[shankar.balan]

All,

I want to begin this new thread because I am interested in a relatively unobtrusive way to track my health vitals and fitness progress.

For some years now, I have worn only my Apple Watch for reasons earlier outlined in great detail in the Apple Watch thread.

My Apple watch has proven to be an invaluable companion.

However, I still love my mechanical watches and would like to go back to wearing those. I don't want to wear two watches.

Hence, I am seeking information on other new age wearables and the Smart Ring came to mind.

1. Is it an effective substitute for the smart watch as a health and fitness tracker and recorder?
2. Is Expensive = Best?
3. Is this the Future?
4. Which is the BEST Smart Ring to buy?
5. Considering the one’s available now are not ‘apple’ products, how efficient is their pairing and integration with iOS?
6. Is a Smart Ring an independent tracker and recorder like a Smart watch is, or does it require constant proximity to the smart phone to which it is paired?

Would really appreciate any and all inputs please from any and all of you Smart ring users and non users too.

Thank you!

[deathwalkr]

Two of my acquaintances use smartrings.

One of them uses Ultrahuman and the other guy uses Gabit. Both of them wax eloquence about it and have ditched their smartwatches.

The Ultrahuman ring wearer uses it with his iPhone and has no complaints about integration.

[UPS_Guru]

Even if the basic tracking is accurate, regardless of the brand, the form factor limits the size of the battery.

Therefore, the real questions to ask are:
- Does it even last a day in practice?
- What about the longevity of the battery, given the frequent charging?
- Does the brand even provide an option to replace the battery?

My take is that for now, for all-day wearers and heavy users, the ring is not ready to replace the crown (aka smart watch) yet!

[shankar.balan]

Thank you.
In reference to the points made on charging and holding charge, it appears that these smart rings last upto 4-5 days.
In my general reading on this subject, I came across this recent article (which seems to cover a few interesting aspects) and would like to share it here.
https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-smart-rings/

[subraiyr]

I have used Ringconn smart ring for some time. However, it was gifted and I had an issue with the size. Therefore I ended up ditching it

Effective Substitute: Yes, for a casual fitness enthusiast, it is. The challenge is that, unlike a smartwatch wherein you can start a workout with a couple of touches or some watches detect workouts, this is not possible in smart rings. Ringconn 2 and Ultrahuman can analyze an activity based on heartbeats but do not qualify the actual activity - running, walking, swimming, etc. But if you are just a regular walker and want to count steps, calories, etc., this makes sense. Also, they do track sleep, spo2, temperature differences, etc. But I don't think they track arterial fibrillation, stiffness, etc. I am not sure, but with my limited understanding, they do not have a GPS built-in

Expensive - may not be the best. The most popular one is Oura ring which is costly and tied down to a subscription to view your health parameters. Ultrahuman and Ringconn do not do that and both are fairly similar in cost - about 28k

Future - For all you know, someone will develop an implant that can monitor all your vitals. It will be invasive, but what the hell, there will be takers for that as well.

Best Smart Ring - Oura or Ultra Human seem to be the preferred ones to go with. Samsung is coming up with one. Ringconn 2 is also a decent one, but I think it's not available in India to buy

Independence - Some smart rings are supposed to connect to the cloud without a smartphone, but most of them need a phone to sync data and push to the cloud. I have seen with Ringconn that it needs to sync to the cloud once a day to hold metrics together

At the end of the day, it all depends on your use case. I tried one but ditched it for the simple reason that I would love to see my rings close and it motivates me to perform better. And I simply love the back-to-home feature of Apple Watch esp when traveling and I am running. Finally, the missus gifted it to me, so will use it till it dies or I do

[Snow_man]

Hi,
I was looking for a smart ring a couple of weeks back. My main concern was about the accuracy of these devices.

I was about to take the plunge and get the ultra human ring. But then I found this YouTuber named The Quantified Scientist. This guy tests out wearables against professional tech which are know to be of high accuracy.

According to his testing, Apple Watch seems to have better accuracy across different features. The smart rings seem to have about 50-60% correlation to the benchmark it was tested against. While the Apple Watches were about 70-80%.

I haven’t purchased a wearable yet. But the stats I require for my sleep tracking would probably need a higher accuracy than 50-60%. I have shared the same concern with my doctor who recommended a wearable in the first place. Let’s see what he says.

IMO, if you don’t really need high accuracy for let’s say fixing your sleep or anything similar and just want to keep an eye on your vitals a smart ring would do just fine.

[avchrono]

True on the form-factor that will always have a smaller battery. But consider that the screen is the one that uses the most of the power, and the smart ring wont have that power hog, seems that the small battery will be able to pull it off.

Originally Posted by UPS_Guru

Even if the basic tracking is accurate, regardless of the brand, the form factor limits the size of the battery.

[shoubhikganguly]

Hi, I was in the same boat a few months back. I was using a Garmin smartwatch to track my runs. At the same time I was feeling guilty about not using my non-smart watches. While I have seen a couple of people wearing a smartwatch on one wrist and a conventional one on the other, I will never do that. I experimented with a cheap Boat smartring - it was an absolute waste of money, but I could see the utility. I bought a Ultrahuman Air and have been using it for a couple of months. Here are the pros and cons

pros:
1. Can wear it continuously, including in the shower and while sleeping. It is not as intrusive as a smartwatch while sleeping
2. no notifications
3. If you get a subtle finish, people will not even notice it
4. It gives me all the basic info - HR, VO2 Max, HR zones, skin temperature, HR variability, cardiac age etc.
5. It works for 3-4 days on a single charge
6. Sleep tracking is superb
7. They have additional features that can be unlocked (some are paid subscriptions)

cons:
1. The run tracking is not good. I have to use Strava on my phone for tracking my run, while the UH ring tracks my HR during the run. The good thing is that UH syncs with Strava and Google Fit, so you will have an integrated view of your workout.
2. It is expensive


All in all, I love the ring and do not miss my smartwatch. I can also use my conventional watches along with the ring.

Hope this helps

[amitoj]

This thread is so timely for me as I am also looking into taking the plunge with Oura. I love my Apple watch and all that it does but I would prefer to not have to wear it when sleeping. I am a little worried about it not being able to do a good job of detecting an activity on its own. Is it possible to force it to do that via its app? If yes, then that's not a deal breaker for me.
The cost is another big thing that's holding me back, so I am waiting for some good Black Friday deals to drop on it and maybe then take the plunge.

Also, I think if I am not wearing my Apple watch all the time, then it will help me stay away from my phone a little more, which is a big positive!

[NiInJa]

I would not recommend having a ring as fitness tracker if the readings are inaccurate, it destroys the whole purpose of having an activity tracking device. That is one reason why I switched to Garmin and recommend nothing else but Apple watches if one is into iOS.

Please have a look at a YouTube channel named 'The Quantified Scientist'. That guy does extensive reviews, almost Team-BHP level quality reviews of smart watches and activity devices.

For me, a ring is a strict no no, I removed my wedding ring as well ever since I started cooking and doing dishes seriously . Simply no time to take it off and clean it after kneading dough (atta) and marinating meat.

[amitoj]

Originally Posted by NiInJa

I
Please have a look at a YouTube channel named 'The Quantified Scientist'. That guy does extensive reviews, almost team-bhp level quality reviews of smart watches and activity devices.

Originally Posted by Snow_man

I was about to take the plunge and get the ultra human ring. But then I found this YouTuber named The Quantified Scientist. This guy tests out wearables against professional tech which are know to be of high accuracy.

Thanks for mentioning the Quantified Scientist. I had not heard of him. I saw a couple of his videos and he mentions that Oura and Apple Watch 10(?) are at par when it comes to measuring sleep. Then I went to a couple of my regular YouTubers, DCRainmaker and DesFit who regularly and thoroughly review gadgets related to the fitness industry and noticed that they dont talk much about rings. So, that got me thinking that I should really be looking at the ring as a companion to my Apple watch where I use the watch to track my workouts and walks and the ring to track my sleep.
So, I have placed an order for Ultrahuman Ring AIR. Will post more updates here. Now I will have 3 devices to track my day
1. Apple watch to track walks and workouts.
2. Ultrahuman to track sleep and non-workout hours.
3. Wahoo chest strap heart rate monitor and power meters to track cycling.

[sibi6613]

Hi!
Ultrahuman ring air user here. I recently purchased it about a week ago and I can share first hand perspective about it.

In short - it is extremely good at sleep tracking. Some other features like asking you to start tapering off on caffeine is really good! But it is horrible at exercise tracking. It is still in beta and doesn’t work well. This also cannot track your heart rate live. It updates the heart rate every 5-10 mins or so, but there’s no option to track your live heart rate. It also has a skin temperature sensor and it told me today that I might be having a fever (which was true though the fever started the previous night itself).

These were just some initial observations but DM me if you want to know anything in specific

[amitoj]

So, I took the plunge last month and got myself the Ultrahuman Ring AIR. I have been wearing it for a month now but I was so disappointed by it in the first couple of weeks that I reached out to support to start the refund process. My main complaint was that the ring was doing a terrible job of tracking speed, the main reason I had bought the ring for. Couple of nights it totally failed to recognize sleep. Secondary issue was that it was doing a terrible job of tracking heart rate during workouts. Once I reached out to support, the biggest issue for returning the ring became the quality of support. I had to reach out to them via email, in-app chat and Reddit thread to get a response beyond an automated one. Finally, after nearly 2 weeks, I got the response that they had started the refund. I was pleasantly surprised that they want me to continue to wear the ring though. I am not sure whether it was because of their confidence in the product or that they did not want to be bothered with a shipping label.

Anyway, 2 more weeks down the line, the ring seems to be stabilizing now and the heart rate and workout calories seem to be getting in the same ballpark as my Apple watch. Sleep data still needs a bit of work. For example, last night I went to bed late but it did not recognize that and thought I was in bed for 8 hours with 1 hour of being awake. Apple watch had no such issues.

All said and done, I am willing to give the ring another month before considering Oura gen 4. I really dont want to get into Oura's subscription model.

[Eddy]

Originally Posted by amitoj

All said and done, I am willing to give the ring another month before considering Oura gen 4. I really dont want to get into Oura's subscription model.

Hi Amitoj, how has your experience been since this update?

[shankar.balan]

Funny thing has happened to me. I have switched off my Apple Watch. Ive completely stopped wearing it. I’ve gone back to my mechanical and automatic time pieces with a vengeance.

So contrarywise I’m not actually sure in the foreseeable future, that I will even consider a smart ring. I’m enjoying the freedom from the digital task master far too much!