Ultrahuman has announced the rollout of Sleep Debt tracking to its smart ring ecosystem – a boost to its sleep monitoring credentials.
Similar to Whoop and Garmin, Ultrahuman’s version will automatically calculate how many minutes/hours you need to make up (or not, as the case may be).
We’re a big fan of the feature on Whoop, which also takes into account your strain and exertion to calculate a nightly Sleep Need. However, with the strains of family life, it can be something of a thankless task keeping on top of your sleep need – but it can be a useful tool to prompt you to get that early night, or explain why you’re not feeling at your best.
Read the review: Ultrahuman Ring Air
But the Ultrahuman system works slightly differently on its smart ring.
Unlike rivals, the debt counter resets at the start of a new week – rather than continuously accumulate night after night. That avoids the crushing weight of having to make back months of sleep debt, and you can simply write off past weeks and start afresh with new intentions.
The company’s founder and CEO, Mohit Kumar, pointed out on LinkedIn when announcing the feature, ‘catching up’ on sleep isn’t as simple as it sounds. He said that building good sleep habits was all about consistency, with disrupted circadian rhythms affecting “weight gain, cognitive function and cardiovascular risk.”
“Many studies now show sleep consistency matters more than maximizing overall time”, Kumar says, “so I’m looking forward to seeing how Ultrahuman factors this in when presenting users with the sleep data.”
Wareable says
But to us, it seems that the new metric feels at odds with the Kumar’s messaging.
Looking at the feature, it’s not quite clear how the Sleep Debt feature tallies with Kumar’s rallying call to increase sleep consistency. The whole idea of having a substantial sleep debt will encourage people to make it back with one long super sleep, which is the exact behavior he’s trying to discourage.
We’ll have to see how it works in practice.
We’ve seen wearables address the idea of sleep consistency, but few have tackled it as a main metric. We thought that Apple was going to try it with its integration in watchOS 7, but it rolled back on the idea in watchOS 8 and included more granular tracking of sleep stages.
With such importance placed on the idea of circadian rhythm and sleep consistency, which wearables will choose to put it front and center?
