ZDNET Key Takeaways
- of Ultra Human Ring Air This is the brand’s first foray into the smart ring space and is available for $350 without a subscription.
- This ring is perfect for avid fitness enthusiasts and recreational exercise enthusiasts who want to leverage their health data to optimize their health habits.
- The app’s user interface could be improved to make the daily log feature easier to access.
of Ultra Human Ring Air is one of the hottest new smart rings on the market, with features and data collection capabilities that go far beyond Oura for those looking to optimize their health. Last month, I tested it alongside the Oura Horizon ring, wearing it for 24 hours a day, tracking everything from my morning coffee to my late-night cocktails. Suffice to say, the Ultrahuman ring will excite anyone who cares about their health and fitness.
I also tried the Samsung Galaxy Ring and it is better than Oura in two ways.
Oura seems appealing to anyone willing to invest in a smart ring, but Ultrahuman’s product is more niche, but arguably better. If the Oura Ring is the girl next door, the Ultrahuman Ring Air is your Silicon Valley-based, Soylent-sipping Bitcoin miner’s neighbor. But the ring is also here to guide hardcore fitness enthusiasts in the right direction, and even to help recreational exercisers optimize their bodies to perfection.
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Unlike the Oura Ring, which requires a $6 monthly subscription, the Ultrahuman Ring Air does not. The Ultrahuman comes in four colors: matte gray, matte black, silver, and gold. Of all the smart rings I tested, the Ultrahuman is by far the thinnest, most discreet, and most unobtrusive. Plus, the matte gray finish remains scratch-free and discolored even after a month of use, which can’t be said for other smart rings with shiny metal finishes.
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From the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep, Ultrahuman sends you notifications on how to make the most of your available energy and your biological clock. With these scientific insights into my body, I couldn’t help but feel like I was hacking my health, or even playing God.
Within an hour of waking up, Ultrahuman notifies you about your “residual adenosine levels.” What is that? I looked it up. Adenosine is a natural chemical associated with wakefulness. It tells you to delay consuming stimulants like caffeine until about two hours after waking to flush adenosine from your body and increase the impact caffeine has on your energy levels. It also reminds you to get some bright light or exercise during this time if you want to go to bed and wake up earlier.
You’ll get notifications like this throughout the day. Ultrahuman will let you know when your stimulant tolerance — the amount of caffeine you can consume without it interfering with your sleep — is over. Not only that, Ultrahuman will tell you how much caffeine is in a particular stimulant, how long it stays in your system, and if the stimulant has exceeded its tolerance.
As the day progresses, Ultrahuman reminds me to stretch my legs and suggests the ideal time to go to bed to get a good night’s sleep, all calculated based on my wake time, sleep, and recovery data.
Plus: Oura Smart Ring’s Amazing New Features Are Better Than Titanium Finish
The Ultrahuman Ring Air measures heart rate, skin temperature, heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate, and collects data on sleep, recovery and exercise. It also measures how your body uses oxygen during exercise, known as VO2 Max.
Ultrahuman presents all this data in an easy-to-understand format through the app, showing scores (and explanations) for three major components: sleep, movement, and recovery. For example, when I had a sleep score of 95, it said I fell asleep quickly and spent most of my resting time asleep. Along with a high sleep score, my recovery score was also 90. The explanation said that because my score was good, “you might want to work a little harder toward your cognitive and physical health goals.” On a day when my sleep score was 49 and recovery score was 64, the app suggested I go for a long walk and try a “sleep-free deep rest session” during the day.
Other health data like HRV, VO2 Max, and resting heart rate are also tracked, with daily data being aggregated and displayed in graphs of daily, weekly, and monthly trends represented by green and red indicators. All of these data points are accompanied by explanations of what each indicator means about your overall health, making their complexities clear.
Another health feature offered by the Ultrahuman Ring is food logging with AI food insights powered by ChatGPT. I log what I eat throughout the day, and its Food Optimization AI gives me cyborg insights (yes, really) on how to avoid blood sugar spikes when consuming certain foods. I logged a bag of potato chips and was instructed to pair the chips with cheese or other protein, such as a hard-boiled egg, to slow glucose absorption. I was also instructed to drink water before and after eating the chips and take a brisk walk after eating to lower my blood sugar response. I rarely followed this advice, but this is a useful feature for anyone looking to optimize their fitness and diet and health data.
Also: Oura Ring users can now sync their data with Strava. Here’s how to turn it on:
Of course, you can also record your workouts, which is what I did a lot while training for a half marathon. However, the ring doesn’t automatically detect that you’re working out if you’re not recording. Hopefully Ultrahuman will improve this in future updates. I liked being able to see a map of where I ran, my average heart rate, max heart rate, calories burned, and average pace. Plus, it shows my workout zones, which is an essential feature for tracking long runs.
The final feature that makes this ring perfect for exercise lovers is that it offers video classes for everything from Pilates and weight training to HIIT and yoga.[Discover]Tab. There are also meditation podcasts and soundscapes to help you fall asleep.
You can wear the ring for about five days before the battery runs out. I tested the battery life against the Oura by charging both to 100% on a Tuesday afternoon and waiting to see how long each lasted with normal wear and activity. By Sunday morning, the Oura ring was at 7% and the Ultrahuman Ring Air was at 6%. However, the Ultrahuman ring was warm to the touch after charging.
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In the next update to Ultrahuman Ring Air, we hope to see improvements to the app’s user interface. Take a page from Oura’s app, which shows sleep, readiness, recovery, and activity at the top of the home tab and aggregates these data at the bottom. Ultrahuman’s bottom tab features Home, Metabolism, Zones, Discover, and a bare-bones profile section. We’d also like to see more accessible logging features that don’t require you to scroll all the way to the bottom of the app to use food, exercise tracking, weight, etc.
ZDNET BUYING ADVICE
Who should buy this ring? Anyone who is interested in fitness and health metrics can get the most out of this ring. Ultra Human Ring AirAnd given that Ultrahuman’s sleep time and sleep and recovery scores are very similar to Oura’s scores, it’s fair to call it a subscription-free Oura knock-off with comparable data and battery life.
All in all, the Ultrahuman Ring Air impressed me, and it’s exciting to see a new product like this evolve into a competitive fitness smart ring that’s niche enough to capture an avid fitness fanatic customer, yet has the data display, health metrics, and AI suggestions to be relevant to the general public.
