Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
I’ve been using the Ultrahuman Ring Air since July, and I have a confession to make. I was immediately captivated by the form factor. As someone who had never worn a ring before, I quickly found it incredibly comfortable and convenient. Within a week, all my initial concerns about wearing such a device vanished. I was surprised by the sheer amount of tech packed into something so tiny, and by the promises of powerful, continuous health tracking from a stylish ring that almost made me feel like I’d stepped into the future.
Four months in, that’s where the honeymoon phase ended. The hard realities of current smart ring technology became impossible to ignore. This experience has proven exactly why these wearables will stay a niche product for several years before they can genuinely threaten the reign of smartwatches and established fitness trackers.
Have you tried a smart ring and did you like it? 1 votes Yes, I have, and I love it. 0 % Yes, I have, but I wasn't convinced. 0 % No, I haven't, but I'm curious. 0 % No, I'm not interested. 100 %
A massive battery and accuracy tradeoff
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
I’ve used a wide range of wearables, including multiple generations of the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch, as well as various fitness bands from HUAWEI, and Xiaomi. I was well aware of the technological compromises inherent in a ring form factor. After all, bulkier smartwatches boast larger sensors and significantly bigger batteries, allowing them to last anywhere from several days to, at times, up to two weeks on a single charge.
I knew a smart ring simply couldn’t compete with that endurance or raw tracking performance. My initial, realistic expectation was that the Ultrahuman Ring Air would manage five days of use. Ultrahuman advertised up to six, but in reality, using the standard profile, I averaged three to four days on a single charge. While that’s disappointing compared to the marketing, it’s arguably on par, if not slightly better than many high-end smartwatches on the market today.
Ultrahuman advertised up to six days of battery life, and I expected at least five. In reality, it only achieved three to four. That was a letdown.
However, the bigger issue was accuracy, which frequently fell short of my expectations — especially at this price point. It seemed the ring often struggled to reliably track steps, active hours, workouts, and even the resting heart rate with the consistency I expected. For a device whose entire job is passive data collection, this trade-off between size and reliable performance is the first major roadblock in the smart ring category.
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