6 ms·

Giving up on smart rings

100 points by lexandstuff 14d ago

scandox 11d ago
One word on rings: degloving
- fragmede 11d ago
  If you're in an industry where that's a real risk, then sure, but rings are ancient.
- axus 11d ago
  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.
striking 11d ago
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.
- spike021 11d ago
  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.
  - canucker2016 11d ago
    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.
    - spike021 11d ago
      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.
      - almyk 11d ago
        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
    - physicles 11d 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.
- kj4211cash 11d ago
  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.
Supermancho 11d ago
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.
- catigula 11d ago
  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.
  - muti 10d ago
    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.
    - catigula 10d ago
      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.
- dcss_gardener 11d ago
  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.
  - 10d ago
mech998877 11d ago
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.
- vablings 11d ago
  As far as I know the smart rings are much more accurate than watches but that could just be marketing bollocks from Oura
  - jerlam 11d ago
    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.
- deleted 11d ago
  [deleted]
vablings 11d ago
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.
- iamatworknow 11d ago
  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.
  - tbrockman 11d ago
    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-Warranty-FAQs#:~:text=Consumable%20parts%2C%20including%20batteries https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025439534-...).
- stets 11d ago
  What's the new device?
- tcdent 11d ago
  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.
bryanrasmussen 11d ago
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. Login open computer, I am using smart ring of course it does it. 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.
- fragmede 11d ago
  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.
  - bryanrasmussen 11d ago
    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.
autoexec 11d ago
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.
- sandcat_ 11d ago
  For what it’s worth the Apple Watch can store data entirely locally, or if you want sync it’s E2EE.
  - autoexec 11d ago
    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.
    - tencentshill 11d ago
      You can export all data in xml https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-your-health-data-iph5ede58c3d/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-your-health-dat...
- Forgeties79 11d ago
  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.
- post-it 11d ago
  Colmi smart rings have a reverse-engineered Bluetooth protocol, so you can use Gadgetbridge instead of the official QRing app and keep everything local.
krunck 11d ago
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.
- vosper 11d ago
  I doubt AI hallucinations had anything to do with it
post-it 11d ago
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.
- capitainenemo 11d ago
  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 ?
atldev 11d ago
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.
- maccard 11d ago
  > 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.
  - atldev 11d ago
    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.
itsmeduncan 11d ago
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.
- illegalsmile 11d ago
  How has all your data changed your sleep and do you think you could have made changes without that data?
827a 11d ago
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.
- nradov 11d ago
  Hey now, you're going to kill the whole fitness tracker industry if you let people in on those secrets.
  - jerlam 11d ago
    A lot of people seem to buy fitness trackers merely to verify they sleep poorly, and then do nothing about it.
  - 827a 10d ago
    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.
- mahboi 11d ago
  Never saw the point of smart watches either. Maybe if you're diabetic?
djierardi 11d ago
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.
- djierardi 11d ago
  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?)
hoistbypetard 11d ago
I have all these same complaints about regular rings.
teliskr 11d ago
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.
- ak6te 11d ago
  >... 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.
  - teliskr 11d ago
    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.
  - freejazz 11d ago
    How would you know if you never tested your intuition against the metrics?
  - jawilson2 9d ago
    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%+.
maxrev17 11d ago
Aye allow rings - silicone is all I can tolerate; like to use my hands!
Xcelerate 11d ago
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.
villgax 11d ago
I just want an HID emulator I can flick into my palm and send keyboard/mouse/trackpad events to whatever Bluetooth device I want.
- pazimzadeh 11d ago
  Same. The Even Realities R1 ring looks interesting, but only works with their glasses.
  - villgax 11d ago
    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
- mastermage 10d ago
  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.
feistypharit 11d ago
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-battery-swollen/ https://cybernews.com/gadgets/samsung-galaxy-smart-ring-batt...
- ak6te 11d ago
  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.
  - in_absentia 11d ago
    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.
    - wongarsu 11d ago
      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
      - addaon 11d ago
        > 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.
yieldcrv 11d ago
Oura Ring 5 has solved all my issues with prior versions
dsalzman 11d ago
Most people would be better off doing one sleep study. Depth over breadth
nostratas 11d ago
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 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.
ck2 11d ago
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?
- wiether 11d ago
  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
stuff4ben 11d ago
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?
NBJack 11d ago
These would be a nightmare to wear for kettlebells.
gambiting 11d ago
>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?
- apparent 11d ago
  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.
SequoiaHope 11d ago
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!
ChrisMarshallNY 11d ago
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).
est 11d ago
I just wish a ring can detect 2.4GHz EM and flash with LEDs.
abbefaria27 11d ago
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.
- pizzathyme 11d ago
  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
- UltraSane 11d ago
  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.
- ehe78qhe 11d ago
  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.
- astura 10d ago
  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.
laweijfmvo 11d ago
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.
bastawhiz 11d ago
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.
deebuildthings 10d ago
[dead]

100 points by lexandstuff 14d ago

scandox 11d ago

One word on rings: degloving

fragmede 11d ago
If you're in an industry where that's a real risk, then sure, but rings are ancient.
axus 11d ago
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.

striking 11d ago

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.

spike021 11d ago
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.
- canucker2016 11d ago
  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.
  - spike021 11d ago
    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.
    - almyk 11d ago
      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
  - physicles 11d 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.
kj4211cash 11d ago
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.

Supermancho 11d ago

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.

catigula 11d ago
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.
- muti 10d ago
  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.
  - catigula 10d ago
    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.
dcss_gardener 11d ago
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.
- 10d ago

mech998877 11d ago

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.

vablings 11d ago
As far as I know the smart rings are much more accurate than watches but that could just be marketing bollocks from Oura
- jerlam 11d ago
  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.
deleted 11d ago
[deleted]

vablings 11d ago

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.

iamatworknow 11d ago
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.
- tbrockman 11d ago
  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-Warranty-FAQs#:~:text=Consumable%20parts%2C%20including%20batteries https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025439534-...).
stets 11d ago
What's the new device?
tcdent 11d ago
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.

bryanrasmussen 11d ago

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. Login open computer, I am using smart ring of course it does it. 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.

fragmede 11d ago
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.
- bryanrasmussen 11d ago
  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.

autoexec 11d ago

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.

sandcat_ 11d ago
For what it’s worth the Apple Watch can store data entirely locally, or if you want sync it’s E2EE.
- autoexec 11d ago
  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.
  - tencentshill 11d ago
    You can export all data in xml https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-your-health-data-iph5ede58c3d/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-your-health-dat...
Forgeties79 11d ago
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.
post-it 11d ago
Colmi smart rings have a reverse-engineered Bluetooth protocol, so you can use Gadgetbridge instead of the official QRing app and keep everything local.

krunck 11d ago

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.

vosper 11d ago
I doubt AI hallucinations had anything to do with it

post-it 11d ago

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.

capitainenemo 11d ago
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 ?

atldev 11d ago

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.

maccard 11d ago
> 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.
- atldev 11d ago
  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.

itsmeduncan 11d ago

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.

illegalsmile 11d ago
How has all your data changed your sleep and do you think you could have made changes without that data?

827a 11d ago

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.

nradov 11d ago
Hey now, you're going to kill the whole fitness tracker industry if you let people in on those secrets.
- jerlam 11d ago
  A lot of people seem to buy fitness trackers merely to verify they sleep poorly, and then do nothing about it.
- 827a 10d ago
  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.
mahboi 11d ago
Never saw the point of smart watches either. Maybe if you're diabetic?

djierardi 11d ago

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.

djierardi 11d ago
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?)

hoistbypetard 11d ago

I have all these same complaints about regular rings.

teliskr 11d ago

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.

ak6te 11d ago
>... 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.
- teliskr 11d ago
  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.
- freejazz 11d ago
  How would you know if you never tested your intuition against the metrics?
- jawilson2 9d ago
  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%+.

maxrev17 11d ago

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

Xcelerate 11d ago

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.

villgax 11d ago

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

pazimzadeh 11d ago
Same. The Even Realities R1 ring looks interesting, but only works with their glasses.
- villgax 11d ago
  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
mastermage 10d ago
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.

feistypharit 11d ago

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

ak6te 11d ago
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.
- in_absentia 11d ago
  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.
  - wongarsu 11d ago
    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
    - addaon 11d ago
      > 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.

yieldcrv 11d ago

Oura Ring 5 has solved all my issues with prior versions

dsalzman 11d ago

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

nostratas 11d ago

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 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.

ck2 11d ago

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?

wiether 11d ago
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

stuff4ben 11d ago

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?

NBJack 11d ago

These would be a nightmare to wear for kettlebells.

gambiting 11d ago

>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?

apparent 11d ago
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.

SequoiaHope 11d ago

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!

ChrisMarshallNY 11d ago

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).

est 11d ago

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

abbefaria27 11d ago

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.

pizzathyme 11d ago
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
UltraSane 11d ago
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.
ehe78qhe 11d ago
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.
astura 10d ago
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.

laweijfmvo 11d ago

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.

bastawhiz 11d ago

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.

deebuildthings 10d ago

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