Ringconn and Fitness Tracking

2-minute read
running • tech

Ringconn ring in its charging case

I just bought a Ringconn to track fitness and activity on top of the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and a Whoop band that I already have.

Whoop Apple Health Metrics

The Whoop is for sleep and recovery, but it really doesn’t expose much for daily fitness activity. And while Whoop does populate Apple Health with metrics like Blood Oxygen, Respiratory Rate, Resting Heart Rate and Sleep – these are only sent to Apple Health once at the start of the morning based on the metrics being tracked during sleep. The Whoop app is supposed to send Heart Rate also, but it does not do so 24x7 and looks like it only does so for activities.

I stopped wearing my Apple Watch Ultra 2 24x7 because:

  1. It’s like wearing a rock on my wrist all the time2) I am tired of all the alerts — which I get I could turn off, but then… 3) I want to wear my mechanical watches.
  2. It’s super uncomforable wearing while sleeping – it’s doable, but not the greatest.
  3. “Getting notifications on my wrist” seemed like a good idea on paper, but in practice it’s an avenue to anxiety. I tried my best to limit the number of notifications coming to my wrist through Focus modes and just flat out not sending some app’s notifications through.
  4. I want to wear my mechanical watches.

What I do like about Apple Watches is that they track fitness metrics throughout the day – the one I like best is steps.

Ringconn Apple Health Metrics

The Ringconn ring tracks a bunch of stuff, a lot of it overlapping with the Whoop, but it sends these metrics to Apple Health, which is great. I am curious in the morning tomorrow to see the sleep stats from the Ringconn, apparently it sends Sleep Stages that are compatible with Apple Health. Whoop only sends “asleeep” and “awake” stages.

I will see how this goes and how well a ring can track things like steps – since I type a lot and I am curious how that affects step count. For now, it’s nice to see Blood Oxygen, Heart Rate, Resting Heart Rate and a few other metrics being sent to Apple Health throughout the day.

A side note: My Apple Watch Ultra 2 has it’s Blood Oxygen functionality disabled because somehow a $3.5T corporation won’t pay up to use it. Shrug.