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Every smart ring calls itself an activity tracker these days; they’ll all report your steps, calories, and workout times. But I take my smart ring off when I go to the gym, and I would never recommend one for somebody who is looking for a dedicated fitness tracker. Let’s have a little chat about why.
What smart rings are good for
Before I get into what smart rings can’t do well, I want to discuss why I think they’re a really useful wearable for the right person. I’ve worn an Oura for years, and I’ve tested several other major smart ring brands (for example, here are my reviews of the Ultrahuman Air and RingConn 2). I enjoy a lot of things about smart rings!
I like that smart rings are comfortable when sleeping and unobtrusive in everyday life. I wear a wedding ring, so I’m already in the habit of taking rings off when I need to do something where rings would get in the way—mainly gym workouts. I want my smart rings to track my sleep and recovery, and if they can pick up on incidental activity like a walk to the store, that’s great.
Smart rings are good for two kinds of people. One is the person who doesn’t usually track exercise, but wants to keep tabs on their sleep and get a general idea of their activity during the day. A ring that can pick up on their 30-minute walk is doing plenty. The other is a person who cares about their metrics during workouts, and has a second device to track that, like an Apple Watch or a Garmin. The smart ring can gather data on their sleep and the non-workout parts of their day.
While smart rings have gotten better at activity tracking over the years, they still have fundamental drawbacks that mean I’m never going to recommend a smart ring as a serious workout tracker.
Smart rings are impractical when lifting weights
It does not make sense to wear a smart ring to lift a barbell, do a pullup, or do most machine or dumbbell exercises. Smart rings are thick and chunky, and if they have sensor bumps on the inside, that’s even worse. It hurts to wear a smart ring while properly gripping a bar for a pulling exercise.
Let me explain what I mean by proper grip, since it’s different for pushing versus pulling exercises. You can wear rings for pushing exercises if you want, since the bar should sit in the palm of your hand. I think of my forearm as a pillar, supporting the weight in my hand. This is how I hold the bar for something like a bench press.
But on a pulling exercise, like a deadlift or a pullup or a dumbbell row, the bar or handle should sit at the base of your fingers, right where your fingers meet your palm. If it were on your palm, you’d pinch skin and risk ripped calluses. The place you need to hold the bar is exactly where rings sit. Some people keep a wedding ring on while lifting, and if the ring is small enough, it might not interfere too much. But smart rings are so much bigger, they really aren’t compatible.
A proper pulling grip will push the ring painfully against your finger. Besides the discomfort, this also gives a less effective grip, since the bar can slide against the surface of the ring. You want your fingers wrapped around the bar, because the bar is held in place by friction between your skin and the bar. There’s no way I’m properly hook-gripping a snatch with a smart ring on my index finger.
Safety concerns aren’t my main issue, but they’re worth considering
There are two other factors that aren’t top of my mind, since the grip issue is already a dealbreaker, but that come up commonly when people discuss this question. One is the idea that lifting isn’t safe for the ring—that the ring will get scratched by the barbell or other gym equipment. And, yes, it probably will. Some rings are tougher than others, so this varies by brand and finish. My silver Oura ring 3 is a little scuffed after years of wear, but not too noticeably. My black Oura ring 4 has some very visible scratches where the finish has come off. You can get silicone covers for smart rings, but I wouldn’t bother—they’ll just add to the grip issues I described since they add bulk to the ring.
The other issue is that some people refuse to use rings when working out for safety reasons, having regrettably googled the terms “degloving” or “ring avulsion.” These refer to a devastating injury, sometimes requiring amputation, where a ring gets caught on something and rips flesh off your finger. This type of injury tends to be associated with things like workplace accidents and falls.
I wasn’t able to find data relating serious finger injuries to lifting weights with a ring on, and I suspect that the fear of a random degloving at the gym, despite being discussed frequently online, is a bit out of proportion with the actual risk. Still, it’s probably a good practice to avoid wearing rings at the gym (smart or otherwise).
They aren’t always accurate enough for heart rate tracking
It’s hard for a smart ring to track heart rate accurately. Some do it better than others, but very few are good at their job, and none are great. Unlike a watch, a ring doesn’t have an adjustable band that you can use to snug the sensor up against your skin. If it’s a hot day and your fingers are swelling, you’ll probably get better data, but you’ll also have a hard time getting the ring off at the end of the day. If it’s a colder, drier day and the ring is sliding around, it may not get a good reading at all.
Rings use a similar type of heart rate sensor as watches, but watches have more skin to shine a sensor on and a larger overall shape to block outside light. The wearer of the watch can control the fit. Rings are at a disadvantage on all of those counts. I cynically suspect that these accuracy issues are why most smart ring apps don’t show detailed heart rate graphs, or allow heart rate data to be exported to other apps. (Shout out to the Samsung Galaxy Ring, which provides data export. Coincidentally, it has the most accurate heart rate of the rings I’ve tested.)
Tracking workouts on a ring is annoying
Even if you do want to track a cardio session on your smart ring, it’s not an easy task. You need to start and stop the workout from your ring’s phone app, which is a pain (and most ring apps don’t provide a live activity to remind you to stop the workout when you’re done). Some rings have a feature to auto-detect workouts, which removes that inconvenience. But then you’re at the mercy of the ring to decide when it thinks your workout stopped and started. If you want to track, say, a 30-minute jog, you have to hope that it picks a reasonable starting and ending point. Sometimes the ring’s guess can be off by several minutes.
Smart rings make more sense as a recovery tracker than a fitness tracker
With these drawbacks, why do I still like smart rings? Because I don’t see them as fitness trackers. A smart ring can track sleep metrics like time asleep and HRV, and that’s useful even without the fitness tracking. I get less out of other metrics like stress tracking (I share my colleague Meredith’s skepticism there). Smart ring apps often have other functions, like tracking habits or nutrition, which aren’t features of the ring itself but can be a handy way to keep your data together.
Smart rings are for all of that, not for fitness tracking. Despite wearing smart rings for years, I can’t say I’ve ever cared to track a workout with one (aside from testing device features). I’m having a hard time thinking of any exercise that it even makes sense to track with a ring. If I’m running, I want to know my pace and heart rate in real time, with a watch. If I just want to note that I lifted or went for a walk on a certain day, it’s not like I need tracking data from a ring to jot that down.
Ultimately a smart ring is good at a lot of things, but not exercise tracking. I use a watch for anything where I want to track my heart rate in real time (since I can glance at the watch to see it) and let my smart ring handle everything that happens outside the gym.
