Smart Ring Benefits: Why Should You Even Consider One?

Smart Tech
Updated On - January 27, 2024

Smart rings are wearable devices that are becoming popular among consumers. These rings are designed to offer a range of features and benefits that can enhance the wearer’s life in many ways. From tracking your fitness, checking your health, and making payments with contactless technology.

The biggest advantage of smart rings is that you can track your health and fitness. Smart rings feature sensors for monitoring heart rate, sleep, and activity. Top smart rings track your data all day, not only during workouts.

Smart ring users vary in age, but Oura, a popular brand, reports that their website is visited mostly by 25-34-year-olds (similarweb).

Gender-wise, smart rings are almost equally distributed between males and females. For instance, the audience of ouraring.com is 49.77% male and 50.23% female (similarweb).

Our guide will go over some of the important benefits of smart rings and why they’re so popular.

1. Sleep Tracking

One of the most critical aspects of health is sleep. With smart rings like the Oura Ring Gen3, you can track your sleep patterns and get insights into how well you sleep. To analyze sleep quality, the ring measures heart rate variability, body temperature, and movement during sleep.

A smart ring provides detailed insights and recommendations about sleep cycles, energy levels, and recovery. By analyzing the data, users can better understand their sleep patterns and make adjustments to improve their sleep.

Why Are Smart Rings Beneficial For Sleep Tracking?

Smart rings give you data-driven health insights about sleep metrics like duration, stages, movements, heart rate, and awakenings throughout the night.

It’s comfortable to wear smart rings all night long, so users can easily monitor their sleep patterns.

Some smart rings offer consistently accurate heart-rate data and provide easy-follow guidance based on sleep tracking.

Users can receive personalized tips and insights based on collected data, which can improve sleep quality.

Unlike some other wearable devices, smart rings are discreet and can be worn all day and night without being obtrusive.

What Features are for Sleep Tracking?

Smart rings can track different sleep stages, including light, REM, and deep sleep, providing a comprehensive view of sleep quality.

Users can receive personalized tips and insights based on collected sleep data from their smart rings. These tips can include recommendations on when to go to bed, how to create a bedtime routine, and even suggestions for adjusting their sleep environment.

Using continuous heart rate monitoring, you can track your sleep quality and detect disturbances.

Sensors in smart rings track body temperature, which can tell you if you’re sleeping well or not. Body temperature plays a crucial role in regulating sleep. Smart rings with temperature sensors can detect subtle changes in body temperature during sleep, providing insights into sleep quality.

Getting a handle on your heart rate variability (HRV) can give you a lot of info about stress levels and recovery, which are important for overall sleep.

Monitoring blood oxygen levels during sleep can help detect sleep apnea.

By tracking movement, smart rings can help identify periods of restlessness or wakefulness during the night.

2. Fitness Tracking

Another significant benefit of smart rings is tracking fitness information. There are sensors to track features like:

- Resting heart rate (RHR)
- Heart rate variability (HRV)
- Active heart rate
- Maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max)
- Respiratory rates

Also, they can count steps when you exercise and measure calorie burn. This allows users to quantify daily movements and exercise intensity.

Smart rings have a readiness score which tells you whether your body is ready for physical activity or needs rest. The score is measured based on all wellness data collected during the day and night.

Some rings provide haptic feedback, which means vibration. It’s useful when you get a notification, meditate, or as an alarm clock.

Smart rings measure blood oxygen saturation levels (SpO2). First, you may want to know what it is in a nutshell. Basically, it measures how much oxygen your red blood cells carry. Oxygen-saturated blood balance is critical to your health.

The ring uses pulse oximeter technology. By measuring the difference between red and infrared light absorption, this technology measures blood flow.

SpO2 is closely related to respiratory conditions such as shortness of breath, asthma, sleep apnea, and more. Normal readings are between 94 and 100 percent.

The smart rings can monitor your blood oxygen saturation continuously, but they’re not meant to be used as a medical or diagnostic tool. They’re wellness devices, not medical devices.

Monitoring blood oxygen levels can help with treatment for:

- Prevention
- Altitude acclimatization
- Recovery
- Determining

When it comes to measuring fitness information, smart rings are generally more accurate than smartwatches. This is due to the fact that it is worn on a finger with many arteries and capillaries. The relative proximity of the ring to the blood vessels allows for more consistent data. The fit of the device is critical, whether it is worn on the wrist for smart watches or on the finger for smart rings.

3. Contactless Payment

One of the most significant benefits of smart rings is their ability to make contactless payments. Users can simply wave their hand over a payment terminal to complete a transaction, without a physical card or cash.

This feature is particularly useful for individuals who are always on the go and don’t want to carry around a bulky wallet or purse.

Smart rings can be linked to a user’s bank account or credit card, allowing them to make purchases anywhere that accepts contactless payments.

This feature is not only convenient, but also adds an extra layer of security, as the user’s financial information is stored securely on the device.

4. Reduced Screen Addiction

A smart ring helps curb screen time addiction with features that cut phone checking.

Here are some ways smart rings can help:

Notifications

Smart rings alert you about calls, messages, emails, and social media with vibrations or LED displays. This feature lets users stay connected in meetings or social gatherings without the need to check their phones.

Remote Control

Smart rings can also act as a remote control for certain smartphone functions or smart homes. This can help cut time spent watching screens.

Less Dependence on Smartwatches

While smartwatches also offer many of the same features, they often come with larger screens that contribute to screen time. Smart rings offer a focused approach to health tracking, beneficial for those aiming to cut screen time.

5. Emergency Assistance

One of the most significant benefits of smart rings is their ability to send emergency alerts. Nimb rings, for example, can send an alert to a dedicated call center or pre-set contacts like emergency centers, friends, and family when the panic button is pressed.

You can use this feature to call for help in dangerous situations. Alerts include the user’s profile info and GPS location, so you can react.

Another smart ring with a panic SOS button is ArcX for people playing sports.

These smart rings can in the future become useful for seniors and can also alert medical professionals in a health emergency.

For example, observing sudden drops in heart rate or falling (acting as a fall detection). Furthermore, smart rings can be integrated with home security systems. This allows users to trigger emergency alerts and summon help during a break-in or suspicious activity.