Like many people, since 2020 I’ve taken a much more proactive approach to my health and fitness. I work out regularly, I track my Vo2 Max Scores, and do Zone2 Cardio.
I’ve bought and worn smart rings, I used a Whoop for a whole year, I sleep on an Eight Sleep mattress, and I often wear two watches because I can never decide which one to stick with.
And over those 4 years there have also been periods of time where I totally stopped wearing all of these things because I just got completely fatigued with checking data and charging at least one thing pretty much every day.
So in this post, I want to focus on my preferred Smart Ring because I’ve tried all of the big names now including the Oura Ring, Galaxy Ring and the Ultrahuman.
Actually, two Oura Rings, Three if you include my wife's. And Two Ultrahuman rings because I lost one. And then, I found it again.
And so without wasting anybody's time, I’m not going to draw this out until the very end or anything - the one ring that has stood the test of time throughout has been the Ultrahuman ring.
And, full disclosure - this is a really awkward time to write a post about the Ultrahuman ring because they literally just flew me out to Abu Dhabi for the launch of their new Ring Rare which I’ll talk about in a bit.
So obviously this is going to look like I’m sucking up to them, but we’ve had this planned for months before the invite hit my inbox.
I’ve been wearing the ring on and off since September 2023, before that me and my wife both bought an Oura Ring in 2022.
So, I’m going to get into a few reasons as to why it’s the Ultrahuman that’s Ultimately won me over for now.
But first, if you’re considering your first smart ring then I want to address some issues that kind of plague all Smart Rings.
Issues
Charging: All smart rings are very tiny, they also have very tiny batteries inside them. All of the rings I’ve worn last around the same time of 5 days.
Battery
Also, that tiny battery means that if you ever get to a phase like I did where I just didn’t want to wear smart stuff anymore. Then if you leave a ring to run out of battery and then leave it for a period of maybe not weeks, but months, and then come back to it - chances are the battery might not charge. Like what happened with my Oura ring and I’ve also heard this from others who have taken theirs off for any extended period of time, only to come back to find their ring is totally dead and won’t charge.
Now, this seems to be common enough that ring companies are just instantly sending out replacement rings - I’ve had this with Oura who sent out a replacement ring to me.
One area that Samsung actually got it right here is with their charger. They have a sort of puck case thing which actually has it’s own battery. So you can slot in the ring, close the lid, and now throw it in your bag or on a shelf.
Whereas all the other rings just have an open design which needs charging with a cable. This means you can’t throw this in your bag. I wish everyone else copied the Samsung approach.
They Scratch Easily
And then another one worth mentioning which might be an obvious one, they scratch easily.
Before I always went for the dark and matte finish colours, but quickly realised that no matter which ring you go with, the dark colours show up scratches really easily.
My latest one is a silver colour and that still gets scratched, but isn’t as noticeable, it’s not discoloured like the darker rings are.
And thats WITH making an effort to take it off when doing anything like lifting weights, I even remove it usually when showering, or doing the dishes or any time I think I’m going to do something that’s going to scratch it. I do the same with my wedding ring too.
Although you can buy tiny little sleeves to go over your ring if you do want to wear them when exercising or lifting weights. Even though it protects the outside of the ring, I just don’t like the feeling of it digging into my finger, so I’d still take mine off.
Wakes me up.
And then the last ‘Issue’, if you can call it that. But at night, you’ll notice all rings will have these small green or red LED’s that light up, because they’re actively monitoring your heart rate and such.
Now, normally this isn’t a problem, but with the Galaxy Ring, I don’t know what it is - but it is the only smart ring I’ve ever worn that can actually wake me up because it’s so bright.
Sometimes I fall asleep and I must cover my face with my hand for some reason, and I’ve legit woken up because my hand was there and it’s shining this bright light into my face. It’s CRAZY bright, and WAY brighter than both the Oura and Ultrahuman.
OK, so let’s get to the good stuff. What made me choose Ultrahuman over the other three?
Pricing
The first is pricing.
Broadly speaking, all these rings cost around the same. Yes, there are a few variations for the finish you get. But they kind of cost the same.
Two things here. There’s a link below that will give you a discount on an Ultrahuman ring - because I’m an affiliate of theirs as someone who loves their product. So use that to order one if you are thinking of buying one yourself.
https://ultrahuman.com/join_group?gro...
And two, There is a new Ultrahuman Ring Air, which is the worlds first Luxury Smart Ring and it costs around £2,000.
It’s so exclusive, that you can only buy one in a specific store in either London or Paris. More information is available on their website. But I know that price is going to be outside of pretty much every one reading this. But just in case you want to throw down £2k on a smart ring that you can’t switch off and the battery might die…go for it.
But anyway - as someone who bought TWO Oura rings back in 2022, one for me and my wife, we both stopped using them after maybe a year or so. I also stopped wearing my Ultrahuman ring at the time because I just got fed up of charging so many wearable devices.
And so when I went to put back on my Oura ring. I opened the App, and all I got were these 3 numbers.
Readiness. Sleep. And Activity.
That’s literally it. There’s not ANY additional bit of data that you get.
No sleep stages, you can’t see how long you slept for, or the quality of the sleep. Nothing. Not, unless you want to pay like, 5 bucks per month. Which honestly I think is pretty stingy. And that is genuinely what rules Oura out for me here.
Whereas I grabbed the Ultrahuman, and if anything it gives you too much data.
You’ve got Movement, Stress, Caffeine Windows, Sleep, Recovery, Circadian Rhythm, and then heart rate, your cardio age, skin temperature, even a VO2 Max score which for me is way more accurate than my Apple Watch Ultra.
And each of these you can tap on and dive even further into the data if you want to.All of this without a subscription fee. Crazy right!
Cross Compatibility
The next one for me was cross compatibility - a really simple one here and really this is about the Galaxy Ring. It only works with Android. And I switch phones pretty much weekly at this stage, so having a ring that works across iPhone and Android is key.
Data, Dexcom, Blood Markers, Home
And then the third reason to me, is just really following over from what I’ve just touched on - it’s the Data.
There is SO MUCH of it with Ultrahuman.
Now I will say, in terms of accuracy. I personally haven’t found any of the smart rings to be that accurate which might sound stupid, because you want accurate data right?
There have been nights where I’ve been laying awake, and I have physically SEEN 3AM on my phone.
And yet ALL of these smart rings tell me I’ve had a solid 8 hours of sleep and was fast asleep as soon as I got into bed. So, and this is my own personal opinion here, I would focus less on data accuracy, but more data consistency.
You want to look at a number, and try to improve on the number that you see - YOUR number, not someone else's numbers.
I’ve heard that Oura is more accurate - but I just don’t want to pay £5 per month for something when the Ultrahuman gives me everything I need. In many cases the Apple Watch also wins in accuracy too, and this is from someone who if I wanted data, I have data. I have data from my eight sleep mattress, multiple smart watches, multiple smart rings. And they are all wrong.
I just think I’m good at pretending to sleep, and tricking whatever I’m wearing to think that I’m asleep. I don’t know.
What I do value though is being able to have those little nudges of - Pete, you’ve been lazy today. Your movement is a 47. Get up and move around! It’s fun being able to see when we were dune bashing that my heart rate and stress were pretty high too.
Following the trip with Ultrahuman to Abu Dhabi, I also really like the Zones Features where you can basically have a group with all your friends in there where you can see each others score and basically compete against each other to get the highest scores. That can be quite fun.
Actually - I’m going to create my own Zone, so if anyone wants to join my Ultrahuman group once you have your ring, that might be fun to see.
And the other reason I prefer the Ultrahuman Ring, is their expanding Health Ecosystem.
Like the Continuous Glucose Monitor I’m currently wearing which lets me monitor my blood glucose levels because a recent blood test I had said that I may be pre-diabetic, so I really need to learn to manage my glucose spikes and crashes.
They’re also bringing out a new Home product which can monitor the air quality in your house, which is especially important if you live in really polluted areas or near maybe the LA Wildfires.
And there’s a new service which I’m told is coming to the UK and US Soon, which is their Blood Markers where you can get regular blood tests, and it brings all of those data points - the ring, the CGM, the home, all of them into the one app. And starts correlating the data between them.
THAT is definitely something I think the others are missing.
It’s all well and good having the data, but trying to find a meaning behind it, and knowing what’s good and bad - that’s the importance of where fitness tech really comes to play.
So if I was buying a smart ring today and deciding where to spend my money - I would pick up an Ultrahuman Ring Air over an Oura, or Galaxy Ring.
