCrunch. The company is accepting preorders right now with a shipping window estimated in summer 2026 — an unusually clear runway for a hardware startup. That lead time gives Sandbar room to harden software, fine-tune gesture detection, and traverse manufacturing at scale, but it also offers enough daylight for the landscape to change on its way to buyers.

Market context and outlook for smart rings category

Smart rings are on the rise. Counterpoint Research analysts have highlighted rings as an emerging subcategory within wearables, bolstered by momentum from Samsung and ongoing interest in Oura’s health metrics. The remaining question is how large the market will be for non-health functions on a ring. If Stream can genuinely replace the tap-to-note habit on phones and reliably offer gesture control, it may slot into a unique space compared with wellness trackers or AI pins.

What to watch for next:

• Battery life and charging performance
• Privacy architecture for voice notes
• Integration depth with iOS and Android calendars
• Real-world transcription accuracy

If Sandbar can get those execution details right, its focus on a narrow set of tasks could be a strength — not another one-size-fits-all wearable but a ring that does two things really well.