Bandai Put a Tamagotchi in a $110 Smart Ring That Doesn’t Track You

By Elliot Nash - News

Updated: 31 August, 2026

Readtime: 4 min

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Bandai has shrunk a full-colour Tamagotchi down to a 28mm device designed to be worn on your finger.
The Tamagotchi ring took two years to develop and uses just 64 components, compared with 116 inside Tamagotchi Paradise.
It costs ¥7,700 (AUD$70) in Japan, with Australian retailer The Gamesmen listing it for AUD$109.95 ahead of an April 2027 release.

Over the past few years, smart rings have tried to make technology disappear. Oura and Samsung will track your sleep, heart rate and activity without so much as a screen getting in the way. Bandai took one look at all that empty finger real estate and decided what it really needs is a Tamagotchi.

Of course, this isn’t really a smart ring in the traditional sense. It doesn’t track you at all. Instead, you’re the one keeping tabs on the tiny creature living on your finger, feeding it, cleaning up after it and generally making sure it survives the day.

The Tamagotchi ring squeezes a full-colour virtual pet into a wearable device measuring just 28mm tall and 23mm wide, complete with a tiny 0.56-inch colour display and the familiar three-button face. Wear it on your finger, and you’ve got more than 30 Tamagotchi characters to raise, including secret evolutions depending on how well, or badly, you look after them.

Shrinking 30 Years of Tamagotchi Onto Your Finger

Turns out shrinking a full-colour Tamagotchi down to 28mm took Bandai around two years. The company eventually cut the device to just 64 components, compared with 116 inside the current-generation Tamagotchi Paradise.

The original Tamagotchi measured around 50mm tall in 1996, but Bandai actually had to make the thing bigger when it introduced its first colour model. That grew to 68mm in 2008 because the colour screen demanded more power and, therefore, larger batteries.

Thirty years later, it’s managed to squeeze an entire colour screen, the familiar egg-shaped body and its original three-button controls into something a little over half the height of the original. Sure, the Tamagotchi ring itself stands 28mm tall, but considering how small the old-school version felt in our hands way back when, seeing it sitting on a finger makes the whole thing almost too tiny to be real.

And yet, it’s still unmistakably a Tamagotchi. The familiar three-button layout remains on the front, while additional controls on the left and right sides of the ring let you feed, clean and desperately keep your digital pet alive from your finger. Oh, and to keep the size as miniaturised as possible, they developed a dedicated charging case instead of squeezing a charging port onto the device. A first for Tamagotchi, too.

Tamagotchi ring 8 — The Tamagotchi ring uses a dedicated charging case, a first for the Tamagotchi series | Image: Supplied

How Much Will the Tamagotchi Ring Cost?

It’s an unnecessarily over-engineered solution to a problem nobody was really asking Bandai to solve, but somehow that makes us like it more. And Bandai isn’t even the first Japanese company to decide our fingers need more technology. Casio has already shrunk its digital watches down to ring size, first with the CRW-001 Ring Watch and later a miniature G-SHOCK. Between Casio’s tiny watches and Bandai’s virtual pet, we’re probably stretching the definition of a smart ring, with finger-sized gadgets seemingly becoming their own strange little tech category.

Right now, the Tamagotchi ring will cost ¥7,700 (AUD$70) in Japan, with the first release expected in February 2027. Bandai hasn’t said where it will be available down under, but Australian retailer The Gamesmen has listed the device at AUD$109.95, with availability currently slated for April 2027.

For comparison, the original Tamagotchi launched in Japan for just ¥1,980 in 1996, roughly AUD$22 at the time, or around AUD$45 in today’s money. So even after accounting for inflation, you’re paying well over twice as much to move your virtual pet from a keychain to your finger.

But Tamagotchi inflation aside, we’re already wondering what’s next. Does Bandai give Digimon the same treatment, or does Pokémon eventually figure out a way to turn a ring into a tiny training device? Gotta wear ’em all, we guess.