Larry Magid: Smart ring tracks health, fitness data with long battery life

I have profited from the insights into my activity, heart rate, sleep quality, and other indicators since I started wearing a fitness band or smart watch years ago. I chose to test out a smart ring from the latest generation because not everyone wants to wear a watch, especially when they’re sleeping.

A ring’s obvious advantage is that it’s smaller and more convenient to wear all day, even when working out or sleeping. However, there are other benefits. The RingConn Gen 2, which rivals the market-leading Oura Ring, is what I’m testing. Ringconn does not charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee, in contrast to the Oura ring.

Smart rings don’t need to be charged every day like most smart watches do. My usage suggests that the Ringconn’s 10–12 day battery life is roughly accurate. Not needing to charge it every day is a relief, particularly if you wear it to bed. I need to find a moment throughout the day to charge my Pixel Watch 3 because I sleep with it as well and don’t need it to track my whereabouts.

Since rings lack screens, you must open their smartphone app in order to read your data, unlike smart watches. In most circumstances, I don’t find that inconvenient, but it’s helpful to be able to view your pulse rate and other metrics by simply looking at your watch when you’re walking or performing other workouts. This is particularly true if you dislike carrying a phone or if looking at it is hazardous or difficult (like when riding a bike).

I’m wearing the ring, in part, to assess how well I sleep. Even though my CPAP machine records nightly apnea events, I wish to obtain other metrics to confirm the information it provides because I suffer sleep apnea. While the majority of personal fitness devices do not seek to record sleep apnea, Apple recently added sleep apnea detection to its most recent watch. That feature was included to Ringconn’s latest ring. The device is not FDA authorized, and I am not aware of any peer-reviewed research to support the company’s 90.7% accuracy claim. In my experience, while my CPAP equipment did identify a few apnea events, it did measure apnea occurrences on some nights but not on others. Five per hour or fewer is regarded as usual.

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It does appear to provide a decent representation of what happened during the evenings that the feature worked, even though the values recorded by my CPAP and the ring were not completely aligned.

Every respectable manufacturer of workout equipment warns consumers against using their products for diagnostic purposes. If you suspect that you have sleep apnea or any other medical condition, you should consult a doctor. Although doctors can measure apnea far more accurately, the benefit of using a fitness device is that you can see how you’re doing over an extended period of time rather than just a snapshot from a medical sleep study. This also holds true for other measurements you can take at home, such as SPO2 and blood pressure.

I occasionally monitor my SPO2 when I sleep in order to determine my blood oxygen levels for the night because of my apnea. The Google Watch’s Fitbit app provides me with a nightly average and range, but it doesn’t display how it fluctuates over time. SPO2 is only measured by Fitbit while you’re asleep. The Ringconn displays a graph of SPO2’s fluctuations over time and measures it both during the day and at night. Another option is to take a measurement right away.

I’ve contrasted its findings with those of a pulse oximeter and the medical-grade O2Ring Oximeter Continuous Oxygen Monitor from Wellue, which is suitable for overnight use. Although the figures were not precise, they were comparable and showed a similar trend. These are indicators rather than diagnostic tools, just like other metrics.The Sleep Foundation advises anyone keeping track of their blood oxygen levels to discuss with their physician what is appropriate for them and what level is too low.

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Heart rate is also graphed by the Ringconn app, and it closely matches the data from my Google Watch. If you click on the measure icon, it displays your current rate as well as its most recent reading. You don’t have to press anything on the majority of fitness watches to see your current rate. Additionally, it provides range, resting rate, and average heart rate.

The Ringconn records heart-rate variability (HRV), or the change in the interval between heartbeats, like a lot of fitness trackers. The Cleveland Clinic states that your heart’s variability is a reflection of your body’s capacity for adaptation. Your body’s ability to adjust to a variety of situations is typically demonstrated by a highly varied heart rate. People who have a high heart rate variability tend to be happy and less worried.

The ring tracks the amount of time spent in bed, total time sleeping, and the stages of sleep—Awake, REM, Light, and Deep—just like the majority of sleep trackers. Skin temperature and respiration rate are also measured.

Sleep trackers are notoriously imprecise when it comes to assessing sleep stages, but they generally do a pretty decent job of measuring how long you sleep. I typically get different findings with Ringconn than from Fitbit and Sleeptracker. As noted by Johns Hopkins Medicine, they frequently use inactivity as a stand-in for sleep. The majority of sleep tracking gadgets estimate your actual sleep duration. Nevertheless, tracking gadgets can undoubtedly be helpful in identifying trends in your sleeping patterns.

The steps, calories from activities, and calories from basal metabolism displayed on the Ring’s Activity screen are all pretty similar to what Fitbit provided for me. It lets you track jogging and cycling both indoors and outdoors, but it doesn’t cover as many activities as Fitbit and many other trackers. It displays the activity intensity ratio as percentages of inactive, low, moderate, and strenuous.

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Based on my two weeks of testing, the Ringconn appears to provide fairly decent data, even though no tracker is comprehensive and 100% accurate. It is competitively priced at $299 when compared to smart watches, while Fitbit and other activity trackers are significantly less expensive. One of the main selling points for me is that I can charge it no more than once a week, and I do believe that the trending data it provides will be helpful in the long run.

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Larry Magid is an internet safety advocate and tech journalist. His email address is [email protected].

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