Ultrahuman Ring Air Smart Ring Review

In one look

Expert rating

Benefits

• Very light and comfortable
• Robust fitness and sleep tracking
• No subscription required
• Useful notification prompts

The inconvenients

• Prone to scratches
• Not designed for workout tracking

Our verdict

The Ultrahuman Ring Air offers a solid smart ring package with a largely likeable design and software as slick as Oura’s to make it a smart ring worth putting on.

Best prices today: Ultrahuman Ring Air

$349

The Ultrahuman Ring Air emerges as another smart ring that wants to prove that you don’t have to pay a monthly or annual subscription to put a useful fitness and wellness tracker on your finger.

It aims to use the same sensors we’ve already seen appear in other rings and wrist trackers to use data like sleep, heart rate, and exercise to help you make better decisions about your day.

On paper, the Android and iOS compatible ring has all the makings of a true Oura Ring Gen 3 rival and surprisingly offers both a similar core experience with a few elements that also make it unique.

Design and build

• Available in five colors
• Water resistant up to 100 meters
• Free Ring Sizing Kit

The Ring Air is a fully circular smart ring made from titanium with a tungsten carbide coating to reinforce a ring that unfortunately didn’t stay as scratch-free as the first time I put it on my finger.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Although it is a pleasantly lightweight ring (2.4-3.6g depending on size), making it comfortable to wear all day and night, it has obviously undergone a fair amount of scuffs and scratches over time, which definitely looks worse on matte black. version that I had to test. This happened even though you remembered to take it off before going to the gym for a weight training session and generally trying to keep it out of harm’s way.

There are five ring colors in total to choose from here – Raw Titanium, Aster Black, Matte Grey, Bionic Gold and Space Silver, and all are available with a free sizing kit to ensure you get a good fit. Despite choosing the sizing kit, I found the size to be a bit off for me, with the ring initially coming loose a few times. This poses fewer problems over time, but what is clear is that not all smart rings are built the same in terms of fit.

Inside is the sensor array and a medical-grade resin to keep the ring from irritating the skin. I’ve had no reason to take the ring off other than for charging and gym weights, so it has the merit of being a skin-friendly ring.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Overall it is water resistant up to 100 meters deep and I have worn it in the shower and for swimming and the ring has continued to track without issue. The configuration is completed by the proprietary charging base on which to place the ring and a Type-C to C cable to connect to this base.

It’s a smart ring that certainly offers the feeling of being lightweight and discreet to wear, even if it seems a little plain next to rings like the Oura Ring Gen 3 and less expensive rings like the RingConn Smart Ring.

Fitness Tracker & App

• Tracks steps, heart rate, temperature and sleep
• Works with apps like Strava and MyFitnessPal
• Custom notification nudges

The Ring Air, like other smart rings, is a fitness tracker at heart and aims to gently nudge you to make better decisions about your day, which can in turn aim to improve aspects such as your sleep and even your recovery after exercise.

Mike Sawh

It does this with some basic fitness tracking sensors, including a 6-axis motion sensor to track steps, general movement during the day, and to enable automatic sleep monitoring. There’s also room for a PPG sensor that can capture heart rate and monitor blood oxygen saturation.

You also get what Ultrahuman calls a medical-grade skin temperature sensor that can be used to show how your body is responding to your fitness or when you might be feeling unwell.

Once you’ve completed the two-week baseline data period, then you’ll really need to start paying attention to what the ring is trying to tell you. You’ll also receive phone notifications recommending that you avoid stimulants like coffee or reduce exposure to bright light to improve your chances of getting a good night’s sleep.

These prompts, while not groundbreaking, help Ultrahuman’s tracking approach feel different from other intelligent rings.

Importantly, the basic tracking also seems reliable, I’ve tracked data like step counts with an Oura Ring Gen 3 and two other fitness tracking smartwatches and the daily counts never felt far off from other devices and some days were a few hundred steps from each other.

I also found that continuous heart rate readings match well with tracking sports watches which I know from experience provide reliable continuous monitoring on the wrist most of the time. Some real-time readings seemed high, though, sometimes as high as 10 bpm, which seemed related to the ring adjustment.

It works well as a sleep tracker with data like sleep duration and sleep stages similar to what I captured with Oura’s reliable sleep tracker. It is also very effective at capturing naps.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

What really underpins this solid experience is the companion smartphone app, which is sleek and, while it gets busier as Ultrahuman adds more features, is still very enjoyable to use. use and presents much of the most useful data in a user-friendly way.

Like other smart rings, workout tracking isn’t a strong point. There is currently a training mode in beta where it is stated that heart rate tracking might not be as accurate as at rest. This is absolutely my experience using it. The good news is that Ultrahuman already offers fairly extensive third-party app integration with apps like Strava and Garmin Connect supported to help fill the exercise tracking data gaps.

Overall, the approach to tracking and putting this tracking data into context seems very similar to what I experienced with Oura. It looks different enough that it doesn’t seem like an exact clone. The app is well designed, although there is also quite a bit of bloat that could be abandoned or better hidden to make it unnecessarily busy.

Battery life and charging

• Up to 6 days of battery life
• Uses Oura style charging pad
• Charges in 2-3 hours

The Ring Air includes a 24mAh battery that Ultrahuman claims can stay powered for up to 6 days on a single charge.

These claims, however, are generous based on my testing. I found it lasted an average of 3 days with the possibility of pushing it to 4 days, but I never reached 6 days on any occasion.

The app will send notifications to your phone to remind you when the battery is low, and then you’ll need to get a proprietary charging stand that clearly takes inspiration from the design of the stand that comes with the Oura Ring Gen 3.

Mike Sawh

Powering up from 0 to 100% is a bit slow and can take up to 3 hours, which is longer than some other smart rings. While it doesn’t better the RingConn, which offers the best smart ring battery life, it at least goes toe-to-toe with Oura.

Pricing and availability

The Ultrahuman Ring AIR is available for purchase now and is sold on Amazon and the official store (also powered by Amazon).

This is a subscription-free smart ring, meaning you only have to pay for the ring itself and it will cost you £329/$349.

This gives it a higher standalone price than the Oura Ring Gen 3 (£238/$299). It’s also more expensive than the RingConn Smart Ring (£220/$279) and the Circular Ring Slim, which costs £225 and like Ultrahuman and RingConn, doesn’t require an additional subscription.

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Mike Sawh

Should you buy the Ultrahuman Ring Air?

The Ultrahuman Ring Air is the smart ring that comes closest to the Oura Ring in terms of what it offers in terms of hardware and software (of course, Samsung will soon want to change that with the Galaxy Ring).

It provides a solid basic tracking and companion app where the data and information is nicely presented and continues to improve as Ultrahuman adds features to make the Ring Air more useful. It also does so with slightly better battery life than the Oura Ring Gen 3.

It’s not immune to the same sorts of issues as other smart rings, however, like keeping the exterior pristine and having to rely on third-party app integration to fill in some data gaps.

Ultimately, this is the exceptional alternative to Oura, where you don’t need a subscription to enjoy the full benefits of the smart ring.

Specifications