💍RingConn news - exercise, apnea report, sharing with family, and... return!
At the moment I see the RingConn smart ring as a sort of third place in terms of interest. The Oura ring is pretty well known these days, and Ultrahuman has made a good name for itself thanks to biohacking ecosystem.
I also think RingConn is a good price/performance compromise. Its domain is mainly:
- The charging box,
- the best battery life of 7 days,
- very good measurement quality,
- very detailed data and graphs,
- continuous development of the app and new functionalities,
- A price that can be obtained in various promotions for around 230 $
- and, of course, no additional costs in the form of a subscription.
The last time I reported on RingConn was as part of the review:
Let's take a look at what's changed since then. I'm currently referring to version 2.4.2 (and later 2.5.0 - a minor redesign) of the app on iOS.
Wellness Balance
Wellness Balance is the new flagship of metrics in the app. It is the first and most important metric you will see together, with a unique visualisation.
Your wellness score is categorised into 3 levels, Excellent, Good and Improvable. These ratings are accompanied by a diamond representing your wellness status. Optimal is achieved when the diamond touches the tops of all 4 key metrics: Vital Signs, Sleep, Activity and Stress Management. The peaks represent the maximum score = 100.
The visualisation actually shows 2 overlapping diamonds, one ⚪ evaluating yesterday's day, the other 🔵 the average of the last 7 days.
Personally, I'm not completely taken by this approach, but I appreciate the novelty and uniqueness, I haven't noticed this approach in any other device.
Detail
Click on the detail to go to the detail. There you will find more details. I.e. a numerical representation of each score and also some verbal recommendations. These are still quite general, but there is some progress.
You can also click through the header of the app to those top metrics I mentioned earlier:
Apnea report
RingConn is also trying to prove that it has some scientific background. It is currently doing this in a new tab in the footer of the app - Research. In this tab you can activate monitoring to see if you suffer from sleep apnea.
Apnea, BrE: apnoea,[1] is the temporary cessation of breathing. During apnea, there is no movement of the muscles of inhalation, and the volume of the lungs initially remains unchanged. Depending on how blocked the airways are (patency), there may or may not be a flow of gas between the lungs and the environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea
In order to start the measurement, it is necessary to fill in the questionnaire:
You can then start the monitoring before you go to sleep. This will run throughout the night, and in the morning you can turn it off from the mobile app. You will receive a report in PDF format:
Included are various charts and, most importantly, a severity rating, i.e. the severity or likelihood of whether you have sleep apnea.
Family sharing
Sharing data with friends or family is a useful and popular feature of both Oura and Ultrahuman. Each does it a little differently... Let's take a quick look at the differences.
Oura Circles - a conservative approach 🥫
With Oura, I see this functionality as a bit of an afterthought. It's hidden in the menu on the left. It allows you to create several 'circles' within which you can invite other Oura owners. You only share fairly generic data - individual central readiness, sleep and activity values. In other words, Oura doesn't share more detailed sleep data, HRV or temperature, for example.
Ultrahuman Zones - a motivational approach 💪
Ultrahuman takes a very similar approach to Oura, with these differences:
- It sees it as a more important feature - as evidenced by its placement in the footer of the app,
- adds an incentive element by ranking zone members according to their overall score, and includes notifications such as:
- is more detailed and includes sharing of CGM data (if the member is using a continuous glucose monitoring sensor) as well as individual metrics for the day (resting HR, temperature deviation, etc.).
RingConn Family Share - Access to "healthcare"⚕️
Ringconn takes a slightly different approach to data sharing. You only share data in 1:1 mode, so no groups. Of course you can share data with multiple people individually.
When I talked about detail at UH, RingConn is the king of detail and graphs. The data provided is really detailed and contains perhaps all the important metrics. Weekly reports are also included.
I can see this being used to monitor the health of your parents, for example. Part of the shared data includes 'heart rate abnormalities', which I could not simulate, but this is actually a good thing.
Workout - Exercise 🏃♂️
Although RingConn classifies its ring as more of a health/wellness device, it has come up with an activity tracking option. It is currently in beta and the only type of activity available is outdoor running. I compared the HR measurement with the Garmin chest band and I have to say that the result is actually not bad. Especially considering that Ultrahuman has been debugging the Workout HR for over half a year now and there is still no light at the end of the tunnel.
Return 🔙
About a week ago I noticed something unpleasant on the inside of my ring. At first I thought it was dried dirt, soap etc. But it seems to be more of a cracked 'film' on the cover. I took the time to send a feedback photo of the problem to RingConn support. I was a little concerned about further correspondence regarding the details of the problem and documenting additional photos.
However, support was quick to offer to send me a new ring after I returned the old one, on the understanding that they would prepare a return label. I disagreed, arguing that I would lose my data for a few days. And they send the new one first, the return label should follow 👍.
Both Oura and Ultrahuman usually send a new ring straight away without having to send the old one back. But I still think RingConn's approach is very positive.
Raw data 💽
RingConn also allows you to download some "raw" data in csv format. Oura is clearly the most advanced in this area, but I applaud the progress made by RingConn.
The path to initialise the data download is as follows:
The downloaded data is then sent to the mailbox via the associated email and looks like this:
Data in this form allows for better work, comparisons, etc. For example, below is a comparison of the measured sleep time of the Oura and RingConn and Ultrahuman rings:
Badges 📛
Personally, I am not a big fan of external incentives in the form of collecting badges, but RingConn seems to have decided that this is an in-demand feature. Garmin, for example, offers something similar within its Garmin Connect app.
See below for a preview of RingConn badges:
Conlusion
I wear Oura Ring first, then Ultrahuman Air, and for testing and comparison I use RingConn, then Circular and others. So now, with hindsight, I can commend RingConn for great progress. There are a number of new things since the last article and, most importantly, they are great steps forward.
At the same time, they disprove what I ironically suggested about a year ago. Namely that RingConn might be a copy of Oura ring:
Not so, RingConn comes up with its own solutions, be it unique 💠 or Apnea Report for example. My (so far) good experience with complaints also speaks in favour of RingConn.
A few months ago I noticed a demand for a combination:
- A cheaper ring than the Oura,
- Share with family,
- support for SpO2 monitoring to detect sleep apnea.
I think we'll have the perfect candidate 😎
I recommend that you take advantage of some price promotions. For example, there is a promotion running right now - 15 % OFF:
➕ discount code "Gifts15" - until the end of April 2024, followed by a "Mother's Day" event (from 30 April to 12 May).
