Review: Ultrahuman Ring Air smart ring nudges you into a healthier direction

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Cons

Our Verdict

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

Price When Reviewed

$349

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Retailer Price

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

It aims to take the same sensors we’ve already seen crop up in other rings and wrist-based 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-friendly ring has all the makings of a genuine Oura Ring Gen 3 rival and surprisingly delivers both a similar core experience with a few elements that make it feel unique as well.

Design & Build

The Ring Air is a fully circular smart ring that’s made from titanium with a tungsten carbide carbon coating to toughen up a ring that sadly hasn’t remained as scratch-free as the first time I put it on my finger.

Mike Sawh

While it’s a pleasingly light ring (2.4-3.6g depending on size), making it comfortable to wear all day and at night, it has noticeably picked up a fair amount of scuffs and scratches over time, which certainly looks worse on the matt black version I had to test. That’s happened despite remembering to take it off before going to the gym for a weights session and generally trying to keep it out of harm’s way.

There are five ring colours in total to pick from here – Raw Titanium, Aster Black, Matte Grey, Bionic Gold and Space Silver, and all are available with a free sizing kit to make sure you get a good fit. Despite taking the sizing kit route, I did find the sizing a little off for me, where the ring had initially come off on a few occasions. That’s been less of an issue over time, but what’s clear is that not all smart rings are built the same when it comes to fit.

On the interior lies the sensor array and a medical-grade resin to prevent the ring from irritating the skin. I’ve had no reason to take the ring off other than to charge it and for gym weights, so it gets the thumbs up in terms of being a ring that feels skin-friendly.

Mike Sawh

As a package, it’s water resistant up to 100 metres depth and I’ve worn it in the shower and for swims and the ring has kept on tracking without issue. Completing the setup is the proprietary charging cradle to drop the ring on and a Type-C to C cable to connect to that cradle.

It’s a smart ring that certainly delivers in terms of being something that feels light and discreet to wear, though does feel a little plain-looking next to rings like the Oura Ring Gen 3 and cheaper rings like the RingConn Smart Ring.

Fitness Tracking & App

The Ring Air, like other smart rings, is a fitness tracker at heart and aims to gently prompt you into making better decisions about your day, that can in turn aim to improve aspects like your sleep and even recovery from exercise.

Mike Sawh

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

You’re also getting what Ultrahuman refers to as a medical-grade skin temperature sensor that can be used to show how your body is reacting to your fitness or when you might be feeling under the weather.

Once you’ve completed the two-week baseline data period you’ll then really need to start to pay attention to what the ring is trying to tell you. You’ll also receive phone notifications to recommend easing off stimulants like coffee or reducing 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 to other smart rings.

Crucially, the core tracking feels reliable as well too, I’ve been tracking data like step counts with an Oura Ring Gen 3 and two other fitness tracking smartwatches and the daily counts never felt wildly out from the other devices and on some days were a few hundred steps out from each other.

I also found continuous heart rate readings nicely in line with the tracking with sports watches I know from experience offer reliable wrist-based continuous monitoring on most days. Some real-time readings though felt high, as much as 10bpm out at times, which seemed to be tied to the fit of the ring.

It performs well as a sleep tracker with data like sleep duration, sleep stage breakdowns similar to what I captured with Oura’s reliable sleep tracking. It’s also very good at capturing naps.

Mike Sawh

What really underpins the strong experience is the companion smartphone app, which is slick and while is getting busier as Ultrahuman adds more features, is still really nice to engage with and largely presents the most useful data in a user-friendly way.

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

Overall, the approach to tracking and putting that tracking data into context feels very similar to what I’ve experienced with Oura. It feels different enough to not feel like an exact clone. The app is well-designed, though there’s also a fair bit of bloat that could be ditched or better hidden to make it unnecessarily busy.

Battery Life & Charging

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

Those claims however are generous based on my testing. I found it averaged 3 days with scope to push to 4 days, but never on any occasion made it to 6 days.

The app will fire notifications to your phone to remind you when the battery is running low, and then you’ll need to grab a proprietary charging cradle that clearly takes some design inspiration from the cradle that accompanies the Oura Ring Gen 3.

Mike Sawh

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

Price & Availability

The Ultrahuman Ring AIR is available to buy now and is being sold on Amazon and the official store (also fulfilled by Amazon).

It’s a subscription-free smart ring, which means you only need to pay for the ring itself and that will cost you £329/$349.

That gives it a more costly 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

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 hardware and software to date (of course Samsung will want to change that with the Galaxy Ring soon).

It provides strong core tracking and a companion app where data and insights are nicely presented and continues to improve as Ultrahuman adds features to make the Ring Air more useful. It also does it with slightly better battery life than the Oura Ring Gen 3.

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

Ultimately though, this is the standout alternative to Oura where you don’t need a subscription to reap the full smart ring benefits.

Specs