Giving Up on Smart Rings - NotesByLex.com

NotesByLex.com

Home
About

/

Recent
Tags

Giving Up on Smart Rings
Sep 13, 2026

MCP is Now a Stateless Protocol
Aug 5, 2026

Qwen3.8-Max
Aug 3, 2026

LLM Agents Do Not Reliably Follow Company Policies
Aug 1, 2026

Decomposing LLM Judge Scores Into Yes/No Questions
Jul 26, 2026

OpenAI and Hugging Face security incident - July 21, 2026
Jul 22, 2026

Kimi K3
Jul 17, 2026

6 Months of OpenClaw
Jul 15, 2026

Completing A Computer Science Degree On Coursera
Jul 5, 2026

Shipping a Laptop to a Refugee Camp in Uganda
May 23, 2026

See more →

MachineLearning
29

SoftwareEngineering
17

LinearAlgebra
16

LargeLanguageModels
14

AgenticReasoning
12

GameDesign
12

ComputerScience
11

AudioEngineering
7

LearningAndTeaching
6

Zettelkasten
6

DiscreteMath
6

AutomatedTesting
6

ReinforcementLearning
5

Roblox
5

AgenticFailureModes
4

DataStructures
4

Lua
4

StoryWriting
4

GameMath
4

AgentStandards
3

See all 112 topics →

Home
/essay
Giving Up on Smart Rings

Sep 13, 2026
·

Fitness
Wearables

After about a year of wearing a smart ring, I've decided to throw in the towel.
I did really like my Oura Ring. Tracking my sleep and steps, amongst other things, has been really helpful for my health journey. Symptom Radar was also typically pretty accurate and usually let me know I was about to get a cold even before I noticed the symptoms.
But a smart ring has a few major downsides that a wrist-based device doesn't, and they weren't obvious to me when I first bought mine.
1. Your fingers change size and rings are not adjustable
Turns out your fingers store quite a bit of fat, and if the fitness-tracking device helps you successfully lose weight, the ring might no longer fit. I initially bought an Oura Ring in size 13 when I was around 94 kg. Then I lost about 14 kg and it became really loose. After picking up a new sizing kit for a replacement device, I learned I was down to a size 11.
Your fingers also change size with temperature. Cold makes your fingers smaller, whilst warmer temperatures do the opposite. Oura's product guidance says that finger size also fluctuates with food and drink, exercise and altitude.
2. You have to take them off to lift weights
Many exercises, from pull-ups to the bench press, place the ring between your hand and a metal bar. Oura recommends removing the ring during activities that involve friction, including weightlifting, to avoid scratches. For me, tracking workouts was one of the primary reasons that I bought it in the first place.
3. They get in the way when you wash and generally use your hands
Rings are constantly exposed while washing your hands, showering, cleaning and gripping things. Even when the ring is water-resistant, water and soap can become trapped underneath it, so removing, drying and replacing it becomes another small source of daily friction - something I repeatedly forget to do, which might explain how I ended up with 2 broken devices which I explain below. The outer surface is also easy to scratch. Oura's care instructions acknowledge the issue of both trapped moisture and scratching.

I must admit, though, the catalyst for these realisations about smart rings was that both my original ring and its replacement stopped working. Bluetooth would connect, but neither ring would track anything, as if I wasn't wearing it.
The first ring stopped working around the same time it stopped fitting me, and a newer model had come out anyway, so I begrudgingly replaced it.
But the replacement stopped working just two weeks after I got it. Thankfully, Oura were willing to offer a refund for the second ring. I think I was just unlucky, and I'm really not trying to throw the company under the bus, but it made me take stock of wearing a smart ring and realise these downsides.
As for what's next, I've decided to try a fitness band: Google Fitbit Air. I really have not historically been a fan of wearing watches and stuff on my wrist, but damn, do I now realise it's a convenient place to put a tracking device (which my fitness-obsessed wife had been trying to convince me of since I became ring-pilled). Anyway, I'm nearly 40. Maybe that's the right age to get into wrist wear. Does my watch era await?
As for my OpenClaw Setup, it now reads from the Google Health API instead of Oura's API. It was pretty trivial to have Codex cut over, except, sadly, Google Health doesn't expose Fitbit's Sleep Score or a readiness score yet (please fix, Google!).

Comments
Reply to this post on Bluesky or Mastodon or Hacker News to join the conversation.

On this page

Giving Up on Smart Rings

1. Your fingers change size and rings are not adjustable

2. You have to take them off to lift weights

3. They get in the way when you wash and generally use your hands

Graph

Graph

Current
Linked note

The author decided to discontinue wearing a smart ring after experiencing several significant drawbacks that were not immediately apparent when the device was initially purchased. While the author found benefits in tracking health metrics such as sleep and steps using devices like the Oura Ring, several physical and practical limitations became pronounced, leading to the decision to give up on the wearable. One primary issue is the lack of adjustability, stemming from the fact that finger size changes dynamically due to weight fluctuations and temperature variations, meaning a fixed-sized ring eventually became too loose or restrictive. Furthermore, the physical interaction required for certain activities presents ongoing problems; for instance, removing the ring is necessary during weightlifting or other friction-based exercises to prevent scratches on the device.

Another major set of disadvantages relates to daily hygiene and practical use. Smart rings inherently impede routine activities such as washing hands and showering. Although marketed as water-resistant, trapped moisture and the need for repeated removal, drying, and replacement introduce friction and potential damage, as evidenced by the author's experience with broken devices. This practical interference highlights friction points in the integration of technology into everyday physical routines.

The impetus for abandoning the smart ring ultimately arose from functional failures; the author noted that both the original ring and a replacement ceased functioning despite maintaining a Bluetooth connection, suggesting a disconnect between the hardware and the tracking data. This experience served as a catalyst for a detailed assessment of the downsides associated with wrist-based tracking technology. Following this realization, the author opted to explore alternatives, transitioning to using a fitness band, such as the Google Fitbit Air. This shift suggests a reconsideration of wrist-based tracking technology, especially given the author's demographic. Furthermore, the author noted a shift in data infrastructure concerning their setup, moving the source of data from the Oura API to the Google Health API, though this also brought to light limitations regarding the availability of specific metrics like Fitbit's Sleep Score or readiness scores.