The 3 smart rings that could help you hit your New Year’s health goals

From sleep tracking to calorie counting, stress analysis and heart rate graphs, we have never had more health data quite literally at our fingertips. Smart rings — such as those made by ŌURA, Samsung and Luna — are soaring in popularity. Less bulky than watches and boasting almost a week-long battery life, the compact bands are packed with sensors to measure biometrics, including temperature, blood oxygen and physical activity.

Data is synced to a smartphone app, which provides a wealth of insights into the user’s health and can reveal long-term trends or concerning changes. Rings lack the GPS tracking capabilities of watches and cannot display notifications; however, the absence of a screen is a key attraction for many users, according to Annika Bizon, Vice President of Product and Marketing for Mobile Experience at Samsung UK and Ireland. She says: “We’re seeing smart rings become an essential part of the wearable landscape because they offer discreet, stylish and always-on health tracking. That discretion can matter more than you think, as many people prefer to keep their progress quiet.

“For anyone monitoring their heart rate, sleep patterns or tracking their cycle, a smart ring provides a level of subtlety that changes how you engage with your own wellbeing. It’s more than just a fashion statement; it is a powerful way to stay connected to your wellbeing that delivers vital health insights in a form factor that works for real life.”

Swapnil Vats, Product and Business Head at Luna, says many New Year’s resolutions fail because we set ambitious targets without understanding what our body needs, and smart rings can help decode our physiology to identify what is holding us back.

He adds: “Smart rings are rising fast because they offer continuous, unobtrusive health tracking without the bulk of a smartwatch. They are being adopted more by people who seek to also monitor sleep, and recovery during sleep, since it’s a much easier wear.”

ŌURA’s recent Year in Review report, which gathered data from thousands of users worldwide, revealed the UK and Northern Ireland topped the league table for activity, averaging a daily score of 85.19 out of 100. Meanwhile, New Zealand and Australia ranked highest for sleep, averaging 80 and 79.4 out of 100, respectively.

Globally, Friday was the most stressful day of the week, and users were most active on Saturday, but also slept the worst. Women got more sleep than men, but also did more physical activity and clocked up the most stress, averaging 129 minutes of stress daily, while men averaged 97.

Experts are predicting steady growth in the market for wearable health trackers, fuelled both by people who take their data extremely seriously and those simply looking to gamify lifestyle improvements. So whether you’re a fitness fanatic, setting some New Year’s goals, or just dipping your toe into the waters of health tracking, here’s a simple guide to smart rings.

Sleep

Sleep is one of the core metrics all smart rings track. They typically offer a daily sleep score out of 100, which takes into account factors such as how long it took you to fall asleep, how long you spent in each sleep stage, and the timing of your sleep.

They also usually monitor overnight blood oxygen saturation levels, which indicate how efficiently the body circulates and absorbs oxygen, as well as respiratory rate and skin temperature trends.

Correlating this data with your daily habits can help identify factors that disrupt your sleep. Perhaps you had a late meal or consumed alcohol close to bedtime, which may have resulted and less deep sleep. Are evening workouts helping or hampering your recovery?

Some rings also offer insights into your sleep chronotype (whether you’re an early bird or a night owl) and circadian rhythm alignment. These can help you tweak your habits for the best chance of a good rest.

Smart watches often have a shorter battery life, which can get in the way of sleep tracking. Sofia Strommer, behavioural scientist at ŌURA, says: “Because rings are comfortable and unobtrusive, people tend to wear them continuously, leading to more complete data and more meaningful, personalised insights.”

Energy/readiness

Smart rings typically provide an overall energy or readiness score for the day, taking into account factors such as recent physical activity and sleep patterns. A higher score indicates you are primed for peak performance, while a low score can indicate a need to focus on recovery.

This is obviously something you can often feel in your body, but having it confirmed at a glance can help you decide whether to push yourself or take it easy. The best smart rings can detect subtle signs you might not notice, such as accumulated sleep debt, high stress, and training fatigue.

Activity

All smart rings typically track steps and calories burned during physical activity, and offer a daily activity score that indicates how well you are meeting your goals. Most can automatically detect workouts and are water-resistant, so they can be safely worn while swimming.

Sofia says the devices can provide crucial guidance to help those aiming to hit fitness goals “build consistency and train smarter”. She adds: “Whether someone is working toward increasing daily movement, improving workout performance, or training for something specific, Oura can help track workouts and deliver personalised insights on how their body is responding to activity.”

Period tracking/fertility

Smart rings can help female users predict their cycles by detecting small changes in overnight skin temperature trends associated with different stages in the menstrual cycle. They can also estimate windows of peak fertility and detect ovulation with greater accuracy than apps that rely solely on manual data entry.

Swapnil explains that the Luna Ring combines “temperature trends, cycle patterns, and physiological shifts to predict fertile windows and ovulation phases with high precision”. He adds: “It gives users a clear, science-based view of their monthly cycle to support family planning or cycle awareness.”

Oura Ring users have even reported that their devices revealed they were pregnant before they spotted any signs, although this feature can be turned off. 

However, the devices are not medical-grade fertility trackers, and readings can sometimes be affected by stress, illness, travel and poor sleep.

Stress

Biometrics, including resting heart rate and heart rate variability (the variation in time between heartbeats), can provide a fascinating insight into stress levels.

Sofia says: “Research continues to show how chronic stress can lead to negative health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease and anxiety and depression. While short bursts of stress are normal — even beneficial — ongoing, unrecovered stress can compound over time and impact everything from performance to sleep quality.”

The Oura, Luna and Samsung ring apps all offer help with breathing or relaxation exercises to manage stress. For example, Samsung encourages regular mood check-ins and can guide you through meditations or breathing exercises, such as box breathing.

Artificial intelligence

Any one of these scores can be useful, but the real magic happens when insights from a range of metrics are combined. Oura, Luna and Samsung have all harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to provide in-app analysis.

These AI systems can draw on days, weeks or months’ worth of data to identify trends you might have missed and provide personalised advice on how to improve your health habits.

All three come with AI-powered chatbots. They are more primitive than ChatGPT, but a nice alternative if you get tired of scrolling through numbers and graphs.

• These are the key features offered by most smart rings, but every brand offers a unique range of health insights. Rings vary in price, thickness and breadth of health data, and some require an additional subscription to unlock full insights. If you decide it’s time to put a ring on it, do your research and consider which factors are most important for you.