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.
It’s in reality a disposable product unfortunately, unlike a wedding band.
An Oura ring appears to be $400, easy to damage, can't be resized. Lots more room for regret there.
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.
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.
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.
Not for me. I like wearing a normal watch, and I don't want to wear two watches.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
striking•1h ago