Review: Qalo Silicone Wedding Ring

I first came across the idea of silicone wedding rings for “active people” on Instagram — of course — about 6 months ago. It seemed like a good idea; having to to take off my wedding and engagement rings when working out (with weights specifically) for safety and comfort is a bit of a pain in the arse, and I’m paranoid that one of these days I’ll lose one or both rings. However, it also seemed like a bit of a non-problem. How likely am I to really lose the rings? Is it that big of a deal to slip them into my leggings pocket for an hour or so? Certainly not enough of a problem to actually buy a replacement ring.

However, then I lost weight. Losing weight has affected the fit of my existing rings. So much so that they slide around on my finger, and suddenly the likelihood of losing the rings doesn’t seem that implausible. I could have the rings resized, but this assumes that a) I won’t put weight back on (which seems unlikely) and/or lose more (even more unlikely) or, b) that resizing the rings wouldn’t just increase the potential for damage later on. I could just stop wearing my rings, but I have grown used to the comfort on my finger and they (however wrongly) help me feel more secure working out in a male dominated environment. So, I looked into these silicone ‘active wear’ rings.

A bit of Googling later and I found myself on QALO.eu. QALO stands for “Quality, Athletics, Love, Outdoors” and they sell rings of all shapes, sizes and colours. Although some of their more complex and decorative rings are as much as 30 euros (which let’s be honest, is nowhere near the cost of a metal wedding ring), the prices on simpler bands start from 11.95 euros which is about £10, at time of writing. Even a tight git like me is willing to chuck a tenner on an off-chance.

I ordered the ‘Women’s White Quartz Smooth Stackable Silicone Ring’ and it arrived a week later, tucked away inside a cute little metallic zipped pouch with a handy clip, which would make it easy to attach the pouch to a gym bag or similar if you were planning on only wearing the QALO ring part time.

I put it on straight away. The ring itself is a couple of millimetres thicker than my usual rings (which are quite thin/petite) so it took a day or so to adjust to the feeling on my finger but I would say this was no more or less different to when I originally started wearing a ring. I put it to the test almost immediately with a variety of lifts and activities over the course of the past week or so.

At first it felt a bit weird when lifting; I had to be careful that it didn’t pinch any skin between the base of my finger (where there are calluses on my hand) and the ring itself with overhand grips for heavy deadlifts. Moving it up my finger very slightly seemed to help here. Conversely, for squats, I preferred it snug against the base of my finger so as not to roll or pinch. It hasn’t really been an issue with lighter accessory work using dumbbells, and is obviously not noticeable during cardio based work like running etc.

I’ve been wearing the QALO full time for a week now and as well as having had some positive feedback, I’ve not had to worry once about moving or losing my original rings which is great for peace of mind. I would like the ring to be slightly thinner in the band to make it more subtle, but really this is a personal preference expressed as a minor niggle. Otherwise I am happy with my QALO and will continue to wear it full time.