REVIEW – Remember with activity trackers were crazy popular back in the days of Fitbits and Misfit fitness trackers? Then the smartwatch came on the scene and those dedicated activity trackers have all but disappeared for the most part. Now, we’re seeing another shift in fitness tracking devices with smart rings. I’ve reviewed a few of them this year and the latest one to take up residence on my finger is the Ultrahuman Ring AIR smart ring. Let’s take a look.
What is it?
The Ultrahuman Ring AIR is a wearable fitness tracker, otherwise known as a smart ring, that tracks your steps, stress, sleep, heart rate, temperature, and more.
What’s included?
- The first step is to receive a ring sizing kit. Once you figure out the size you need, you can place the order
- Ultrahuman Ring AIR smart ring
- USB-C to USB-C cable
- Standard charger
Tech specs
Click to expand Specs
Dimensions – 8.1mm width – 2.45 – 2.8 mm thickness (varies with size)
Weight – 2.4 – 3.6 g (varies with size)Spec1
Material – Titanium outer shell with medical-grade hypoallergenic epoxy resin inner shell
Connectivity – Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE5)
Sensors –
- Infrared Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor
- Non-contact medical-grade skin temperature sensor
- 6-axis motion sensors
- Red LEDs (heart rate monitoring and oxygen saturation)
- Green LEDs (heart rate monitoring)
- Infrared LEDs (heart rate monitoring)
Battery –
- Rechargeable, non-replaceable 24mAh LiPo battery
- Last up to 6 days on a full charge
- 90 mins to fully charge the Ring from 0% to 100%
Design and features
Even after using the sizing kit, I had trouble getting the correct size for my Ultrahuman AIR review sample. The ring in the sizing kit that fit the best on my ring finger was a size 6, but when that ring arrived, it was too tight. So I had to send it back for a size 7, which is a bit too big, but I’ve made it work. So do make sure that you order the ring sizing kit BEFORE you order the ring.
I went with the Raw Titanium version, but this ring is also available in Aster Black, Matte Grey, Bionic Gold, and Space Silver. It is well-made and lightweight, which means it is comfortable for 24/7 wear, although the band is a little wider than I prefer.
The ring’s inner shell is made of epoxy resin, which is fully enclosed so that you can wash your hands, shower, and swim while wearing the ring without worrying about water damage damage. It’s safe for up to 100 meters (about 328 feet) for up to 12 hours.
There’s a thin flat section designed to be worn on the palm side of your finger. I wish the ring had some type of marking on top so that you would know when it twisted around your finger. Since my ring was slightly too large, I felt like I had to check the orientation quite often.
Ultrahuman app
This ring does not have any type of display (wouldn’t it be awesome if it did?) so you will need to install the Ultrahuman app to set things up. The Home tab is pretty much just a long scrolling screen of the biometric data captured by the ring for that day. Let’s look at each block which you can tap to get more info.
The top block is for movement. On the Home tab, it gives you a percentage of your day’s movement goal. Under the movement dial, there’s an hourly graph of the time you moved. Below that is your estimated calories that you have burned along with your steps.
When you tap that block, you can scroll through a variety of graphs that show when you’ve been active throughout the day.
Back to the home screen, the next block is the Stress Rhythm block. The home screen shows what stress zone you’re currently in and then tapping that block gives you a more detailed overview of the daily stress timeline. This information can help you determine what factors might influence your stress levels because you can see a detailed timeline of when your stress has spiked.
The next block on the home screen is the Dynamic Recovery block. Although it sounds like this has to do with recovering from your workouts, Ultrahuman defines Dynamic Recovery as your overall state of well-being. It takes your stress levels, sleep, HRV, temperature, and more into consideration when it provides a real-time score.
Scrolling farther down the home screen, we have the Sleep block. The home screen view gives you an overall score and your sleep debt amount. This is the amount of time that you’re behind in your sleep from the past night’s sleep. It’s a reminder to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep per night.
When the Sleep block is tapped, you get much more info on your previous night’s sleep. The level of detail is impressive. You’ll even see how many times you tossed and turned during the night, the temperature during the night, and your sleep cycles.
If you suffer from sleep issues or insomnia, the information collected by the Ultrahuman Ring AIR and tailored tips in the app could be invaluable in improving and solving those problems. Note that this ring and app do not provide explicit sleep apnea tracking, but you can check the oxygen saturation information under each night’s sleep data to find any warning signs.
Back to the home screen, we scroll down to the individual markers section that shows heart rate information, your cardio age, and more. This section is a quick way to see your averages without drilling down to each section. But of course, you can click on each one for more info. I really have to hand it to Ultrahuman because they give you so much information through the app. But that’s not all they provide.
If using the app is a bit tedious for digging through the data, Ultrahuman sends periodic high-level insight reports that you can read through your desktop’s browser.
Automatic workout detection
The Ultrahuman app has a feature (in beta) that you can use to kick off workout tracking. I don’t really advise using this feature because it uses a lot of battery life. Luckily, the app will detect if you’ve worked out and will prompt you to add the workout along with the type of workout.
Once a workout has been detected and added to the app, you can read more data about it, including a breakdown of the heart rate zones you were in during the session, calories burned, and more.
Adding more functionality to the Ultrahuman app through PowerPlugs
You can expand the Ultrahuman’s features by turning on various PowerPlugs. PowerPlugs are a variety of free and premium plugins that you can add to the app. Free PowerPlugs include a Vitamin D feature that will prompt you to get outside to soak up some sun at the perfect time of day. The Caffeine Window PowerPlug notifies you when you should get some caffeine to improve your energy and when you should stop so you won’t affect your sleep.
Other PowerPlugs include cycle tracking for women, pregnancy insights, screen time, and more. There are also premium (paid) PowerPlugs like AFib detection ($4.90/mo) and Cardio Adaptibitly ($2.90/m0). Ultrahuman is constantly adding more plugins and teases this in the Coming Soon section of the PowerPlug page.
How’s the battery life of the Ultrahuman Ring AIR?
First of all, the Ring AIR comes with the standard charger that you see me holding in the image above.
The battery life Ultrahuman AIR is good, but it’s not as awesome as the RingConn smart ring which lasts for 10-12 days on a single charge. Don’t get me wrong, the Ultrahuman ring is way better than the Circular Ring Slim smart ring I recently reviewed. The battery life with that ring was terrible!
After 3-4 weeks of testing the Ultrahuman Ring AIR smart ring, I found it could constantly last for about 5 days on a full charge. When I first started testing this ring, I was only getting about 2 days of battery life because I was using the beta feature for tracking workouts. When I stopped doing that and let the ring detect when I had done a workout, the battery life improved dramatically.
The charger requires that you use a USB-C cable with it to connect to a power source. If you want to spend an additional $45, you can buy the Voyager charger which adds light indicators signifying three charging states – white for charging, red for an error in charging, and green when charging is complete! It also comes with a handy pouch so it’s easy to carry on your travels.
What it doesn’t offer is its own built-in battery to truly make it a great travel charger. Other smart rings like the RingConn smart ring include a wireless charger.
What I like about the Ultrahuman AIR smart ring
- Deep dive biometric data
- Decent 5 day battery life
What needs to be improved?
- Offer a wireless travel charger
- Improve battery life even more
Final thoughts
The battery life is good but not the best compared to other brands, and the lack of a wireless charger is a little disappointing. But when it comes to smart rings, I have no problem saying that the Ultrahuman Ring AIR is the king in providing data that can help you make actionable changes to improve your health and sleep. This ring’s features can also be extended with a variety of PowerPlugs. Given this ring’s price, I wish that all future PowerPlugs were provided for free instead of some being premium/paid. When it is all said and done, I do recommend the Ultrahuman Ring AIR smart ring as a quality smart ring, but I find myself preferring the RingConn for its fit, battery life, and wireless charger.
Price: $349.00
Where to buy: Ultrahuman.com and Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by UltraHuman. Ultrahuman did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
