Taking Ultrahuman’s sleep & fitness tracking Ring for a spin
Indian startup Ultrahuman has made a name for itself since 2019 by building out a subscription fitness platform which offers a range of workout and wellness-related content, integrating with third party wearables like the Apple Watch. In 2021 it expanded into offering medical grade sensing hardware which monitors real-time blood glucose — spinning up a program focused on encouraging users to track their metabolic health as a fitness intervention. This was followed, last summer, by a teaser of more hardware incoming: A smart ring of its own design — to complement the existing CGM (continuous glucose monitoring) sensor program but which it also offers as a standalone health-tracking wearable to compete with the likes of Oura’s smart ring.
TechCrunch tried a beta version of Ultrahuman’s Ring (or R1), as its plainly called — testing it in combination with its CGM-based metabolic tracking program (M1) over a month’s use and for several weeks on its own when it did not also have access to real-time glucose data. So there are actually two review scenarios here: The Ring + CGM; and just the Ring. (We’ve previously tested Ultrahuman’s CGM-based program on its own — click here to read our report on the M1 from last year.)
For those not already familiar with CGMs, these are partially invasive sensors which are worn directly on the body — containing a filament that’s inserted under the skin to allow the hardware to sense changes in blood glucose via the wearer’s interstitial fluid.
It’s a different story with the Ultrahuman Ring: All the sensors are fully contained in the body of the smart ring and only non-invasive techniques, such as optical sensing, are used to track the user’s biomarkers. Absolutely no skin puncturing required.
However, if you’re up for wearing both the Ring and the M1, Ultrahuman’s its pitch is you’ll get a deeper level of health tracking as it’s platform is able to link more biomarkers and draw a more detailed picture of how your lifestyle impacts your metabolic health.
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While tracking blood glucose is most commonly associated with people who have diabetes or prediabetes, in recent…
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