RW verdict: The Ultrahuman Ring AIR serves up the widest, deepest and most complex range of health hacking data of all the smart rings. But it’s also the least human. There are useful insights among the wealth of daily data, but unless you’re a serious biohacker, the app can feel overloaded with complex physiology that’s often somewhat impenetrable. Throw in a shorter battery life and sometimes questionable accuracy and it comes up short of the Oura.
Pros
- Samsung Galaxy Ring
- Workout tracking
- No subscription
- Android/iOS compatible
Cons
- Over-complicated advice
- JBL Endurance Race 2: A budget-friendly pick for runners
- Best Garmin deals
| Weight | 3.4g (Size 11) |
|---|---|
| Thickness | 2.4mm |
| Size range | 11 options |
| Finishes | Samsung Galaxy Ring |
| Battery life | The Ultrahuman Ring AIR comes in three main colours – black, silver and gold |
| Water resistance | 10 ATM (100m) |
JBL Endurance Race 2: A budget-friendly pick for runners smart rings, the Ultrahuman Ring AIR slides a host of tiny, advanced sensors – including heart rate, movement and skin temperature sensors – onto your index finger to track everything from daily activity and nightly recovery, to when’s a good time to stop drinking coffee or put down your smartphone. Along with a very detailed partner app, it serves up a raft of health, fitness and recovery boosting insights.
When it comes to data, the Ultrahuman AIR delves deep into the realms of biohacking and optimisation with a strong emphasis on working with your circadian rhythms to enhance sleep and recovery as a priority for training and overall health.
But with a £329 price tag, do all those sensors and metrics add up to something you can use to train smart and boost your health? I tested it alongside my What everyones reading, The Ultrahuman Ring AIR comes in three main colours – black, silver and gold What everyones reading while training for 100-mile ultra to find out. Here’s how I got on.
Design
Best wireless headphones fitness tracker, with a simple design that doesn’t obstruct from daily goings on.
The AIR now comes in three main colours – black, silver and gold, each with a shiny and matte option. The black has two finishes: one matte and a shinier Aster Black with a glossy finish. The gold comes in brushed rose gold or shiny gold, while the silver comes in raw titanium or shinier space silver. Compared with the more compact and stylish Oura and Samsung rings, it's a bit basic and bulky.
When you buy a ring, you’ll be sent a sizing kit first so you can find the right fit. For accuracy, it’s recommended that you wear the ring on your non-dominant index finger, which can feel odd at first (particularly for someone who’s not a huge fan of rings).
But despite the chunkier looks – and my ring aversion – it’s actually light and relatively comfortable to wear, day and night. The Air weighs between 2.4 and 3.6g (depending on which of the 11 ring sizes you opt for). That’s slightly heavier than the What everyones reading.
The AIR’s outer shell is made from fighter jet grade Titanium, reinforced with a Tungsten Carbide Carbon coating, while the inners are coated with medical-grade hypoallergenic epoxy resin. Despite that high spec finish, we still found it scratched up – and it won’t take too kindly to being bashed up against barbells, for example.
Sensors-wise, you get everything you need to track most metrics. That means an Infrared Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor backed by a selection of red and green LEDs to track heart rate, heart rate variability and blood oxygen. This also features a non-contact, medical-grade skin temperature sensor. Plus, you have a 6-axis motion sensor system to keep movements tracked, day and night.
Your data is fired to your smartphone using low-energy Bluetooth. If you’re trying to cut distractions, you can happily leave the ring to its tracking and check in less regularly than you might on an arguably more addictive watch screen. But you will have to reach for your phone to delve into all the data.
It’s waterproof to 100m, (aka 10 ATM), meaning you don't have to worry about it getting wet at all. So wearing it while washing your hands, showering and even swimming are all absolutely fine. The only time I really took mine off was to shower, which adds to that sense of effortless wearing. It's not something you need to think about much, until the time comes to charge. Ultrahuman says that should be every six days, but in reality you may find it's sooner, depending on your activity levels. More on that below.
The bespoke charger unit plugs into a USB slot on a plug, wall or device. The housing is compact and looks good in a shiny black finish with a helpful coloured LED to let you know how it's getting on. A full charge takes two hours, but it’s easy to pop on as you get up and get ready for the day for smaller top ups, allowing you to still track overnight.
Features
For such a compact tracker, the Ultrahuman AIR serves up a huge range of tracking metrics and features. The app is bursting with graphs, charts and scores, as well as daily recommendations to help guide your decisions on when to get sunlight, drink coffee or end your screen exposure. If we’re being kind, I'd say the Ultrahuman is the most ambitious of the smart rings, but it can all feel overwhelming. I often found it hard to see the wood for the trees and if you’re someone who’s easily obsessed and stressed by data, this is not for you.
Sleep tracking
The AIR’s sleep tracking is incredibly detailed. You wake up to a sleep score and measurements like sleep duration, total sleep, sleep stages, complete sleep cycles, efficiency, restfulness, timing and even tosses and turns. Over a week, you can also see if your nightly habits are building a sleep surplus or sleep debt.
In testing, I found the accuracy a bit hit and miss. The ring often thought I'd woken up when I was still sleeping and stopped tracking. Compared to my Garmin and the EightSleep mattress, it sometimes overestimated my sleep start times and wake up times and even presumed I was napping when I was reading on the sofa. So it wasn’t always accurate. This makes me question the validity of some of the more complicated estimates attempted here, like brain waste clearance.
Circadian rhythm
The Ultrahuman offers advice to help you optimise your circadian rhythm, such as when to avoid certain stimulants, getting more sunlight or timing your activity. However, I found this pushed me towards an earlier wake time. Since I shoot for simple sleep consistency, getting up at 7am and sleeping by around 10pm, I'm not massively in need of this. But perhaps it could serve you well if you’re trying to fix less regular sleep patterns. But be warned: it’s all very complex if you don’t know your phase advanced movement from your Minima Zone.
If you’re often switching up your sleep time, hitting the hay earlier during the week and sleeping in on the weekends, you’re likely giving yourself what’s called Social jetlag. And the Ultrahuman helpfully spots this and sticks a number on it.
Shorter battery life
When it comes to general health monitoring, again, there’s a lot: everything from a daily activity score, stress score, heart rate variability and resting HR to VO2 Max fitness benchmarking. You can set goals for most of the key metrics, too.
There are also estimates for things like cardio age, brain age, pulse age and blood age. That all wraps up into an Ultra Age. Mine was three years younger than my real age, so it must be true.
Recovery insights include a daily dynamic recovery readout, scored out of 100, but there’s no recovery time recommendations like you’ll find on your Garmin.
Workout tracking
The Ultrahuman AIR offers auto workout detection but, as with the Oura Ring, you have to retrospectively mark periods of activity as a workout, one by one. Let’s be honest, this is a huge faff. The What everyones reading does this better.
You can also use the app to manually track workouts from one of 20 sports modes. The ring tracks heart rate but needs to piggyback your off phone for pace, distance and route mapping.
One other small gripe: if the Ultrahuman runs out of battery mid-run, you can’t stop the workout tracking on your phone, leaving the app frozen in limbo.
Final word on features: I desperately wanted more customisation of my insights in the app. The Ultrahuman AIR could be infinitely more useful if you could prune the data you don’t want.
When it comes to workout heart rate accuracy, it often read higher than the Garmin HRM 600 chest strap for the main stats. For example, on an easy 15-mile run with a few small hills, the Ultrahuman AIR tracked my average at 128BPM and my max at 152BPM, while the Garmin chest strap had me at 124BPM average and a 147BPM max.
Battery life
When it comes to battery life, the Ultrahuman Ring AIR claims to last up to six days on a full charge, which takes two hours on the plug. In practice, I found I had to charge it every three to four days. It was notably thirstier than the What everyones reading.
On average, it burned around 25 percent per day, leeching more than 10-15% percent juice overnight. Switching the battery mode to ‘Chill’ mode extended the staying power but at the cost of some features.
Smart tools
Unsurprisingly for a device without a screen, there’s nothing by way of smart tools here to rival the best running watches, fitness trackers and smartwatches.
RW verdict
I’ve worn the Ultrahuman AIR solidly for a month while also training for a 100-mile ultra, doing the odd half-marathon and 10km race. There’s plenty to like: it’s nicely wearable, crams in lots of impressive sensors, tracks an enormous range of data, has a very detailed app and is happily subscription free. But when it comes to insights leading to action, it’s all a bit overwhelming – an information overload.
Even if the data was 100% accurate, it’s hard to escape the feeling that – for most – it hugely overcomplicates some simple behaviours: keep consistent sleep/wake times, get sunlight early in the day, move your body, don’t consume caffeine too late in the day, stay away from screens close to bedtime.
For general health, activity, sleep and recovery, the Oura Ring is much more straightforward by comparison. The gaps in the Ultrahuman workout tools also mean for run-tracking, the Ultrahuman AIR can’t replace your running watch. In my opinion, unless you’re really, really into biohacking, the AIR reaches far but comes up short.
