Smart ring or fitness watch: Finding the right fit

Log of the Rings

First, the Ring Air ( ₹28,499), a health tracker with a bunch of sensors, including a heart rate monitor, a six-axis motion sensing unit and a skin temperature sensor, all packed into an 8mm wide, 2.4mm thick titanium ring. As with the Luna Ring ( ₹19,999), it’s light and unobtrusive, so much so that one didn’t notice its existence on the finger beyond the first week. It comes in 10 sizes and five finishes; a sizing kit is sent as soon as you place your order to ensure a correct fit. Build quality is good; I haven’t scuffed my ring in all these months, but I suspect it may not fare as well if you are into lifting weights or working with outdoor tools.

These sensors log data on heart rate, movement, body temperature to give you a report card on three scores: Movement Index, Sleep Index and Recovery Score—how regularly you’ve been moving, how well rested you are and your overall state of well-being. While the Luna Ring follows a similar approach (sleep, activity and readiness), the Ring Air’s secret weapon is the companion app, which surfaces your key scores and lets you dig deeper into individual markers.

At any point, you can see your heart rate, VO2 Max (maximal oxygen consumption) and skin temperature, along with little lifestyle nudges. I’ve learnt about my adenosine clearance window, which tells me whether or not I should consume caffeine at a certain time, or how to stay on top of my body clock by knowing the best time get sun exposure or exercise, or my ideal bedtime.

Submit to it, and it feels somewhere in between “hacking your health” and “letting an algorithm decide your day for you”.

You can also log a variety of workouts, but the rings don’t auto-detect a workout if you start exercising and don’t log the activity. Now, whether you’ll want to do so or not brings me to the most vital consideration for smart rings, at least for now.

How accurate are rings?

Smart rings claim higher accuracy than wrist-worn trackers owing to the fact that fingers have a higher perfusion index and arterioles and therefore serve as a richer and more accurate source of biomarker information. This works better for some metrics than others—sleep tracking is excellent, for example, and this is a major reason why many who won’t want to wear smartwatches to bed may prefer the ring.

The Ring Air was able to pinpoint with fairly high accuracy when I fell asleep, when I had restless sleep, the quality of my sleep stages, and the Sleep Index and Recovery Score were an accurate assessment of how tired or alert I was feeling the next morning.

Jitesh Luthra, entrepreneur in residence at Leo Capital, who has been using the Ring Air for over six months, adds that while he chose the product since it was lightweight and best for sleep, the fact that the ring tracked his metrics without adding one more screen was the clincher.

Activity tracking was a bit of a mixed bag, particularly when you pit smart rings against wrist-worn wearables. Step tracking on my daily walks on Ring Air was closer to actual counts than the Watch Ultra 2, but I have noticed that playing the piano or typing out a furious email had the unintended effect of adding phantom steps. Live heart rate tracking needs work—even according to Ultrahuman, it’s optimised for resting measurements, not while in motion (still in beta).

While I wouldn’t count on any smart ring as my only source for workout data, they do give you a good sense of how active you were on a day-to-day basis, which may be enough of a metric for most. Meanwhile, Noise has validated its accuracy via independent studies with IIIT Hyderabad.

Dr Ashish Contractor, director, rehabilitation & sports medicine, Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai, agrees: for parameters like steps and calories, a general sense is good enough, says the doctor. He feels accuracy becomes more crucial if you are tracking ECG for someone with a heart rhythm problem, a capability smart rings don’t claim to have.

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What’s on the horizon?

Contractor is excited by the category, given how convenient rings are to use and the data they unlock, minus screen-time and daily charging.

Globally, the space is dominated by Finnish company Oura and its third-generation ring ($299 onwards), and while its panoply of sensors and strong data sharing tie-ins with other apps makes it a top pick, a subscription model for advanced insights may put off potential users. Late last year, Oura filed a lawsuit against Ultrahuman for patent and copyright infringement, and followed up with suing two other smart ring brands, RingConn and Circular, earlier this year. Clearly, there is a lot at stake as the number of brands looking to enter the category is only set to rise.

The action is heating up with Amazfit launching the Helio smart ring and Movano with its women-focussed Evie Ring both launching at CES 2024.

Samsung has announced the launch of the Galaxy Ring later this year—it may well be an ecosystem play first and foremost, working to complement richer workout and activity data from Galaxy smartwatches with the 24×7 sleep and movement data from the ring. Maybe even a Galaxy AI play via AI-based coaching?

Ditto for the much-rumored Apple smart ring, which could significantly boost Apple’s sleep monitoring chops. The ring could even act as an input interface with iPhones, Macs and Vision Pros. Inevitably, the biggest reason the Galaxy Ring and whatever Apple launches will be a hit with the mainstream will be thanks to their collective (and quite considerable) marketing to the Android and Apple faithful.

Tushar Kanwar, a tech columnist and commentator, posts @2shar.

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Published: 04 May 2024, 08:00 AM IST