This Smart Ring Is The Best Sleep Tracker I’ve Tried Yet

Key Takeaways

• The Ultrahuman Ring AIR is lightweight and comfortable, with accurate sleep-tracking insights and full breakdown.
• The app offers optional features and actionable insights, but may need user customization.
• There is no ongoing subscription for most features.

The Ultrahuman Ring Air packs all the health sensors you might want into a tiny finger-worn form factor, offering long battery life, extensive data collection, and deep analysis. While some elements of the accompanying app are brilliant, it can sometimes be overwhelming, so it’s up to you to figure out which elements are helpful and ignore the rest.

Price and Availability

The Ultrahuman Ring Air retails for $349 and is widely available directly from Ultrahuman, Amazon, or local retailers. It comes in five different styles and sizes 5 to 14, so it’s worth getting the ring sizing kit first to ensure a snug fit. The sizing kit also includes a card with samples of the various styles available. If you order directly, you also opt for a custom engraving service.

Design: Chunky

Aesthetically, the Ring Air is plain and chunky; I love it. It’s like a plumber chopped off a bit of steel pipe. Some might prefer something a little more ornate, but the Ring Air has one style, and this is it, in five different colors. I chose Raw Titanium, which has a brushed chrome finish, but you’ll also find grey, black, gold, and silver.

On the inside, you’ll see all manner of delicate electronics and sensors, with one side slightly raised and flatter than the rest. This should be located on the underside of your finger. Which finger you wear it on doesn’t matter as long as the sensor has good contact and it won’t rotate freely. After a few weeks of wearing it, I haven’t found any discomfort; I forget it’s there.

What Does The Ultrahuman Ring Air Track?

The Ultrahuman Ring Air doesn’t break any new ground when it comes to the types of data that it tracks:

• Heart rate
• Skin temperature
• Heart rate variability (HRV)
• Resting heart rate
• VO2 Max

That means it’s up to the app to differentiate the experience from other health trackers.

The Ultrahuman Ring Air doesn’t track most exercises, at least not automatically or consistently. You need to start those manually from within the app. Some activities, like cycling or walking, can be automatically detected. I opened the app and found several activity times awaiting my approval. But those don’t have live heart rate tracking unless you manually start them, and again, it’s not always consistent.

Food Logging: Too Much Effort

New to me is the concept of logging what I eat, which is fed (pun intended) into the Food Optimization AI, powered by ChatGPT. This gives advice on food pairings or things to do before or after eating to avoid glucose spikes. Mostly the advice seems to be: drink water, and walk it off.

The Ring Air seemed to be especially concerned about my coffee intake. Bacon and egg bap? You’re cool. Cup of coffee? Naughty—you should have that without milk!

Sleep Tracking: The Best Yet

I’m quite obsessive about sleep, but I’ve yet to find a fitness tracker that offers accurate sleep tracking and actionable data. While my Apple Watch seems to track the sleep phases accurately, it doesn’t give advice beyond “bedtime approaching.”

The Ultrahuman Ring Air breaks down your sleep into what it calls “sleep contributors” and explains precisely why your sleep may not have been great (or why it was). If you compare the hardware sensors within the Ultrahuman Ring Air to those in the Apple Watch, they aren’t more numerous. But what Ultrahuman does with that data and how it interprets it makes the difference.

With a puppy and an old dog, neither of whom can hold their toilet breaks all night, my sleep has been rather disrupted lately. Apple Watch doesn’t seem to think it’s much of a problem, regularly telling me I’ve hit my sleep goal because I’ve been lying in bed for eight hours. Ultrahuman tells me that while I was asleep for a reasonable length of time, it was terrible sleep, with one or two REM cycles maximum. It knows I didn’t dream much, and that’s crucial to feeling rested. After a while, the Ulktrahuman told me to sleep earlier—contrary to my own beliefs about when I fall asleep best. It was right, and my sleep score increased.

Soundscapes and Classes: Loads of Content

On the Discover tab you’ll find video classes for various exercises, as well as learning resources, podcasts, soundscapes to fall asleep to, and even bedtime stories. Especially considering it’s subscription-free, there’s a brilliant selection of content to suit all your meditation and sleeping needs.

Battery Life Is Realistically Three Days

Despite a small battery, the lack of visual display means the Ring Air can get a respectable five days of battery life—however, you’re encouraged to charge it in small bursts, to no more than 80%, and let it drop no less than 30%. This ensures the longest battery lifespan but means that, more realistically, you’ll get about three days out of it before it suggests recharging.

Of course, you don’t have to charge it when told; you can use it beyond 30% if needed. But it’s best to just put it on the wireless charger during any prolonged downtime in the day. The charger is a small black stand that it lays flat on, with a single LED indicating its charging. It must be connected over USB-C (no adapter included), and it’s recommended that you don’t use a fast charger, as that, too, will degrade the overall battery longevity.

PowerPlugs: Optional Features

PowerPlugs are like plugins for your Ultrahuman app and Ring—or, as Ultrahuman calls them, micro-experiences. They’re optional metrics and features that not everyone will care about. Some are free, while some are paid—usually those that cover more medical features since those require certain licensing and regulation.

The paid options are currently Cardio Adaptability and AFib (atrial fibrillation or irregular heartbeat) Detection. It would be remiss of me not to mention these are both included with Apple Health, but I assume Apple is big enough to swallow the various costs involved. That said, I don’t know how accurate one is versus the other; I don’t have AFib, so it wasn’t picked up by either. However, my Apple Watch does tell me that I have poor heart health due to inactivity, which is roughly the same as Cardio Adaptability score.

There’s a good selection of free ones, too: Vitamin D, which tracks how much sun you get, and even when you’ve had too much and might burn; Caffeine Window, which tells you when you can and can’t drink coffee; Phase Alignment, which helps you to align with the natural circadian rhythm; Pregnancy Insights, which adjusts tracking and advice specifically for your pregnancy; Cycle Tracking, offering a comprehensive overview of your menstrual phases as well as predictions about start and end dates; and while I was still writing this review, Screen Time was added, which should be obvious.

I’m not convinced of the utility of all of them.

Screen Time predictably advises avoiding all screens before bed, but I’ve never had an issue with blue light or screens. I’ve always found that what you do with your devices matters—not the color of the light (and the latest medical research agrees with me).

While I appreciate the caffeine and sun exposure insights, I don’t think they’re as important as the app seems to think they are. I don’t need a screen to pop up whenever I log a cup of coffee about blood glucose levels. And it’s all very good telling me to get outside and get some sun, but this is England. Believe me, if there were even the slightest inkling of sun, I’d be getting it.

Or at least I would have if the app hadn’t told me not to. At 4:16pm on a bright summer afternoon, it happily informed me that my “phase delay window” was starting soon, and it recommended I avoid exercise, meals, or bright lights. I decided to log an hour of sun exposure instead since, apparently, I was still only at 30% of my recommended daily sun. I’m not sure how it reasonably expects me to avoid bright light at 4pm on a summer’s afternoon, or not eat when I haven’t had dinner yet. A lot of the concepts have explainers attached, but to a layperson like myself, a holistic connection isn’t made. This has since changed to around 7pm, and seems to be closely related to the previous night’s lowest heart rate timing.

The window of when to drink caffeine did seem to help my sleep, I’ll concede, but after a few days, I stopped logging food and coffee intake because the advice was getting repetitive. “Consider having ACV with water ten minutes before the meal”, it would often say. What’s ACV? Apparently, it’s “Apple Cider Vinegar,” and perhaps this is a common abbreviation in the US, but I had to Google it. But there’s no evidence to support it as beneficial for weight loss, and this kind of pseudoscience irks me in a wearable health device.

Ultrahuman Ring Air vs Samsung Galaxy Ring

While writing this review, the Samsung Galaxy Ring was released, and its design is identical to the Ultrahuman Ring Air. The Galaxy Ring costs $399—a little more than the Ultrahuman Ring Air—and claims seven days of battery life.

Unlike the Ultrahuman Ring Air, the Galaxy Ring doesn’t work with iPhones but offers clever integration with Android phones. It lets users double-pinch their fingers to take a photo or dismiss an alarm. It also features an NFC chip and a silent alarm, but most reviews say it’s not worth getting if you don’t have a Samsung phone, as many of the features rely on Galaxy software and AI.

Ultrahuman Ring Air vs the Oura Ring

The Oura Ring is the cheapest of the three options upfront but requires an ongoing subscription of $6. This is similar to the Ultrahuman Ring Air if you turn on AFib Detection or Cardio Adaptability plugs, but neither is mandatory on the Ring Air, and the default (free) feature set is extensive.

The Oura is aimed at the more casual user, with less overall features than the Ultrahuman Air and less actionable insights. Both the Oura and the Ultrahuman Ring Air get around five days of battery life.

Interestingly, you can trade in your Oura for up to $100 credit on the Ring Air.

Should You Buy the Ultrahuman Ring Air?

The Ultrahuman Ring Air constantly offers many insights and actionable advice. If you care deeply about every aspect of your health, want to log your diet, and track every possible metric, I do not doubt that the Ultrahuman Ring Air will be perfect for you. There’s definitely an übermensch feel to the whole experience. Ultrahuman also offers a wireless glucose monitor (the M1); combining the two will give you deeper correlations and insights.

Despite not being a fitness fanatic, I’ve enjoyed the insights the Ring Air offered. The metrics could do with being explained better, but overall it doesn’t feel that inaccessible to a normal user, and you’re free to engage as little or as much as you want with each area of the app. I’ve disabled some of the optional components for now, but it’s customizable enough that anyone can do that and make it the ideal health-tracking companion. The sleep tracking is particularly impressive.

If you’ve been jealous of the data Apple Watch gathers for its users but don’t want to stop wearing your existing watch, a health-tracking smart ring is an ideal alternative. I’ll probably keep both on; I mainly use my Apple Watch for notifications.

Do I feel any healthier? Not particularly—but I have started to sleep better, and get up earlier. The Ultrahuman app figured out what time I sleep best. It hasn’t motivated me to exercise more though. The smart goals that are presented just aren’t as compelling as closing your rings on the Apple Watch. Now there’s an idea for next Ultrahuman Ring: an actual ring of LEDs on the outside that slowly fill up with activity.