About a year ago, I decided to get a smart ring as a fitness tracker. I decided on the Ultrahuman Ring Air for a few reasons.
- (The main reason) The Ultrahuman Ring Air was subscription free.
- It was sold to me by the bicycle shop that I patronise. This bicycle shop is Entro Cycles.
- I tried on the other options, namely the Oura Ring and the RingCon and felt that this was the most comfortable.
If you would like to read my review of the Ultrahuman Ring Air, here is my initial article.
One year later, I can safely say that the Ultrahuman Ring Air is not the ideal fitness and sleep tracker for me. Oh and it failed on me. But let us put that aside first and let me share why I think if you are into certain activities, this may not be the ideal fitness tracker for you.
Firstly, if you lift weights, the Ultrahuman Ring Air is extremely uncomfortable for almost all weightlifting activities. Carrying a dumbbell in my left hand with the ring on places extreme pressure on by index finger, where the ring sits on. It is so unbearable that I do not wear the ring while I lift weights. It is not comfortable while doing pull ups and pushups as well. I tried deadlifting with the ring on and the pain from the pressure was ridiculous. Hence I almost never wear the ring while strength training.
Secondly, it may slip off when running or swimming. The Ultrahuman Ring Air will not, just like other smart fitness rings, shrink in size as you get leaner. I intentionally lost some weight, not a lot, about three to four kilograms, so that I could fall within a certain category for an online cycling platform. Just that small weight loss caused the ring to feel ever so slightly looser. It fell off while I was playing football on a number of occasions. It also, almost, fell off while I was cycling. Therefore, as your weight fluctuates, a smart fitness ring will no longer fit you.
After about three months with the Ultrahuman Ring Air, I almost completely stopped wearing it while I did any form of exercise. Therefore, it had only one core function to me. Sleep tracking. But even that did not go well around the 10th month mark. The ring for some reason started to bloat. It could no longer fit on the charger. I had to press it in with a great deal of force just to get it to charge. Moreover, it could not hold even a day’s worth of charge. The degradation of the battery was horrible.
This is the picture of the bloated Ultrahuman Ring Air. I have no idea whether you can see that the internals of the ring have somehow expanded a little.
When I contacted support on the app, they informed me that I had to provide them with the proof of purchase, videos and photos of the ring not fitting on the charger. This was an extremely painful process as I was passed over to multiple customer support staff. They kept pushing some firmware upgrade to my ring. It did not help at all. The battery life issue was never solved and I can never understand how they intended to solve the hardware issue of the ring bloating through a firmware update.
After countless explanation and with me providing proof of purchase, they send me a replacement.
I believe this should be a refurbished set. For the following reasons:
- It was not sealed. The picture that you see here is how it came delivered. The contents were not sealed as well.
2. The most telling reason why I think this was refurbished is because about a month after I received this replacement, issues with the ring started to surface.
Anyway, I tried to take a photo of how badly scuffed the original ring got from me just lifting some weights and doing some pull ups with it on my finger. I do not think I did a decent job but just understand that the ring will show signs of scuffs from rubbing against surfaces.
A friend of mine commented that maybe it was because I used the ring on those few occasions while lifting weights and doing pull ups and push ups that caused my first ring to bloat. I think that is a ridiculous comment because the manufacturers of fitness rings should anticipate that wearers would exercise with the ring. Moreover, there is an activity tracking function and it is supposed to track your strength training sessions.
This is the start of the replacement ring going wonky. The red and green light started flashing.
I got no sleep data for a few days.
On certain days I got a ridiculously low amount of sleep even though I slept for about 6 hours.
On certain days it decided to work…
But after a while… it decided not to track my sleep again…
The ring had just ONE function to complete… and it could not do it.
Once again, reaching out to support was frustrating. It was just them pushing out firmware updates to my replacement ring.
Oh and I was told that I should no longer be on chill battery mode. I needed to turn on turbo mode to ensure that the ring would track my sleep.
Chill mode worked fine previously.
Turning on Turbo mode meant that I reached Critical battery mode quicker. The battery like is about 3-4 days thereabouts.
With little to no data, there is nothing I can effectively track on the app…
The app was constantly trying to connect to the ring.
I tried resetting the ring. The process is extremely silly. You put the ring on the charger and start tapping the charger continuously on the table. There should not be such an inelegant reset method. Just install a button for a long press and hold on the charger please.
Even resetting it did not work.
I believe the bluetooth sensors on my replacement ring are not functioning properly. This is because my phone cannot detect the ring on many occasions. Sometimes it will detect the ring. I had to leave this on for a very long period of time for the app to detect the ring. When I say long, I mean hours. I just left it there and went about my work. Reconnected it to my phone when it was detected.
I am going back to proper wearables with no subscription. I got used to the fact that there is no screen on the Ultrahuman Ring Air. This is unlike my Apple Watch. Hence I decided to try the Amazfit Helio Strap. Cost me slightly over a hundred dollars.
The Ultrahuman Ring Air cost me in excess of S$400 thereabouts.
What a waste of money.
Yours sincerely,
Daryl
