19/02/24
The ring
Comfortable to wear
Looks good
No irritation and super-light
No scratches in 6 weeks of usage
Like the charger design as well, easy to fit it correctly
It was marketed on the website for 6 days battery life; with regular workouts it runs for 3 days
Need to charge it every 3 days; not a bummer but different from what was shown loudly on the website
I wish it had a tracker if I misplaced it somewhere
The app
It’s too complicated to use for the first few times
The cards on the home screen are not predictable; some widgets come and go depending on when I open the app during the day
I missed the top navigation to go to previous days completely for the first few days
Screen 3 above
Everything is extremely text heavy and feels like a lot of work to understand something
Don’t understand the difference between index and score (movement index, sleep index vs recovery score)
Don’t understand if a number is good or bad
Screen 2 above
Thought Movement index is the UH's equivalent of Apple health rings but it's again a list of some numbers -- most understandable is Steps because it's against a goal I had set.Screen 3 above
Not sure where will find the weekly report if I dismiss it now.I’d ideally want to see how am I doing daily against all metrics (how much am I moving, staying active, steps, sleep etc.) but the Screen 2 below doesn't give me an option to toggle between days or a summarised view.
I don’t feel like sharing the screen above on social media because it feels like a text field with black background
So much text — it’s noisy to even clearly look at what’s important
My solution — I give it to my trainer to figure out what’s good or bad; his answer, “leave all this, let’s workout”
Cardiovascular fitness — 42. Is it good bad? I have to Google.
There is an input form between the stack of display cards as well — how are you feeling right now? I have spotted this probably 1-2 times in 6 weeks during scroll, when I’m trying to find some other card. I thought it's a progress bar score it's showing only to realise it's asking me for input. I didn't interact with it thinking it'll take me to another page which I didn't want.
Heart Rate — not sure what time’s value is shown. Still couldn’t figure out if it’s real time or lagged. Still don’t know how can I read my current heart-rate with the press of a button.
Same for skin temperature.
Smart goals — tried understanding it, gave up. Now, I don’t bother. I thought it could be the nice streak thing like Apple rings but I couldn’t use it.
Timeline — Not sure what should I be looking for here. I challenged all my friends to start a workout — all techies and actively workout. None of them could. Who would have thought adding a workout is hidden behind the + button. More on this in next section.
Total macros — don’t use it; don’t want to use it. I wish I could remove it from the home screen.
Activity is confusing, I pressed on Activity as I wanted to log a walking session from earlier — on the same day I received the ring. Turned out it’s just a dumb form.
Some of my workouts last for 1.5 hours. Not sure why does it take manual start but auto-stop after 60minutes. Either start automatically and stop automatically or keep all manual!
Blood vision was interesting and my yearly health check-up was due so thought of going with it. 15K spent.
I’m not sure what am I supposed to do next. Doctors typically want a report presented in a certain way. This was not that format — I then went to orange health to see if they’d have the report. They did thankfully and I forwarded that to my dad to consult with the GP.
They should have an option to have a PDF report from the app itself.
Blood vision is also a weird place to find the rings on top; not sure how do they connect the blood report with my movement — this entire thing is very confusing.
I referred this ring to a few folks; once you do the referral through the app, there's no visibility on what's next. Frustrating!
I found their roadmap and couldn't find an app-redesign item so that was a bit disheartening. I hope they change the app (dramatically) soon!
Conclusion
I hate using the app but have no choice
Thankfully Apple health reads it and so does some of the simpler but beautiful apps like Any Distance Club, Gyroscope
So, I prefer sharing screenshots from those apps on my Instagram
I still have to figure if Apple reads everything from this app then I’ll move to using Apple health completely or any other app completely while keeping the ring
Other posts in
Product & design
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15/10/24
11/10/24
07/10/24
05/10/24
31/05/24