All three RingConn rings measure blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), and movement, among other health metrics, and use that information to grade your activity, sleep, stress, and vital stats. The rings send collected data to the RingConn app for iOS and Android over Bluetooth.
The Gen 2 Air comes with a charging pad and instructions in the box. This is in contrast to other RingConn models, which come with a charging case that holds up to 150 days of extra battery life. The case is certainly a nice convenience, but the charging pad is at least easy to use.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)
To set up the Gen 2 Air, place it on the charger to wake the ring up, then open the RingConn app on your phone. If you’re new to the brand, the app will prompt you to create an account and input some basic health and personal information so it can properly calibrate your data. Specifically, it asks for your birth date, height, weight, and gender (with options for female, male, and prefer not to say).
Next, head to the Me tab to pair the ring, a quick and easy process in testing. After pairing, the app will install updates and show you a basic user guide. Once the setup process is complete, you’ll need to wear the ring for a while to let it collect data and populate the different tabs of the app.
After a couple of days, the app’s main Insights page shows four teardrop-shaped bubbles at the top representing your activity, sleep, relaxation (stress level), and vitals (comparing your current measurements with your baseline stats). Each bubble dynamically fills with color throughout the day, based on your score from 1 to 100. You can tap any one of the individual bubbles for a breakdown of factors contributing to your score.
Together, these four factors contribute to an overall Wellness Balance score meant to offer a holistic view of your physical and mental state. While interesting, I don’t find RingConn’s Wellness Balance score as helpful as the holistic health scores from competitors. The Oura and Samsung Galaxy Ring synthesize various health metrics into an energy or readiness score, respectively, that can help you quickly gauge your overall recovery status, and both provide a clear recommendation of how much activity you should plan for the day, insights I didn’t get from the Gen 2 Air.
RingConn’s feedback is sometimes as simplistic as “Better Sleeping Skin Temperature leaves you feeling refreshed and invigorated. Keep it up!” To that end, it didn’t always offer tangible advice for improving my Wellness Balance score.
(Credit: RingConn/PCMag)
To dive into all your health data, scroll down the Insights page for interactive cards dedicated to activity, exercise, sleep, stress, and vitals. The AI button at the bottom of the app lets you talk to RingConn’s beta chatbot, though this feature is very limited at the moment because it only offers inputs for certain questions that you can easily find answers to elsewhere in the app (such as “how did I sleep” or “how active am I”), and there’s no way to input your own questions.
In the app’s Plan tab, you can fill out a questionnaire to create an AI-generated wellness plan based on your goals. The Trends tab shows your seven-day averages for activity, sleep, stress, and vital signs, and you can click these cards to see your data charted over time. The Me tab is where you can access device settings and update your profile.
In all, the RingConn app is more well-organized and understandable than it was when I tested the first-generation model, but there’s still room for improvement. In comparison, Oura’s app is a lot more thoughtfully designed, and it offers more insights and guidance to help you make sense of your data and meet your goals. Oura also offers long-term health assessments for your cardiovascular age, sleep regularity, and stress resilience, data the RingConn app lacks.
The Ultrahuman Ring Air app offers more customization options than RingConn, with add-ons to track relatively uncommon wellness metrics like circadian rhythm alignment and optimal caffeine windows. RingConn also falls short on women’s health features, omitting pregnancy insights, but the app will predict menstrual cycles.
