I used a smart ring for 4 months, and it’s not what I hoped it would be

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.

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.

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.

Smartwatches don’t just win on battery life; their bulkier designs offer distinct advantages in sensor size, surface area coverage, chip power, and antenna reliability. This inherently makes them more accurate and reliable data collectors than a tiny smart ring. While I knew the Ultrahuman Ring Air wouldn’t match a dedicated fitness tracker, the actual level of inaccuracy and, worse, data loss, surprised me.

Take sleep tracking and general data sync, for example. Even with my phone’s battery optimizations disabled, the Ring Air often wouldn’t automatically transfer data unless the dedicated Ultrahuman app was actively open. This resulted in significant gaps and inaccurate health reports.

In the first few weeks, I was diligent, constantly opening the app to compare the ring’s tracking against my other wearables. While the data wasn’t perfect, it was close enough to satisfy my curiosity.

But fast-forward a month, and the ring had done its job too well: it had truly disappeared on my finger. I was charging it reliably every few days and completely forgot about the app, assuming the ring was tracking everything in the background like any other modern wearable.

My shock came when I finally checked my activity log. Weeks of data were simply gone. The app had only managed to sync over the last three or four days, and it had never once notified me that the connection was failing, or that syncing wasn’t happening in the background. Weeks of consistent tracking and experimentation — to test its accuracy — were lost due to a simple software oversight and a dependence on the user actively opening the app.

I had to start my experiments all over again from scratch. Now, I’ve established a forced routine: open the Ultrahuman app every two to three days just to initiate a sync. While this has worked reliably in transferring my data, this requirement is a huge strike against a device that promises seamless data collection.

Just to clarify, this issue isn’t an isolated problem with Ultrahuman’s smart ring. Oura Rings were known for missing data, too, alongside a few other brands. However, most of them have improved, and lost data has become less of an issue over time, thanks to continuous updates.

Smart rings typically vary between $250 and $400, sometimes even requiring a costly monthly subscription just to unlock key features, like the Oura Ring 4. This price point is excessive when you consider they are still less reliable and offer fewer features than similarly priced, mature wearables.

The high cost is, in part, understandable: smart rings are niche, lifestyle-first products. Health tracking is the secondary selling point, making them an alternative for users who prioritize comfort and form factor. They lack a display and offer a smaller technological footprint, which is the very source of their charm — and their limitations.

While they are more convenient for everyday tracking, they become a liability during actual sports and fitness activities. A smartwatch generally stays out of the way, but I noticed that a smart ring will constantly scrape against metal dumbbells, rubber grips, and exercise handles. They become scratched and potentially uncomfortable, especially during workouts, undermining the very convenience they promise.

Paying $300 or more for a smart ring that’s less reliable, offers fewer features, and could potentially suffer from data loss compared to a similarly priced high-end smartwatch is simply hard to justify. For anyone prioritizing accuracy and comprehensive health tracking, my advice is to look elsewhere.

Of course, the decision ultimately depends on your priorities. You could wear both a smartwatch and a ring, as I currently do, to get reliable workout data from one and passive tracking from the other. But let’s be realistic: this “best-of-both-worlds” approach requires spending a significant amount of money and maintaining two devices — a solution only for dedicated “power users” like me.

The reality is that smart rings are a beautiful concept with a promising future, but the current technology is disappointing. They cost as much as devices with built-in GPS, large displays, more accurate sensors, and comprehensive data collection. Those do a better job, and they don’t lose your data.

As things stand today, the Ultrahuman Ring Air — and the entire smart ring category — is simply not what I expected it to be. There are far better wearables that offer greater reliability and value for the same money. And while I’ll continue to wear my ring in the future, primarily because I have made the necessary changes to make it work for me, it’s not something that I could recommend to a lot of people, especially at this price point and with the required change in habits you have to get accustomed to.