Ultrahuman Ring Air review: the smart ring to buy?

Given their diminutive size and weight, there’s not very much separating the increasingly contested world of smart rings. The Ultrahuman Ring Air is, erm, ring-shaped, comes in various metallic finishes and is lined with the required sensors to track things like heart rate, movement and body temperature. All pretty standard.

But the ring is arguably the simplest part of the puzzle, and the real fun and games begin in the app, which is where the numerous smart ring manufacturers try to differentiate.

Ultrahuman immediately feels more high-tech, with a dashboard that favours neon greens, bold reds and complicated pie charts and graphs over animations and more muted hues.

Paired with the smartphone app, this 2.4mm thick and 2.4g ring offers insights into sleep quality, stress rhythms, steps and movement, recovery status and much more, building up a well-rounded overall picture of health and readiness to perform athletically the longer you wear it.

Prices start at £329/$349/AU$599 across most of the range, with only the latest brushed rose gold model commanding a premium in the UK, priced at £379.

Unlike some rivals, most of the wellness tracking comes part and parcel with that price, but, as you’ll see later, that doesn’t stop Ultrahuman from trying to upsell plug-ins and other products on multiple occasions.

Design

What is there to say about the design of a smart ring? They are round, mostly metallic and aim to ape the sort of shiny things you might spot in an H Samuel catalogue.

Ultrahuman offers the Ring Air in Bionic Gold, Raw Titanium, Aster Black, Matte Grey, Space Silver and a new Brushed Rose Gold finish. I opted for a raw titanium option in order to keep the bling factor down, and it’s not bad.

Ultrahuman claims the exterior is fashioned from “fighter jet grade Titanium reinforced with Tungsten Carbide Carbon coating”, but that feels like it’s over-egging things slightly.

The ring feels extremely light in the hand and doesn’t have the same reassuringly metallic tones when dropped on a hard surface like proper gold or silver jewellery. In fact, when on the finger, the rather plain, flat surface looks like an off-cut from some plumber’s piping.

On the plus side, it basically melds into the skin when you slip it on, and it’s very easy to forget about, both during the day and, more importantly, at night when trying to catch some zeds.

It’s fully waterproof, so you don’t have to worry about taking it in the shower or for a dunk in the pool, and Ultrahuman offers its own proprietary charging stand that’s compact enough to slip into a wash bag when travelling.

The brand claims a battery life of between four and six days, and I wouldn’t disagree. Even in “Turbo Mode” (Ultrahuman’s words, not mine), the ring would easily last five days with all sensors, all data and all power cranking constantly.

You can also switch it to Chill Mode, but the ring will mainly track during sleep and restful periods, or if it detects exercise to conserve battery.

Features

In terms of hardware, the Ultrahuman Ring Air packs an Infrared Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor, which takes care of blood oxygen saturation and heart rate tracking, as well as six-axis motion sensors and a “non-contact” medical-grade skin temperature sensor.

The latter refers to the fact that you don’t have to put up with any awkward lumps and bumps that dig into the skin to measure body temperature. In fact, the ring’s interior is perfectly smooth and comfortable to wear for hours, or even days, on end.

The Ring Air does all of the hard work in the background, constantly reading cues that inform the algorithms of stress, poor sleep, activities and much, much more. Reams of this data are then fed into the app, which crunches it all to provide useful insights.

If you head out for a walk, the ring will typically pick this up as an activity and ask you to confirm it later within the app. The same goes for many forms of exercise, such as jogging, cycling, rowing and plenty more.

Ultrahuman goes a few steps further than some other smart rings that I have tested, with insights into the best times to consume caffeine, guidance on getting more UV exposure for vitamin D levels and circadian rhythm analysis, which informs on the best times to avoid light and activity for a restful night’s sleep.

The Ring Air can do even more if you are willing to pay for a bunch of other Ultrahuman products, such as the M1 Live patch, which takes care of glucose levels, or one of the many subscription-based PowerPlugs for things like Cycle and Ovulation, AFib Detection and a slightly odd Tesla plug-in that gives insights into your readiness to drive. But do you really need that?

Perhaps more importantly, all of the deep insights into sleep quality, stress, UV exposure and activity come part and parcel of the ring package, so you get a solid overall picture of daily wellness for the asking price.

Performance

Like so many other fitness rings, Ultrahuman takes a few days before it can properly calibrate a number of important metrics. But after 48 hours of continuous wear, you’ll start getting data delivered on recent activity (including step counts), sleep and heart rates.

Metrics like Ultra Age, which is similar to Garmin’s Fitness Age and works out if you have the cardio system of a teenager or an old geezer, takes around two weeks of consistent wearing to calibrate, so don’t expect to delve into the most intricate data right away – it takes patience.

However, the ring itself is comfortable to wear, and the battery life is strong, so it’s not difficult to slip it onto an appropriate finger and just leave it there to do its own thing.

During testing, I found it offered some excellent insights into sleep quality, clearly flagging those evenings where I had messed up my sleep cycles by drinking too much caffeine or generally pulling my hair out during the day.

Based on your personal circadian rhythms, Ultrahuman will recommend the best time to start the sleep process, suggesting breathwork programmes or avoiding sunlight at certain times in order to maximise sleep potential.

There’s also a neat caffeine window that, as you’ve probably worked out, suggests the perfect time to slurp a flat white for maximum energy and brain-boosting benefits, without the sleepless nights.

The heart rate and step monitor are both accurate, with the step count aligning nicely with the Garmin Enduro I also wore while testing the ring. The general daily heart rate was accurate, but I found it didn’t pick up the same spike in heart rate during exercise as a dedicated fitness device, particularly one that syncs with a chest-mounted heart-rate monitor.

Again, it’s also not recommended to wear the Ultrahuman Ring Air in the gym if you plan on doing a lot of heavy lifting or anything that requires grip strength.

Swinging a barbell or dumbbells around is a surefire way to scratch up the exterior… and it’s bloody uncomfortable to boot.

Smartphone app

Ultrahuman’s app is very slick, and the presentation is arguably the best on the market. I found it really easy to locate the data I needed at that specific time. It’s possible to manually start workouts (rather than relying on the ring to detect them) and edit the main ‘snapshot’ with favourite data fields.

As previously mentioned, the presentation feels more techy than that offered by something like Oura, with lots of charts and graphs presented on the main page, and even more if you dive into individual data fields. I probably found it reassuring, coming from a fitness watch background.

On top of this, most of the analysis comes as part of the ring’s price, unlike some other rivals, and there’s so much here to get stuck into. I was particularly blown away by the UV goals and just how far we miss the recommended daily dose of Vitamin D in a UK winter… It’s shocking.

However, the Ultrahuman app does like to try and sell you things, with pop-ups for various plug-ins and gadgets appearing several times a week. Aside from ‘Ring’ and ‘Profile’, the other menus are reserved for trying to sell you stuff.

Ultrahuman Ring Air verdict

For those into their fitness and exercise, the Ultrahuman Ring Air feels very much like something that can mix it with dedicated fitness trackers, like watches from Garmin, Suunto, Apple and more.

The data it delivers is accurate, and the insights dive deep into various performance and wellness factors, which makes it easier to plan workouts for the most productive time of day or plan recovery and rest when it is most needed.

Opt for the full Ultrahuman suite of gadgets, and you’ll basically have one of the most encompassing fitness and wellness ecosystems this side of a professional sports laboratory.

For anyone who simply wants to track steps and join the “sleep-maxxing” social media craze, the Ring Air will feel like overkill, and the app might even bamboozle at times. There are more “lifestyle” rings out there for that stuff.

Ultrahuman Ring Air Technical Specifications