I don’t like smartwatches. As I wrote in one of my previous stories, I don’t like being available to my phone notifications and want it the other way around. However, if I switch off the notifications and am using a smartwatch for only tracking sleep, steps and calories, it loses the “smarts” and becomes an expensive fitness tracker on my wrist.
I’m not a fan of something buzzing on my wrist but I still want to keep track of my sleep and calories (sometimes). If you are anything like me, you’re going to like smart rings. These fitness tracking devices offer tracking without exposing you to phone notifications. I got to try the Noise Luna Ring for a couple of weeks and I’m glad I now have a way to track my bad sleep routine without wearing a big smartwatch on my wrist or being available to notifications all the time.
The Luna Ring is small, light and strong. It has a titanium body, which helps keep the 8mm slim ring to four grams. I like the design – it’s minimal and looks good, especially in the Lunar Black color variant with a matte finish. If you are into a flashy design, you can opt for the Midnight Black or Stardust Silver colors with glossy finishes.
I usually wear it on my index finger but I shuffle it to the ring finger too, sometimes. However, I’d recommend not doing that because when shaking hands with someone, it hurts my fingers if the device is on my ring finger. Otherwise, it’s comfortable to wear for hours at a stretch. The Luna Ring is rated to be water resistant up to 50 meters (5atm). I haven’t gone swimming with it but I wash my hands frequently with the device on my finger and that hasn’t affected it yet.
Noise says that there’s a non-allergic coating so it doesn’t affect your skin but wearing it for long with sweat and dirt gathering under it could cause irritation on the skin. You might want to take it off and clean it and your skin frequently if you have sensitive skin.
The Noise Luna Ring houses an optical heart rate sensor, a blood oxygen sensor, PPG sensors, a skin temperature sensor and a 3-axis accelerometer. It connects to your phone using a new Luna Ring app, which is compatible with both iOS and Android.
The device doesn’t have a screen, so having an intuitive app is important, and Noise has done a good job of making it easy to use. The Luna Ring app has five sections at the bottom, namely, Home, Sleep, Readiness, Activity and My device – pretty self-explanatory.
Tapping on each section gives you more data about that specific thing, while Home has cards for a brief summary of every data. The app is said to send a notification when the Ring’s battery is about to die but that didn’t happen any time in my two-week usage and I discovered my ring was out of charge only when I opened the app to sync it.
Coming to functionality, the Luna Ring can track sleep, calories burnt, heart rate, temperature and more. Starting with sleep tracking, it is accurate for the amount of time you’ve slept but the “time in bed” is inaccurate, in my experience.
My lifestyle includes sleeping a maximum of five hours at night and a one or two-hour nap in the day. It’s frustrating to not be able to track my naps through the day. The sleep tracking is limited to the night hours. You get numbers for the usual total sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, latency and overall sleep efficiency.
The Luna Ring gives you a Readiness score based on your sleep patterns, recent activity levels and “biometric signals” to help you decide whether you should push the limits or take a step back and relax through the day. I’m not sure how it works because I’ve felt like not getting out of bed when my Readiness score was 95. You also get a Sleep score and an Activity score.
But here’s the thing – and it goes for almost all kinds of scores on any wearable – these are trained on data. If you are taking a medicine that fatigues you or aren’t doing well emotionally/mentally, it won’t take that into account. It is trained purely on numbers like the amount of sleep you had and calories you’re burning. You could be feeling mentally or emotionally exhausted but acing your readiness score. Trust your gut and not the numbers on a screen.
Noise’s Luna Ring measures the body temperature every five minutes without you needing to tap anywhere. As for calories burnt, it uses the motion sensor and heart rate sensor, and it does well to not count typing on my laptop as a form of workout. The accuracy was close to my Amazfit watch, which I find to be pretty good in terms of getting the numbers right.
The Luna Ring can last up to five days on a single charge. I was mostly looking for the charger during the fifth day. And it takes about two hours to charge, which is on the slow side. It charges by placing it on a dock (comes in the box). I’ve been told that the units shipping to the consumers will have a marking on the charger to help you place the ring properly – it charges only when placed at a certain position.
I wish the Luna Ring had something like Find My with the app because if you place it somewhere randomly in the house, forget where you kept it, you’ll have to rely on your memory to find it. There’s no way to track it through the app. You need to be near the Ring to connect it to the app, so it’s hard to locate when misplaced.
The Luna Ring is priced at 14,999 Indian Rupees and is available via the official Noise website. It might seem expensive for a Noise product but is actually more affordable than the Oura Ring ($300 / Rs 25,000) and the Ultrahuman Ring (Rs 22,500), and comes with a free app.
Noise tells me that they’ll be rolling out more features as the product ages. Although, we’re yet to hear about what those features are. Overall, there’s room for improvement but the Luna Ring is a good fitness tracker. It is great for anyone who wants to keep track of their fitness and sleep but doesn’t want to be bothered by the persistent notifications, buzzing, or yet another screen.
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