Fitness trackers have come such a long way since the original FitBit bands that I used to wear. We now have such a wide variety of trackers that are giving us more insight into our body’s health signals than ever.
My experience has always been to have a tracker on my wrist as a watch. It has worked for me up to this point, and I am very happy with my recent upgrade to the Garmin vivoactiv 6. However, my curiosity about smart rings continues to nag at me in the back of my mind.
I have family who have tested the OURA ring and the Luna Ring 2, so I wanted to test the Ultrahuman Ring Air. This ring continues to show up in my social media feeds and in my research as a strong competitor to the category-defining OURA ring. So I will be testing the ring for the rest of the year in tandem with my Garmin vivoactiv 6 to see how it’s tracking compares and help you decide if it is the right choice for you.
The Ultrahuman Brand
As always, I like to do a deep-dive in to the brands behind the products. As I have mentioned many times on this blog, the fitness industry has the potential to be a lucrative industry and there are plenty of bad actors who are just trying to make a quick buck selling you the latest trending item.
Which is why I was pleased to discover that Ultrahuman is not one of those types of companies.
Ultrahuman was founded by Mohit Kumar and Vatsal Singhal, two entrepreneurs who are passionate about physical activity and the health and wellness industry. The idea for Ultrahuman actually came about after Mohit noticed that athletes at a Muay Thai gym in Thailand were all using various tools to track their health markers.
So they decided to start Ultrahuman in 2019, and launched a suite of products that give you better insights into what’s happening internally so you can learn and adapt your training, nutrition, and sleep to improve those metrics.
Along with the Ring Air, they also have the M1 product, which monitors your body’s glucose levels, and their Blood Vision product, which represents a revolutionary leap into the future of health and wellness by seamlessly correlating changes in sleep, resting HR, HRV, and movement trends with key blood markers.
More recently, they unveiled their Ultrahuman Home, which takes tracking from your internal environment to your external environment, giving you a full picture of how your environment impacts your health.
I am really excited to dig into the data that the Ultrahuman Ring Air will provide me with throughout this test. But before I get into that, let me quickly walk you through the buying journey.
Buying Your Ultrahuman Ring Air
To choose your Ring Air, go to the Ultrahuman Website and choose your ring colour. They have the following colours available:
- Bionic Gold
- Raw Titanium
- Aster Black
- Matte Grey
- Space Silver
- Brushed Rose Gold (premium price)
I decided to go with the Bionic Gold since I primarily wear gold jewelry. Once you’ve selected your ring, it is recommended to include a sizing kit in your order. If you have a friend who has already purchased an Ultrahuman Ring Air and has the sizing kit, then you can use theirs and skip the sizing process.
If you want to save 10% on your Ultrahuman Ring Air purchase, be sure to use code RileyPearce10 at checkout to save.
While you wait for your ring sizing kit to arrive, you’ll begin receiving emails from the Ultrahuman team, building anticipation for your new tracker, and helping you understand what you’ll be able to track with your ring once it has arrived.
The kit arrives quickly (about 4 days) and provides you with a number of options to find the right ring size for you, plus some swatches of what the different ring materials actually look like.
I had heard from various people in my life that your ring size is usually pretty close to your shoe size. I wear a women’s size 8, so I tried on the size 8 ring, and it was a great fit!
The next step was to wear the ring for the 2-night test. This helps you determine if the ring is comfortable to sleep in, stays on during sleep, and ultimately if it’s the right ring size for your long-term wear of the ring.
I have a habit of taking things off in my sleep without me realizing it, especially if it’s not something I am used to. Nose tape, eye masks, earplugs, and mouth tape never last through the night with me.
So I wasn’t entirely surprised when I woke up, and the ring was not on my finger. Because I know myself and my strange sleeping activities, I put the ring back on and wore it throughout the day, growing more accustomed to the ring being on.
Thankfully, the ring survived the second night so I could return to my order tracking emails and confirm my ring size and the colour of my ring.
Once confirmed, they provided me with a shipping and delivery date estimate, which was about 2 weeks after I confirmed my ring size.
Two weeks may seem like a long time to wait in today’s world of same-day delivery, but I find Ultrahuman does a great job of keeping you well-informed about the status of your delivery and getting you excited about your Ring Air.
My personal favourite? Their email about all the things that the Ring Air can track!
What Can the Ultrahuman Ring Air Track?
As I mentioned at the start of this, fitness trackers have come a long way. The Ultrahuman Ring Air is no exception to this.
Within their core capabilities, the Ring Air helps you understand your sleep better and gives you valuable insights into your recovery.
Sleep Tracking with the Ring Air
If you’re already using a smart watch or fitness tracker, chances are you are already getting some insights into the quality of your sleep. Factors such as sleep stages, resting heart rate, breathing variations, temperature changes, and heart-rate-variability are all becoming commonplace in the sleep-tracking world.
From what I can tell, the Ring Air will track all of these metrics and provide you with more insights into how each factor impacts your sleep, and ultimately how it has impacted your recovery and readiness for your next workout.
I’m excited to test this feature out and compare it to the data my Garmin shares with me.
Dynamic Recovery Support with the Ring Air
As a girl on the go, working my 9-5, spending time with friends and family, growing this community and maintaining a consistent workout routine – optimizing my recovery is a non-negotiable.
With the Ultrahuman Ring Air, they will deliver actionable insights based on stress levels, exercise, nutrition, resting heart rate, HRV, and skin temperature to help me recover more efficiently.
Again, my Garmin vivoactiv 6 also provides some guidance, but I find it doesn’t give me the level of insights and action items to truly optimize my recovery. So again, I am looking forward to testing these features with the Ring Air.
Power Plugs
On top of sleep and recovery data, you can also choose to add “Power Plugs” to your Ring Air experience. Depending on the type of data and the partnership that developed the Power Plug, they may be free but could also require a small fee to access them.
The list of Power Plugs is as follows:
| Power Plug | Details | Free/Premium? |
| Afib Detection (atrial fibrillation) | This PowerPlug discreetly monitors your heart rhythm every night, detecting early signs of AFib (atrial fibrillation). Enjoy seamless and nocturnal monitoring with daily medical-grade reports for peace of mind. | (CAD) $5.70/mo |
| Cardio Adaptibility | Monitor your heart’s activity every night with this PowerPlug. It analyzes cardio adaptability using detailed tachograms and Lorenz plots, offering key insights into how your heart responds to activities, stress, and rest. | (CAD) $2.90/mo |
| Caffeine Window | Recommends caffeine timings and cut-offs to boost alertness while protecting sleep quality – ideal for sustained energy and restful nights. Log caffeine intake for real-time body caffeine for personalized recommendations. | Free |
| Phase Alignment | Aligns your daily habits with natural circadian rhythms. Get personalized recommendations on when to get daylight exposure, exercise, and wind down, which helps boost energy, improve sleep quality, and support better overall health, day and night. | Free |
| Vitamin D | Tracks Vitamin D through sun exposure by calculating ideal outdoor times based on skin type, location, and UV index. The PowerPlug monitors Vitamin D absorption in real time and provides safety alerts to help prevent overexposure. | Free |
| Cycle and Ovulation | Accurately predicts a 7-day fertile window by analyzing real-time biomarkers like skin temperature, HRV, and RHR. Offers proactive, seamless fertility insights, predicting ovulation more effectively than traditional methods to support cycle awareness and planning. | Free (pro version available for CAD $4.10/mo) |
| Pregnancy Insights | Offers pregnancy-specific health monitoring and guidance. Get personalized advice on nutrition, activity, and key health metrics to support your well-being and your baby’s development, ensuring confidence throughout your pregnancy journey. | Free |
| Smart Alarm | Delivers a personalized wake-up aligned with your sleep goals, triggered by meeting Sleep Index, repaying Sleep Debt, or completing optimal cycles. Wakes you during the lightest sleep phase with gentle sounds for a refreshed, natural start. | Free |
| Social Jetlag | Monitors the gap between workday and free-day sleep schedules to minimize circadian rhythm disruption. This enhances sleep quality and helps you to feel more energized and powers recovery. | Free |
| New Parent | Adapts sleep and recovery tracking for the unique challenges of new parenthood. The PowerPlug recalibrates sleep and recovery patterns, to support new parents in getting good quality rest. | Free |
| Shift Work | Designed for non-traditional sleep schedules, this PowerPlug adapts sleep and recovery insights to your shift timings. Get personalized guidance on light exposure, sleep timing, and recovery strategies to reduce circadian disruption and boost resilience | Free |
Initial Expectations for the Ultrahuman Ring Air
If you haven’t yet gathered from this article, I don’t have my ring yet. But I wanted to share some expectations for the product so we have a basic understanding of what I will be looking for and hoping to get out of this product.
- The Ring Air will not track my weight-lifting workouts. The product guide says that wearing the ring while doing weight lifting can actually damage the sensors and the product itself, so I will not be relying on the ring to track my workouts. My Garmin and my Hevy app will take care of that.
- The Ring Air will provide better support for travel/jet lag. Compared to what my Garmin currently offers, I am expecting the Ring Air to provide better insights into how I can recover from international travel and jet lag. I tend to lose 2-3 days of training when I travel, so I want to improve this.
- The Ring Air will give me better insights into the impact of my nutrition on my overall health. Right now, I don’t have a reliable nutrition tracking app that is also taking into consideration all other health metrics that I am tracking. I am hoping that the Ring Air will be able to take all the health data it has, look at my nutrition, and help me optimize this further.
- The Ring Air will be something I can actually wear at all times without sacrificing a polished look. This is more. of apersonal one, but I really don’t like wearing my fitness watch when I go out or if I get dressed up. The ring looks nice and fits with a more polished outfit, so I am excited to be able to continue monitoring my health data while also looking nice.
As of this writing, my Ring Air should be arriving in about 4 days. When it arrives, I’ll do. mybest to provide you with regular updates on all of the features, wearability, battery life, and of course, if I feel like it lives up to the value and hype.
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