By Piper Gallagher, Senior Reporter
A new fashion forward fad has hit the technology and fitness world.
And it comes wrapped around your finger. Multiple brands have released their own version of something called a smart ring. A small band-like ring that can track health, sleep, stress and more, in addition to being a fashionable piece of jewelry.
The first break into the smart ring world happened with a company called Oura, when they released what was essentially, a fitness tracker in ring form.
According to Oura’s website, they launched a successful crowd funding campaign and released their first model in March 2015. From there, the major brands that rule the industry now consist of Oura, Ultrahuman, Ringconn, and most recently, Samsung.
Features of these rings, which have evolved immensely since the first launch, consists of heart rate tracking, skin temperature, sleep tracking, movement, recovery, and even blood oxygen levels. And it does all of this without a screen. The metrics and measurements can be found on a phone app that directly syncs with the ring.
Every brand brings something slightly different to the table.
For example, Oura is still the most successful company and maker of smart rings, but a lot of consumers get turned off by the monthly subscription you have to pay for in order to use the ring. Some prefer the slimmer fit of the Ultrahuman Ring Air, or Samsung users may prefer the Samsung ring for easy compatibility.
Not only do celebrities and athletes make up the users for smart rings, but any average person can benefit from using one. Athletes especially find them useful during training and recovery.
“I like my Ultrahuman Ring because it helps me keep in tune with my body during training. It allows me to understand my biometrics and how external factors influence my body and performance,” Cadence Long-Torres said. Torres is a junior psychology major from Moore, Oklahoma, and she’s also on the cross country team here at Northwestern.
She says that the smart ring has actually helped her make changes to her day to day life to better her health and performance as an athlete.
Some claim that these rings have actually helped alert them to real medical emergencies. According to Canadian Running Magazine, Hunter Woodhall’s Oura ring saved his life.
Woodhall is a paralympic athlete who competes for Team USA. His ring alerted him that something was seriously wrong with his body, and he sought medical attention at a hospital where he found out he needed emergency appendix surgery.
Unfortunately, there’s some speculation that Ultrahuman and Ringconn rings may disappear from the market soon. Behind the scenes, Oura has been involved in a patent lawsuit against both of these companies.
Oura, who has recently won the initial patent lawsuit over their design elements. Forbes magazine says that Ultrahuman has filed a countersuit, but they will have to stop importing rings into the United States by October 21st.
Ultrahuman themselves have issued a lengthy statement, saying that they will continue to update their firmware for existing customers, and that their rings will continue to be available on Amazon and other resellers for purchase.
There are still more legal decisions and battles to come, but options in the smart ring world may become more limited soon.