Noise Luna Ring: On your fingertips

Fitness bands and smartwatches have unlocked more health stats for the average user than they can handle, but they come with 'second screen digital fatigue,’ incessant phone notifications, and some discomfort if worn overnight. Not to mention the inability to wear your regular wristwatch and still keep track of your health data. Precisely why the concept of a ring for fitness tracking would appeal to many, and the reason I checked out the Luna Ring by Noise.

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Fashioned out of titanium and available in three colours and seven size options, the Luna Ring looks premium and brand new even after a few weeks of year-end vacations, which involved some beach time and less than gentle handling. It’s light to wear all day and night, but it does need charging every once in about five days. Accurate sizing is done via a sizing kit, which is sent over before the actual right-sized ring is shipped to you, and you need to wear it the right way, with the sensors on the palm side of your index or ring finger, for optimal health data measurement.

Underneath the slick exterior lies a panoply of sensors: an infrared PPG sensor to measure heart rate/SpO2, a skin temperature sensor, and a three-axis accelerometer to measure movement. Working together, these sensors give you metrics on sleep, activity, and a readiness score, such as restfulness and sleep duration, steps or distance walked, and how energetic or ready you are based on your sleep or activity scores. While the data measured is fairly accurate compared to a recent Apple Watch and an older Garmin I had available for benchmarking, Noise has gone ahead and validated its accuracy via independent studies with IIIT Hyderabad; this will certainly instill some confidence in this new form factor.

All the metrics you collect via the Luna Ring feed into the specially designed companion iOS and Android apps, and there are glanceable readouts on your sleep and activity score, along with detailed metrics over time. There isn’t any way to track workouts automatically, and these need to be added in manually. Battery level can be seen on the app, but you will need to keep track of when it's low and needs to be charged since the ring doesn’t notify you via a haptic nudge or a phone notification if it's low on charge.

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At INR 17,999, the Luna Ring is a slightly higher-priced alternative to fitness bands, but it does its job silently without adding another beeping, buzzing screen to your wrist, allowing folks to wear it all day and then to bed or use it with their existing analogue watches. This is a solid effort and a great showcase for where smart rings are headed.

Rating: 8/10

Price: INR 17,999