Giving up on smart rings | Hacker News Reader

Giving up on smart rings

notesbylex.com

121 pointslexandstuff193 comments

What I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention yet. If the internal batteries swell you are now in a very bad situation.

https://cybernews.com/gadgets/samsung-galaxy-smart-ring-batt...

Absolutely nuts that this thing wouldn't be engineered so that at least a swelling battery causes the exterior to split so that the swelling is directed out rather than in.

It is understandable in some narrow sense because you want the outer surface to be nick-resistant, so you need to make it out of reasonably thick metal. Plastic rings would look terrible after a couple of weeks.

But it's really hard to justify the big picture. It's hundreds of bucks + a monthly subscription for... what, exactly? Why does this need to exist? If you really want to gamify your pulse and sleep patterns for some inconceivable reason, a phone or a wristwatch can collect the same information in a more practical and safer way.

Thinner skin, so you can in theory get better sensor readings. And you don't have to convince people to give up the watch they already own. Selling somebody who owns a $4000 watch another watch is an uphill battle that requires Apple watch levels of sophistication, selling them a ring is a lot easier

I also find the cost of the Oura outrageous. But getting the $450 smart ring instead of the $20 smart ring from aliexpress is the buyer's choice. It doubles as jewelry, and some people are willing to spend on that. And the software quality is certainly better than with the bargain bin option

> Selling somebody who owns a $4000 watch another watch is an uphill battle

I’d wager the future lifetime spending of someone who owns a $4000 watch on other watches is at least one and maybe two orders of magnitude greater than the general population.

I think the parent is talking about wearing two watches. But I'd guess that the overlap between people who like expensive (almost always synonymous with mechanical) watches and who want achievements for sleep patterns is pretty minimal. It's almost like a statement of two different life philosophies.

I agree with you, but I believe the person you responded to meant that someone with an expensive mechanical watch doesn’t want to wear a smart watch in place of their mechanical watch (and double wristing looks silly). As someone with an expensive mechanical watch who wants to wear that instead of an Apple Watch, I agree with them.

You cannot lift weights with that ring, but you can with a whoop. That, plus the battery life (no display) makes it very practical. Just my 2c as a whoop user

Perhaps you could reinforce both the outside and the inside, so any swelling would be directed parallel to the finger?

Or have a cut in the outer ring with an insert filling the gap. A partial ring is easiy to bend outwards, but difficult to bend inwards.

> It's hundreds of bucks + a monthly subscription for... what, exactly?

Once upon a time I thought this kind of thing would be needed for accurate hand tracking for VR applications, in lieu of a full glove, but it seems to not be a major use case.

Some people just do not like wearing a wristwatch. I would sleep with a ring i would not sleep with a wristwatch

Wdym "seen no one mention"? This case was so much "all over the news" it might as well have been a psyop.

And yet it was exactly one case.

We're all in our own filter bubble my friend, there is no the news any more

Was thinking about how many people willingly stuff lithium batteries in their ears, but have never read about an accident

I've seen someones vape catch on fire while they had it in their mouth

Well to be fair they are already willingly ingesting harmful materials.

Victim blaming. Nice.

that was just a joke grow up

"just a joke"

Right.

Exceedingly unlikely

None of these 3 problems have anything to do with it being a smart ring. Same problems that regular rings have, yet people still wear them.

1. Adulting: buying rings that are the right size. eg My tungsten wedding ring cannot be resized either.

2. Most people don't even lift. Those that do, dont mind taking off jewelry. I can see how this would be a problem for someone who wants to wear a smart ring for lifting. Sounds like an issue that should have been noticed earlier.

3. Adulting: moving the ring up and down your soapy finger and washing your hands properly.

A health and fitness tracker that cannot be worn during a common health and fitness activity seems highly problematic as a form factor, especially since competing form factors do not have this problem.

Not necessarily common, but I imagine most form factors would have issues with _some_ activities. I have a fitness watch that I don't like wearing when rock climbing. A ring also isn't suitable, but an armband worn further up would be.

It’s a little intellectually disingenuous to compare something you don’t like wearing during a niche sub categorical activity to a category of tracker you CANNOT wear during a categorical activity.

Most people do not wear tungsten wedding rings. A wedding band can be resized and it's typical to have it resized several times during a long marriage. This is a legitimate downside of smart rings that is only shared with one niche-but-overrepresented-here option.

Cobalt Chrome ring wearer here (and my wife). Not so niche I guess

True, a sample size of 1 means it is extremely common

Rings that can't be adjusted are ubiquitous. Walk into almost any store that sells rings, most open-air stands that sell rings, and you will find some. It's true they aren't usually preferred, but they are common.

TWO! Mine's cobalt as well. My wife picked it out when I'd lost my original gold ring (temporarily, cough). Besides looking interesting, apparently it was much less expensive than gold is these days.

My experience with devices with very small batteries is that they lose capacity (below 80%) quickly after a couple of years of daily use. By the time you need the ring resized, the battery might be worn out anyway.

It’s in reality a disposable product unfortunately, unlike a wedding band.

The advantage of my tungsten wedding ring is I have 5 of them, some in different sizes, and it cost me less than $100 for them.

Don't look up how they get removed from your finger at the ER

EMT here. I've never had a patient with a tungsten ring but I'm pretty sure our ring cutters would not work. So I looked it up. Apparently you have to break them off with vise grips [0]. One more tool for my kit I guess.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=poM423pewRE

Thank you for everything that you do! I imagine EMTs don't get nearly enough thanks amidst all the rush and horror.

I looked it up and seems they just bash it with hammer? What are you eluding to?

It is difficult to get off. If they can't smash it, they remove the finger. But if your ring gets caught you lose your glove. The one made of skin

Since this is HN: About 25% of US males wear a tungsten wedding band. So, not most, but a sizable amount.

The numbers you are probably referring to are for the market share in any given year.

https://www.jckonline.com/magazine-article/the-knot-2019-jew...

Since people tend to stay married for years, and tungsten wasn't as popular previously, the actual number of adult men wearing tungsten wedding bands is probably a lot lower, maybe around 10%.

Still a lot. Approximately nobody wears them in Germany; seems like an opportunity.

smart rings aren't meant to last more than a couple years though - the rate of progress on these means that you're more likely going to be paying for a smart ring subscription than a physical object

Mine is serinium (a zirconium/titanium/nickel/etc. alloy), because it was cheap (because I was poor and wanted to spend more money on my then-fiancée's, of course). Serinium rings are also not resizable, and, from what I understand, they are becoming more popular (because they are cheap).

Odd, I was married for almost twenty years during which I think I took off my ring twice (maybe not even that much—if I recall correctly, I persuaded the surgical staff to tape my ring rather than have me remove it when I had surgery). Never had to resize it and it fit fine the whole time. I don’t know what lifestyle leads to a finger changing size dramatically during the lifespan of a smart ring.

> I don’t know what lifestyle leads to a finger changing size dramatically during the lifespan of a smart ring.

Are you pretending that you are unaware that this can happen, or are you showing contempt for people who gain or lose weight? I don't find either useful.

To be fair to the parent commenter, I wondered the same thing, and I'm someone whose weight has fluctuated by >60% over the course of my marriage without needing my ring resized. Having been both obese and medically underweight over the course of that time, I'm not particularly contemptful of people who are either.

I’ve not quite had the same dramatic change of weight (only about 20% gain), but my fingers have retained their diameter through that. I was genuinely curious about what caused people to need resizing.

The only thing I can figure is that my change wasn't extreme enough. I guess mine is centered on a roughly healthy weight, with fluctuations ~30% above and below that, which might be quite different than fluctuations only above. (Thankfully I'm now much closer to the midpoint now).

Ever heard of arthritis?

This is not typical

I don't wear my wedding ring for similar reasons as described in this post. (Mostly reason #1.) But my wedding ring was $75, can be resized pretty cheaply if I'd like, and is harder to damage because it's just solid metal.

An Oura ring appears to be $400, easy to damage, can't be resized. Lots more room for regret there.

People wear wedding rings but take them off for pull up bars and so on. But a fitness tracking device you need to take off to... Do some fitness exercises... Is not a smart idea in my book.

I'd question the utility of the data from a ring for weightlifting, cardio sure but just lifting weights there's not a huge need to track your heart rate, you're not moving a lot for steps, etc.

Lifting weights definitely causes your heart rate to change.

It's usually not the primary benefit of the exercise. You are not going to maintain zone 2 (120-140 bpm) while lifting.

Of course it does but it's barely relevant to the goals of the exercise though so tracking it is minimally useful beyond the vague curiosity of cataloging and measuring every moment.

The data should be useful for automatically counting reps...

I suppose, if counting to low double digits is difficult for you?

Not really the point.

If you make program with a bunch of different exercises, and are modifying your program a lot, it can be a pain to keep track of what your next exercise should be.

If you are automatically tracking reps, it can just announce whatever the next thing in your program is, and start rest timers automatically...

It's not really about tracking reps as much as tracking where you are in a program that it is useful for...

I use the Pump Club app when lifting, it has the day's programme to follow: I simply enter the reps after each exercise.

It never occurred to me that I'd want to automatically track reps. I mean, it could be kinda useful, but I'm also taking 45 to 60 seconds cool-down between exercises anyway, so it's not like it gets in the way.

That also moves the app onto the next exercise in the programme. It's manual, but it's not intrusive and can't be wrong, like a fitness tracker, that definitely can be. So shrug, just personally, auto-tracking reps isn't something I need and wouldn't be a big selling point for a band/watch over a ring.

I wasn't wading into the watch/ring debate, never used a ring just a watch. Was just saying while heart rate data might not be the most useful. There might be uses for other sensors and reasons to replace the ring with a watch while lifting...

Fair enough.

If you're modifying your program a lot a ring isn't going to help you remember your rep count for that day either. Yes a watch can display that but we're talking about rings here that can't and could only count reps and there's no vibration or speaker on the ring to notify you so you'd need your phone there anyways and could just look at it at the start of the set and count.

I wasn't really talking about just rings, the comment I was replying to was talking about heart rate sensors. I'm saying it's still worthwhile replacing your ring with a watch.

Even if it is just for swiping or pressing buttons to switch between exercises in your program. But there are other uses for accelerometers.

The utility is not having to take your ring off. If nothing else, once it’s off, you are one step closer to losing it.

If you constrain the device to ‘fitness tracker” and not lifestyle/sleep/health/illness/fitness telemetry, sure.

I wear an Oura Ring for the complete suite of telemetry, not just for tracking workouts.

I also lift, I’ll take the ring off for heavy lifts, and keep it on for every other exercise (unless I feel there’s a risk that the ring could get caught on the equipment, in which case I’ll take it off for those reps too). Granted this is in my home gym, so there’s no inconvenience to me doing this.

I’ll rest between exercises and that’s when I make the call to keep the ring on or not [for the subsequent exercise].

I still get most of the insights and the Oura ring app lets me to tell it that I was doing strength training, which allows it to guesstimate calorie usage based on duration.

Of course that’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for people who are interested in health metrics without being obsessed with them (which is just probably a better idea unless you’re a pro athlete).

The workout tracking is kinda the least interesting aspect for me. It’s more about the long term trends of activity, sleep, heart rate, stress, etc.

Also, it’s worth saying, I went with a ring rather than a watch or a band because I like to wear a real watch.

Agree. I thought this article was going to be about smart rings, but it was a rant about rings. His first exposure to rings was a smart ring, but that's it.

A tungsten wedding ring is a pretty silly/unsafe thing to have. I'll readily admit it's cool but I like my fingers too much to worry about degloving one of them. That said using it as an example of or point of comparison for most anything is pretty unrealistic.

Similarly I am not willing to wrap a LiPo battery around one of my fingers. Absolutely not. I suspect this is in part why we have not seen more smartwatch bands doing the same.

Why would a tungsten band increase the chances of degloving your finger?

A tungsten band is a lot harder than a gold band. But a gold band is already way harder than your flesh. Jimmy Fallon was wearing a traditional platinum band when he nearly lost his finger.

If you want to reduce your risk, you should either not wear a ring or wear a silicone band.

In a hospital, they may need to remove the ring quickly for example, if your finger was injured and begins to swell.

In a hospital setting nobody will be degloving your finger - this is a common situation, and they have pliers that will crack/shatter the tungsten for removal.

I'm guessing that strongly depends on how big the hospital is. I know someone who lives out in the boonies and it's amazing what isn't on hand.

I live in a town of <15k people, and it’s the county seat. Our hospital can handle tungsten carbide rings without issue. I checked before getting one for this very reason (though I now wear an Oura as my wedding ring).

Steel toed work boots are almost never allowed to have a steel toe anymore. It is always plastic which is just as strong but it shatters when it breaks so they don't have to uncrush that once they get whatever fell on your toes off.

There are some rare exceptions for specific jobs, see OSHA (or your country equivalent) for the exact rules that apply to you.

This isn't remotely true. Steel is absolutely still allowed. The steel toe is designed to collapse without crushing the toe. When that happens, the boot needs to be replaced.

There are composites which are fiber based but those aren't labelled as steel toes, they aren't designed to shatter and it's not plastic.

Osha allows steel where plastic (fiber is a plastic) has issues. However they have complex rules and none of the industries I work with will allow steel.

I've been wearing them all my life all over North America. Very few industries require metal-free footwear. Composite toes (since we're getting carried away with various terms, that's the actual term and fabrication method, which is fiber mesh and epoxy) still have downsides. Those don't apply if you're a white collar guy and just need them because of regulations.

But if you're an actual worker that relies on them to save your toes, CT has much worse puncture resistance than ST. So it's trivial to puncture with a framing nail gun or cut through it if you rest a board on your toe, for example.

They also shatter when something heavy falls on them. If the thing bounces and you're quick enough to pull your foot, then great. If not, the second bounce will be shattering your toes and your boot will be filled with fleshy composite soup that is impossible to save. A steel toe in that situation will just bend and odds are good that your foot will be salvageable.

Tungsten also shatters. It doesn’t crush. That’s actually how a tungsten ring that’s stuck is removed. You break it with a vice.

Go check out the OSHA injury reports my dude. All it takes is something like a seemingly harmless hop over a short chain fence gone wrong. Where any other band would deform or break, that fucker's taking everything else with it.

My dude the question is not what danger a ring poses but why tungsten poses a higher risk. The flesh on your finger is much softer than a normal wedding band. Again, Jimmy Fallon is an excellent example of this. He fell in his kitchen and his very traditional platinum band took the flesh off his finger when it caught on the counter.

Amen. As an EMT/Firefighter you'll never catch me wearing a ring made of any kind of metal. I have seen and dealt with some pretty horrific things. Degloving is the only traumatic injury that makes me queasy to think about.

I loved my first tungsten wedding ring so much I got another one when I remarried. It has a really satisfying feeling of solidity. Your safety concern does not trouble me at all: yes, it's a very hard metal, but it's brittle. You can't cut a stuck tungsten ring loose the way you can a gold ring, but you can easily break it, using a hammer or a pair of vice-grips.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Y2gzBI-2amA

My ring has a "comfort fit" profile, and it slips off so smoothly I can't imagine why this would ever be necessary.

> Adulting: buying rings that are the right size.

He did buy it at the right size. Then he lost weight.

There aren't many places where a wearable doesn't get in the way, even an Apple watch it's unusable if you do kettlebell training (I severely scratched one doing a kb snatch).

I also stopped wearing my wedding ring because of lifting, it mangled beyond all recognition and had to cut it off with pliers and send it for repair.

> Most people don't even lift. Those that do, dont mind taking off jewelry.

I dimly recall some folks promoting silicone wedding bands, although at that point I think it's more about social-signalling "I'm in a relationship" rather than a durable memento or signalling wealth.

That is what I wear - when I bother wearing one at all. Or sometimes the cheaper rubber rings, depending on what is in stock at the store. They are cheap enough that I don't worry about losing them. When (not if!) they break I just get a new one. My gold ring stays hidden at home where I don't have to worry about it.

I've never got used to the feel of a ring on my fingers though and now I do without. I know I'm married and girls never "hit on me", so I really don't need it for anything.

I wear silicone ring in the gym, in my workshop, and working on or sailing boats and a platinum band when I'm not doing manual stuff. I could wear no ring at all, but I don't particularly like the optics of an obviously married man with tan lines on ring finger not wearing his ring: I think it makes you look like there's something wrong with you - recently divorced at best, a sleazy creep at worst. Should I care? No, but I'm not that well adjusted. Silicone is basically as safe as no ring at all for almost any manual or physical activity. Metal rings offer an entire exciting catalog of spectacularly horrible accidents for the low price of one tiny slip.

So, yes, it's literally a social signal that I'm in a relationship :)

Men do divorce their wives, just saying.

I wear a silicone wedding band. The "durable memento" went missing when I took it off at the gym. My wife bought me a new gold band for our 15th anniversary and it lives in my jewelry box, since I don't want to lose it.

I have a soft gold ring, and I lift. I take my ring off to lift or it would get absolutely destroyed.

> Same problems that regular rings have, yet people still wear them.

In some jobs/hobbies, it is highly recommended to wear soft metal rings, and add a structural weakness to the ring in order to limit finger injuries, in case you forget to remove it.

Doesn't mean everyone must do it, but as with this post, it's a good point of view to get before making a choice: not everyone rides horses, but the same injuries can happen in everyday life.

> Most people don't even lift.

It’s about any physical activity involving hands and friction. Rock climbing, basketball, tennis, etc. Perhaps this depends on intensity. Still, much more than just lifting.

People who don’t usually wear rings might not realize this.

I think what we might be moving towards is the idea that rings are kinda dumb.

Rings make our fingers less mobile, harder to clean, get in the way of our delicate hand-tasks, scratch things our hands are manipulating, yada yada.

Earings make much more sense. Or bracelets. What about Torques?

My wife and I both just stopped wearing our wedding bands, and it turns out you’re still married even if you’re not wearing the ring. Also we just have simple gold bands so we never spent much on them in the first place.

These are problems with it being a smart ring RELATIVE to a smart watch.

- wrist size changes far less dramatically, and even if it do change, a strap swap for a smartwatch is far cheaper and easier than a whole-device change for a smart ring - wristwatch doesn't interfere with any hand activity - wristwatch far less likely to trap debris from your activities.

> My tungsten wedding ring

You do realise that in the (admittedly unlikely) event that needs to be cut off in the Emergency Department, they wont have a chance?

Place the tungsten ring against concrete, hit the top of the ring gently with a hammer and increasing the force with each hammer blow until the ring cracks.

Search YouTube for “break tungsten ring” for examples.

I can't bring myself to send a corporation a constant stream of extremely personal data when I know they absolutely will sell/leak all of it along with the countless assumptions they'll make about me using that same data.

It'd be nice to have the information a ring or watch gathers as long as it stayed local. I haven't seen many products offering that though. The thought of not being able to continuously profit from surveillance is just too painful for many companies to bother creating a product aimed at the consumer who doesn't want to be spied on I guess.

For what it’s worth the Apple Watch can store data entirely locally, or if you want sync it’s E2EE.

Kind of. You still need an account/iphone to set it up. It will still send data via wifi if it can, and you'll be tracked over bluetooth even if you keep in in "airplane mode". I'm not sure how easily you get data off of it and onto a PC or laptop either or what format that data is in, but if you already have an iphone it's not a terrible option.

You can export all data in xml

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-your-health-dat...

It’s why I have enjoyed my refurbished pebble though I won’t be getting their “index” because I just don’t want a smart ring tbh. Nice to have a slightly dumber product with better battery life and open source top to bottom.

Colmi smart rings have a reverse-engineered Bluetooth protocol, so you can use Gadgetbridge instead of the official QRing app and keep everything local.

The only problem is that the data is woefully inaccurate, so what's even the point?

I find it's comparable to the data from my Apple Watch.

Pebble Index!

Exactly why I abandoned my Oura ring. I stopped wearing it for a couple of years, and when I went back, it wouldn't work without a cloud account/sync.

The bluetooth protocol has been reverse-engineered and you can run everything locally with https://github.com/Th0rgal/open_oura

Presumably you have no social media then?

I ditched my Oura ring, I found that it really was great at tracking sleep HRV and RHR, but the battery doesn't last and it's just expensive e-waste after a year and a half

I got really upset with Oura when they tried to have their cake and eat it with regards to charging a huge premium for what is a very cheap device and then also a monthly subscription for something that does not need any subscription. I bit the bullet and switched to a Garmin watch for longer battery life and no subscription.

I now have a device that has way more features and lasts significantly longer.

You're just never going to get a smart ring with a battery that lasts longer than a year or two until different/better battery technology becomes commonplace.

I've had a RingConn ring since December 2024, and I went with them primarily because they don't charge a monthly fee like Oura. But at this point the battery that originally lasted 2 weeks lasts only about 2 days. It's about the best you can expect from a ~30mAh lithium cell. Once it finally dies completely I won't be replacing it.

You can, however, design rings that can have their comparatively cheap batteries replaced, and be transparent about the expected life span of your $500+ ring that requires a subscription and whose warranty specifically excludes the battery (https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025439534-...).

What's the new device?

I reached out to their chatbot after my battery life tanked a year-or-so later and it sent me a replacement no questions asked.

I like my Oura ring and find it one of the least fussy fitness trackers I've used. To me, the battery question is more about time between charging. I can travel for a week on a business trip without taking the charger, no problem. The sizing issue is real and as I dropped weight, the ring became loose and would fall off. I've added a small eva tab on the inside to increase friction and reduce risk until I buy the next version sized down.

The most important metric to me was the sleep score and related components. I've noticed my performance (mentally and physically) is tied to sleep in a huge way. I was skeptical that it would capture sleep metrics accurately, but after about a year of use, I can say without question that the number it presents as my sleep score is a very good proxy of how good I feel throughout the day.

My goal for this past year has been to focus on improving sleep health and for that, the ring has been a very useful tool.

> The most important metric to me was the sleep score and related components. I've noticed my performance (mentally and physically) is tied to sleep in a huge way. I was skeptical that it would capture sleep metrics accurately, but after about a year of use, I can say without question that the number it presents as my sleep score is a very good proxy of how good I feel throughout the day.

For so many things, the absolute number being correct doesn’t matter, what’s more important is having _a_ scale that iou can use to chart against whatever you want. A “sleep score” doesn’t need to be accurate as long as it’s measuring the same thing (and that thing is the correct thing). Calorie counting is the same - it doesn’t matter if I think my breakfast is 500 calories but it’s actually 600 - as long as I consistently enter it incorrectly and measure my weight, I know I need to reduce my portion size somewhere.

Agreed. It has been consistent enough that I can make a pretty accurate guess each morning based on how I feel. With a consistent scale, I can work on the components (timing, duration, and other factors like alcohol, etc.) and I've made big improvements over the year.

> I can make a pretty accurate guess each morning based on how I feel.

So you don’t actually need the ring? :)

This is actually a serious question: I would want to use a smart ring for the things I can’t tell by myself. But then I also can’t judge the accuracy and consistency of the corresponding measures.

I can estimate a portion of rice within about 5-10% without a scale, but I needed the scale to learn what the portion was in the first place.

same thing applies to the ring!

I have sleep apnea. I have noted discussions online where people have used oura data to tune their cpap. I was wondering if anyone had used a smart watch for the same. I read that Garmin had worse sleep tracking, but more opinions would be handy

I feel the same way about my Garmin watch's sleep tracking, but one thing I haven't been able to do is use that data effectively. It's an accurate after the fact representation of my sleep, but it doesn't tell me anything that my own body isn't telling me in terms of how I should adjust my sleep patterns/habits.

Do you find you change your behavior at all based on the sleep tracking?

Yeah, I found its made me much more aware of and focused on eating early, getting to sleep early, staying on a consistent sleep schedule, etc.

I like my oura ring but I find its terrible for fitness tracking. It takes nowhere near enough readings to actually get an idea of what zones my heart rate is in. I have a Wahoo Tickr that I use when I cycle or play tennis and the difference between it and the Oura ring is huge.

I can understand those pain points, but they don't really bother me. I'm on my 3rd oura ring now and I still like using it. I don't go crazy with the information, but I really do try to get a good night sleep and oura lets me know when I do not. I got married a few years ago and I usually don't like wearing my wedding band around because I worry about loosing it. So I wear the oura ring in place of the wedding band. I take the ring off when I lift weights and do some other things.

I also wear a garmin watch that I mostly use for tracking mountain bike rides, hikes, etc. So I'm just a geek who enjoys gadgets and the data they provide. I like that both have very long battery lives. I would love all the features of an apple watch, but I don't want to be charging it every day.

>... oura lets me know when I do not.

Does your body not do the same? I really want to like sleep tracking as a feature, but I find that my body already has built in sleep tracking, and the tech version doesn't give me any actionable advice on how to improve my sleep that my biological sleep tracker isn't already giving me.

The only thing my body tells me in the morning is.. "dude coffee now". I have no problem falling asleep, but I usually wake up pretty early. I feel ok with 6 hours of sleep, but I don't think that is optimally healthy. I don't worry about it a lot, but I look at sleep duration, heart rate, hrv, and sleep debt. The details motivate me to pay attention to sleep hygiene. If I ignored it, I don't think I would sleep enough.

How would you know if you never tested your intuition against the metrics?

I could see how it would be helpful for people who don't necessarily know they have sleep apnea. I also recently read about someone who quit smoking weed, and their sleep tracking changed dramatically while they detoxed. With my Garmin, that and the Stress tracker usually let me know 1-2 days ahead of time that I'm getting sick, before I even feel it. My sleep quality plummets, and my physiological stress is at like 80%+.

I also really quite like the Fitbit Air. I used to wear a Galaxy Watch but there's something really freeing about how light and unobtrusive this little wristband is.

I recently (June) bought an Air too to replace my 5 or 6 year old Apple Watch.

I'm enjoying it for the same reasons. Longer battery life. More comfortable when I'm sleeping since it has no buttons or weird bulky shape.

I do wish Apple would make their own version of it with apple pay.

Too bad the Google Health app (which is required for FitBit devices since Google retired the FitBit app) is getting mostly 1 and 2 star (out of 5) reviews on the Google app store.

The reviews were ~90% 1 & 2 star within the first month of the FitBit Air release.

Three months later, the app has improved to ~80% 1 & 2 star reviews. At this pace, they'll be on v3 of the device when app reviews are decent...

They force everyone to move over to a different app when the replacement app doesn't have all the features/reliability of the old app.

Genius.

Garmin released the Cirqa band at $199 w/o compulsory subscription a few weeks ago. I may switch to that if the FitBit Air acts up.

I'm waiting for the Apple Health app support. Supposedly it's coming sometime in the fall. The Google app is ok but I don't use the AI features.

I'm not sure if proper Apple Health would help with this but Google tends to be delayed at automatic recognition of activities (e.g. I take a walk it can be an hour or two until it processes automatically). Apple would recognize a walk as I was on it.

according to the changelog in the app store this has already been shipped in v5.05: "- Sync to Apple Health..." this was about a month ago

Oh wow, the Cirqa is exactly what I've been looking for: a wrist sensor without subscription and without a screen.

I had a FitBit Charge 4 some years ago, but it stopped working after a couple years.

Then I got a RingConn 2 last year, but like TFA I've decided that I don't like the ring form factor.

I just switched from a Whoop to the Fitbit Air. Whoop wanted $350 for a subscription fee which I just found really ridiculous. It's only been a few days, but the Fitbit Air might even be better at tracking sleep. And it looks like it can periodically, automatically check for Afib unlike the Whoop (?). The rest looks a little worse. But worth it to avoid a subscription fee. Not sure how Whoop stays in business TBH.

All these trackers (rings, watches, wrist bands) seem so… useless. Do you really need to know your heartbeat every minute of the day? What does sleep tracking tell you, can’t you just tell if you’re tired? For athletes there are garmin type watches, which I understand during a workout. But the lifestyle trackers I don’t get the point.

I love my whoop band. Has noticeably made my day to day life happier than before I owned it. The insights pushed me to sleep much better, which makes each day brighter and less overwhelming. The insights also pushed me to up my cardio fitness metrics in general, which has made me overall more athletic and capable on strenuous hikes, trips, and activities.

YMMV but for me it might be my favorite product I own

I have my Galaxy watch linked to myfitnesspal so that calories from workouts get added to my total calorie budget for the day. It is pretty convenient.

Many of these are extremely useful/lifesaving for people who are at risk for medical reasons (cardiovascular conditions, fall detection for elders, etc.) and the lifestyle tracking features are basically extras to market the device to a wider audience and bring the price down.

I get this point of view totally, so I'll give you a different one. I pretty much wear one (cheap Fitbit) as a gentile constant reminder to do my workouts, keep active, and to increase my fitness. I also noticed that if the readiness score is very low, like single digits, I tire extremely quickly during a workout and it feels very frustrating so in that case I will give myself some extra rest. I cannot even a little tell the difference between high readiness and low readiness by the way I feel waking up or going through the day, but I also have anemia due to a genetic defect and am going through perimenopause, so not being able to tell is likely a "me" thing.

Sleep tracking isn't useful as far as trying to improve it for me, because, again, I'm in perimenopause, so my sleep is all over the place and my body just does whatever it wants. But I'm sure it is part of the readiness score or whatever.

All of these problems are solved by buying a CA$35 Colmi ring off Aliexpress.

1. If your finger changes size, spend another $35 for a second one.

2. If it gets scratched to shit, buy another one. Though I lift with my plastic R09 and there's only a bit of scratching around the edge. Other models are metal and should resist scratching better.

3. If it eventually breaks, get another one. Personally I fidget with mine a lot, so removing it before or after washing my hands happens unconsciously.

On top of that, the protocol has been reverse engineered so you can use Gadgetbridge or make your own app instead of using the stock one.

No idea how it compares, but my local Lidl was selling a smart ring for $15 so I decided to give it a shot. I assume half the measurements are "for entertainment purposes only" (glucose, blood pressure, stress [heart rate variability proxy?], blood oxygenation [might be ok with my skin tone, not sure I'd trust it]) but the others seem fairly accurate. Again, no idea how it compares to the pricier ones, but seems to match my pulse measured at neck and what I remember of my nightly sleep pretty well.

And yeah, I'm certainly not going to worry about it getting scratched or slightly wet. Actually, it got dropped and stepped on, and is slightly dented but still seems to run fine - the epoxy sealant for the electronics seems intact and while I was a bit concerned for the battery, that's been a while with no issues.

And, while I have no idea whether the app is quietly collecting data and pushing it to a server in china (if it is, it is doing it in a way that is sneaking past the firewall), at least it does not require creating an account to use.

So in that sense it is maybe more private than oura or samsung ?

Bit of an update to myself. My dipping toes in water with the cheap device convinced me to try the Pebble Time 2, and man it's an enormous difference in accuracy and real-time feedback. So, if I was going to be spending a significant amount of money on a fitness device I'd definitely recommend the watch. Has a lot more alternate uses too. But ofc if you're looking to stay more in the <$50 range, a ring probably still makes sense.

... oh, and the pebble watch only does steps/sleep/heart, not all the other more dubious measurements, but frankly, I didn't trust those anyway.

I gave up on my Oura ring 6 months into use. The event that really convinced me their crap: I sat down at my desk at work, told Oura I'm starting a bike ride. One hour later it said my average HR was over 100. I have bradycardia so my heart rate never got over 60 for that hour. BS AI hallucinations.

I doubt AI hallucinations had anything to do with it

Assuming I made this stuff. It is useless to have smart rings do the primary stuff of what a smart watch does, so not monitor your pulse or that crap because anyone who has a smart ring should have a smart watch for that and the few people who don't want smart watches but do want smart rings would be such a small outlier group I wouldn't care.

The only way the concept of a smart ring makes sense to me is as a form of gestural navigation/usage for real world or virtual world inputs that would be similar in affect to media presentations of superpowers/magic.

Thus, with my smart ring I can walk towards my office and make the open gesture before getting to it and the door opens for me and I don't have to do the other stuff. I can make the open gesture but contact security also and it opens but contacts security.

I can make the close all the doors and lock the house gesture and only the smart ring open can open them etc.

Refuse to login open computer not using smart ring (obviously this has down sides, everything does)

Using smart ring but not you, give fake access computer in sandbox, contact security.

Obviously gestures would have to be customizable via your other smart world devices and computers and so forth. The benefits of an integrated platform.

Before anyone laughs at continual contact security. Smart ring is luxury and anyone who pays for that crap has enough money to pay for either personal security or at least an on call company, provided by smart ring services.

on edit: note this is my idea of what smart rings should do, don't know what the normal ones do, so my idea that it should be a luxury item may not track actual situation.

A knock off smart ring is $50 on Amazon with no subscription. Personal security starts at $200k a year. You may want to investigate how much what you think of as luxury costs.

I wrote my post an hour ago, immediately edited it 1 minute after to put the following in "on edit: note this is my idea of what smart rings should do, don't know what the normal ones do, so my idea that it should be a luxury item may not track actual situation"

you posted yours 44 minutes ago.

I hit add comment, went off to do the dishes while I thought about what I wanted to say and didn't refresh. Sorry!

> It is useless to have smart rings do the primary stuff of what a smart watch does

Not for me. I like wearing a normal watch, and I don't want to wear two watches.

OK as always there are more ways for markets to split than analysis tells at the beginning. Interestingly enough this is probably also a good part of the luxury market.

I have always hated watches until I had a reasonably good one for a year, and lost it because ADHD just does not handle keeping track of things well.

But it seems to me people who refuse smart watches for normal watches probably are not doing so for crappy watches (and if you are for the rest of the post I shall assume you are the outlier). They must be reasonably luxurious brands that are preferred, as such there is a larger amount of the luxury market who might like smart rings (but this also seems off to me, who the hell wants to wear a crappy looking ring, in the luxury market.)

Maybe however the multiple watches look might catch on, like the stand-up routine of Harry Anderson the guy who used to play the judge on Night Court. He was a guy who could wear two or three watches on each hand, and maybe a couple on his ankles. That was style right there.

Same, I got a Withings watch, which is both

What appeals to you about a normal watch that a smart watch fails to satisfy?

And what specifically do you mean by normal?

I like to look down at my wrist and see the time down to the second, and my Apple Watch S7 can't deliver on that. Either the screen doesn't light up, or it lights up after a second or so, or it lights up but it's showing me the Smart Stack or an old notification instead of the watch face. And the screen fades quickly and hides the second hand (my girlfriend's S10 shows the second hand when the screen is dimmed, so they've at least fixed that in newer models).

It also needs to be charged daily which is inconvenient, whereas a normal watch lasts for years, and the smart ring lasts several days.

The smart phone integration features don't really work well either. It'll buzz with a notification, I'll look down and there's nothing. 2-3 seconds later the notification appears, but it'll only say who it's from, not the contents, despite my privacy settings being set correctly. I tap it, and a second later the message appears. I may as well have pulled out my phone instead.

By normal, these are the criteria I've decided I want in a watch, after trying out a handful from aliexpress:

- Quartz mechanism - day-date - Arabic numerals - light face - some sort of illumination

So that's all valid but those are pretty much all reasons to not want a smart watch, or it failing to do its basic job. When you talked about not wanting two watches, I thought you meant that even if you had a smart watch you liked, you'd still want a normal watch on top.

I like the data collection features of smart watches.

That's why they make fitness tracker like FitBit Air that looks like brackets, so you aren't wearing two watches.

> It is useless to have smart rings do the primary stuff of what a smart watch does

Is it? I don't really like wearing watches and certainly have no interest in a smart watch. It's also deductible from my HSA whereas personal security (??????) isn't and also costs significantly more?

I have an Oura ring but never really check the app since I’m not sure I believe a lot of the conclusions it gives me. I mainly just want a bunch of time series of signals measured from my body so after a year or two I can throw all that data (plus my own recorded notes like my weight and what I eat) into some some multivariate forecasting system to tease out predictive relationships. I don’t actually care what the signals themselves “are”.

The main problem is that a lot of the time series presented to the users of wearable products are lossy transforms of the original signals I want, so I have to use all the random projects on GitHub to try to access the raw data directly.

Is there any way that smart rings outperform smart watches in terms of data collected? I've generally assumed there isn't any biometric data you can get from a finger that you can't get from a wrist.

As far as I know the smart rings are much more accurate than watches but that could just be marketing bollocks from Oura

My Oura Ring picked up on breathing fluctuations that my Garmin did not detect.

However my Oura Ring was also very battery-constrained so it also only looked at heart rate every few minutes. My Garmin measured it every second.

Doesn't sound like a complaint against "smart" rings; more like a general complaint against rings.

Also sounds like the author has done a great deal of work to improve himself, physically, and I can respect (and hat tip) to it, but he would definitely see the same issue with a wedding ring (except that you can usually resize those).

I wear my wedding ring constantly; even in the shower. I'm old-fashioned, and haven't really changed that much, since I got married (besides getting grayer and wrinklier).

I realized I was scratching my Oura at the gym so I started taking it off. It fell out of my pocket one workout, I couldn't find it, and I didn't feel like I got enough utility from it to replace it and deal with the hassle of taking it off and on. The whole point of the form factor is to not have to worry about it.

I was an early adopter of Oura, and have recently stopped wearing it. I've reverted to the Apple Watch & EightSleep for all of the tracking I could ever need. I found the experience with Oura to be overly optimistic numbers wise, as well as borderline dark patterns in the app to drive my anxiety around getting good scores.

How has all your data changed your sleep and do you think you could have made changes without that data?

I got the Garmin Lily 2 Active. It’s an attractive simple watch. For sleep and activity tracking without GPS it’s great. It also has GPS but I use my phone for tracking biking. The big thing is that after configuring it with the Garmin app you can tell Garmin they don’t have permission to store your data in the cloud, and then use iOS settings to block the app from even talking to the watch. Then I vibe coded an app for my Linux system that syncs over Bluetooth. Once per day I turn off Bluetooth on my phone and press the button in the web app and my Ubuntu desktop pulls all the files and displays them in my web ui. It’s really nice and my data is reasonably private (Claude can see it though I could fix that). I recommend the watch!

One word on rings: degloving

If you're in an industry where that's a real risk, then sure, but rings are ancient.

Totally not what you're talking about, but I've lost a ring while taking off wet gloves. Fortunately someone had explained to me this was a common way to lose a ring, and I checked the gloves before the ring dropped out.

The biggest reason should be that they're just bad. They gather sus data from their undersized sensors, then derive tons of sus insights to overwhelm you. None of it is accurate enough to base major life decisions on, which is also laughable because even if it were accurate, there are effectively no major life decisions to make based on the data! Here I can save you $500: Go to bed before midnight. Set your alarm at least +8 hours from when you lay down. Sleep in a cool, dark room. Eat nothing 4 hours before bed. Don't exercise 4 hours before bed. Limit alcohol. Engage in at least 30 minutes of strenuous physical activity each day. Done.

Hey now, you're going to kill the whole fitness tracker industry if you let people in on those secrets.

A lot of people seem to buy fitness trackers merely to verify they sleep poorly, and then do nothing about it.

I don't feel that all fitness trackers are bad, though some use-cases for them are generally bad (such as sleep tracking). Watches are quite good for exercise tracking, and tracking exercise has legitimate and high quality value (e.g. competitions with yourself to incentivize improvement, strain tracking to ensure you aren't overdoing it, daily targets and goals to incentivize activity). The idea of all-day tracking is probably on the net unhealthy for almost all humans though.

My comment was targeted at rings in-particular, because 1. they encourage that all-day tracking paradigm, which is probably on the net unhealthy for almost all humans, and 2. their sensors are so bad that even if all-day tracking were healthy (it isn't) they physically can't do it to any degree that is meaningful.

Never saw the point of smart watches either. Maybe if you're diabetic?

I don't think consumers would accept this but for athletes there has been some research that the EARLOBE might be the ultimate single point for measurement

They can even measure blood pressure in lab tests during MOVEMENT at the earlobe

Heartrate, spO2, temperature and it's even a good location for very low level of sound to be heard

Again consumers would never adopt an earlobe cuff, well maybe it was artistic somehow and not heavy/distracting

But athletes would use whatever works

If I had millions I'd invest in development, so steal this idea?

AirPods already do HRM and some people already put random stuff on their ears

There was a trend of non-diabetic people wearing huge glucose monitoring patches on their arms

I don't see how an earlobe cuff would be a deterrent for non-athletes with the right marketing

And marketing it's all the rage since those people don't need those gadgets in the first place

Oura Ring 5 has solved all my issues with prior versions

I have all these same complaints about regular rings.

The OP mentions he switched to a Google FitBit Air which seems like an elastic cloth band which is all I want too, except I want it to operate like an Apple Watch in terms of integration with Apple Health. Anyone know if the FitBit Air and Apple Watch are similar in features?

I just want an HID emulator I can flick into my palm and send keyboard/mouse/trackpad events to whatever Bluetooth device I want.

Same. The Even Realities R1 ring looks interesting, but only works with their glasses.

My form factor is more like a micro joycon but sits on your wrist like a fitness band & if you flick it hard enough the magnetic thingy will just come into your palm, do whatever like scroll, delete/archive emails, close tabs etc & then flick it back onto your wrist for it to attach magnetically

Ok so the Mudra Link (aka the Meta Neural Band) is like in a way that. You can actualy get it and connect it without needing Meta Glasses.

I have a Pebble Index, it’s my first “smart” ring and first ring at all. All of these problems are things I didn’t anticipate either.

I loved my Oura Ring 3, but one day it just stopped working, and it was past the warranty period so that I couldn't get a replacement. I thought it was stiff to pay _another_ $300 for a new ring.

At first, I thought I could try to fix it myself. But I found that the repairability scores for the Oura Ring are atrocious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqCp-z9WAkA

Even looking at Pebble's new voice ring, it's designed to be thrown away when the battery runs out. I like the idea of smart rings, but they seem wasteful and products not really built to last.

Most people would be better off doing one sleep study. Depth over breadth

Aye allow rings - silicone is all I can tolerate; like to use my hands!

I just wish a ring can detect 2.4GHz EM and flash with LEDs.

These would be a nightmare to wear for kettlebells.

Yawn. Produce data to assess its value. I already check my blood pressure and heart rate daily, and when running. Heck, my watch (which I wear only at the gym) gives me feedback -- at the moment but not something I need to record. Why why why? Those exceptions are luxuries without obvious advantages.

And, good lord, a SUBSCRIPTION to access its features. technically unnecessessary but yet another leech on my accessibility to data. (So many sites lately are behind paywalls. But you're receiving this data from my ring, WHY would I pay monthly for you to observe it and report?)

>1. Your fingers change size and rings are not adjustable

....I guess OP doesn't wear a wedding ring, or any other kind of ring for that matter? How is that a problem with the smart ring, specifically?

I have a gold wedding band and can have it resized if needed. Also, I don't wear my wedding band when exercising, and that doesn't reduce its utility for me much. But a health tracker ring is arguably at its most useful when worn during exercise, to having to take it off while working out is not great. This isn't limited to weight lifting, as others hav noted. It also applies to tennis or other racquet sports where it gets in the way, and to anyone whose hands swell significantly during exercise. I find that even long walks make my fingers swell quite a bit. So I'd either have to get a ring that's loose during everyday wear or take it off during intensive exercise.

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