ZDNET’s key findings
- He Ultrahuman Air Ring It’s the brand’s first foray into the smart ring space and is available for $349, no subscription required.
- The ring is ideal for fitness enthusiasts and recreational athletes looking to use their health data to optimize their wellness routines.
- The app’s user interface could be improved to make it easier to access the journaling features.
As one of the newest and most popular smart rings on the market, the Ultrahuman Air Ring offers features and data collection that go a step further Our for people looking to optimize their health. I tried one along with the Oura Horizon Ring For the past month, I’ve worn both watches at all hours, recording everything from my morning coffee to my evening cocktails. Suffice it to say, the Ultrahuman ring will excite people who care about their health and fitness.
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While Oura seems to appeal to just about anyone looking to invest in a smart ringUltrahuman’s offering, while more specialized, is arguably better. If the Oura Ring is the girl next door, the Ultrahuman Ring Air is the Bitcoin-mining, Soylent-drinking Silicon Valley girl. But while it will set fitness enthusiasts on the right track, this ring will also help anyone — even those who exercise for pleasure — optimize their body to perfection.
Unlike the Oura Ring, which requires a $6 monthly subscription, the Ultrahuman Ring Air doesn’t require a subscription. The Ultrahuman comes in matte gray, matte black, silver, and gold. Of all the smart rings I’ve tested, it’s by far the thinnest, most discreet, and most unassuming. Plus, the matte gray finish hasn’t scratched or tarnished after a month of use, something I can’t say about other smart rings with shiny metal finishes.
Also: I tested the Samsung Galaxy Ring and it beats the Oura in two significant ways
From the moment you wake up to the minute you fall asleep, Ultrahuman sends you notifications on how to make the most of your available energy and your biological clock. With all this scientific knowledge about my body, I couldn’t help but feel like I was hacking my health… or playing God.
An hour after I wake up, Ultrahuman alerts me about my “residual adenosine levels.” What? I had to look that up, too. Adenosine is a naturally occurring chemical associated with wakefulness. It tells me to delay consuming stimulants like caffeine until about two hours after I wake up to flush the adenosine out of my system and increase the impact of caffeine on my energy levels. It also reminds me to expose myself to bright light or exercise during this period if I want to go to bed and wake up earlier.
Throughout the day, I get signals like this. Ultrahuman tells me when I’m nearing the end of my allowed stimulant window — the window in which I can consume caffeine without it disrupting my sleep. Not only that — Ultrahuman also tells me how much caffeine certain stimulants contain, how long they’ll stay in my system, and whether they exceed my window’s caffeine intake.
As I go through the day, Ultrahuman alerts me to stretch my legs and when would be the ideal time to go to bed to get enough sleep. All of this is calculated based on my wake-up time, my sleep time, and my recovery data.
Also: The best smart rings: tested and reviewed by experts
The Ultrahuman Ring Air measures heart rate, skin temperature, heart rate variability (HRV), and resting heart rate to gather data on sleep, recovery, and movement. It also measures VO2 max, or how the body uses oxygen during workouts.
Ultrahuman presents all of this data in an easy-to-understand format via an app, with scores (and explanations) for the big three: sleep, movement, and recovery. For example, when I got a sleep score of 95, it told me I fell asleep faster and stayed asleep for most of my rest time. Along with my high sleep score, I got a recovery score of 90, and the blurb told me my scores were in pretty good shape, so I “may need to push myself a little harder to meet my cognitive and fitness goals.” On a day when my sleep score was 49 and my recovery score was 64, the app told me to go for a long walk and try a “sleepless deep rest session” during the day.
Other health data, such as heart rate variability, VO2 max, and resting heart rate, are recorded, and daily data is aggregated and displayed via graphs with 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 a person’s overall health, explaining their complexity.
Another health feature that the Ultrahuman ring offers is food logging, which takes advantage of ChatGPT-AI-powered food insights. I log the food I eat throughout the day, and its food optimization AI provides what it calls cyborg insights (seriously) on how to avoid glucose spikes when I eat certain foods. When I logged a bag of chips, it told me to pair them with cheese or another protein, like a hard-boiled egg, to slow glucose absorption. It also told me to drink water before and after eating the chips and to take a brisk walk after eating them to lower my glycemic response. While I rarely followed this advice, it’s a useful feature for fit people who want to optimize their diet and health data.
Also: The Oura smart ring’s shiny new features outshine even its titanium finish
Of course, you can also log your workouts, which is something I did often while training for my half marathon. However, the ring doesn’t automatically detect that you’re working out if it’s not logged. I hope Ultrahuman improves this in future updates. I liked being able to see the map of where I ran, my average heart rate, my maximum heart rate, the calories I burned, and my average pace. Plus, it also showed my training zones, which is essential for tracking long runs.
The final feature that makes this ring ideal for fitness junkies is the Discover tab, which offers video classes on everything from pilates and weight training to HIIT and yoga. There are also meditation podcasts available and soundscapes to help you fall asleep.
You can use the ring for about five days before the battery runs out. I compared the battery life to the Oura by charging both to 100% on a Tuesday afternoon and waiting to see how long each would last with typical use and activity. By Sunday morning, the Oura ring was at 7% and the Ultrahuman Ring Air was at 6%. However, I should note that the Ultrahuman ring does get warm to the touch after charging.
Also: Oura Ring users can now sync data to Strava – here’s how to enable it
In the next update to the Ultrahuman Ring Air, I’d like to see an improvement to the app’s user interface. It could incorporate some improvements from the Oura app, which offers sleep, readiness, resilience, and activity information at the top of a home tab that aggregates this data at the bottom. The Ultrahuman’s bottom tabs include home, metabolism, zones, discover, and a basic profile section. I’d also like to see a more accessible logging feature where you don’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the app to use it to log food, exercise, weight tracking, and more.
ZDNET’s buying advice
Who should buy this ring? I imagine anyone who is familiar with health and fitness metrics will be able to get the most out of it. Ultrahuman Air RingAnd given how often my sleep duration and the Ultrahuman’s sleep and recovery scores mimicked the Oura’s, I wouldn’t be afraid to say this is a subscription-free Oura clone with rivaling data and battery life.
All in all, the Ultrahuman Ring Air impressed me. It’s exciting to see such a new product become a competitive fitness smart ring, with a niche just right to attract an audience of fitness fanatics, but with data presentation, health metrics, and AI suggestions that could equally satisfy the average person.