You’re driving in your car and out of nowhere you have a brainstorm for the big presentation you need to make tomorrow.
For good reasons, you can’t pull out your phone. Instead, you raise your hand, touch your index finger and quietly speak into your palm. Brainstorm preserved.
That’s the convenience promised by the Stream Ring, a new wearable coming next year from a company called Sandbar. It functions like a private notetaker that lives on your hand.
Thoughts arrive unpredictably, often at inconvenient moments, right? Rather than fumbling for a notes app or dictating loudly in public, this low-profile ring is designed to let you whisper to store ideas in a private conversational interface.
Smart rings are usually used for health tracking, sleep metrics or notifications. Oura popularized the idea for sleep and wellness tracking. Voice AI gadgets are emerging in parallel, including recorders like Plaud AI. The Stream Ring is a hybrid of both product types — essentially, it’s a microphone you wear like jewelry. Gadget-minded consumers will have to find a balance that suits them between convenience and intrusiveness.
The Stream Ring does make use of artificial intelligence, but it’s different from conversational AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, not least in avoiding their tendency toward sycophancy.
Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.
How the notetaking smart ring works
Sandbar is positioning the Stream Ring as an augmentation tool instead of another AI assistant that tries to do your thinking for you. The focus is cognitive extension and quiet mental clarity rather than companionship or automation.
Stream consists of a ring and a companion app on your phone. The idea is to wear the ring on your dominant index finger, raise your hand slightly when inspiration strikes, press the tiny touchpad and speak softly. Sandbar says that the ring is not always listening — haptics confirm when the microphone is active — and picks up sounds only within a «personal range.» Everything routes to the Stream app on an iPhone (the app will be available only on iOS).
When you speak, Stream creates notes inside the app. Sandbar says those notes live in a «conversational interface,» meaning you can both read the notes and listen to them like voice memos. This gives you an opportunity to review and expand ideas as if you were talking through them. The AI component focuses on transcription and conversational organization.
The Stream Ring’s setup also includes a personalized digital voice — dubbed Inner Voice — that mirrors your own sound and speaking style when reading notes aloud. Sandbar says the experience feels like talking to yourself rather than conversing with a chatbot. Sandbar describes this approach as expanding your own thinking instead of replacing it. Contrast that with other companies pitching AI gadgets as virtual companions.
CNET’s Scott Stein, an expert in smart glasses and other wearable, AI-infused tech, got an early demo from Sandbar. The Stream Ring’s «focus on quiet note-taking feels different» from voice AI services and wearables in general, he says. «It’s also something made to feel like an extension of your notes rather than another person. And it feels less intrusive.»
Sandbar promises all-day battery life for the Stream Ring.
The promise of a lightweight, whisper-friendly wearable for rapid thought capture fits the moment. With AI flowing into every productivity app and headset, a ring that augments internal monologue instead of competing with it stands out.
The Stream Ring is available to preorder now in silver for $249 or gold for $299. It includes three months of Stream Pro, a premium subscription required for most features to work. This then costs $10 a month for early users, though there is a free tier available. Sandbar plans for the smart ring to begin shipping in summer 2026.