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Your heart rate cycling on the road

Ongoing studyRecorded on the road

This is an ongoing study. The figure will be updated here as more people are recorded.

OPTICAL

Accuracy

90.4%

Outdoor Cycling Heart Rate Agreement

side by side with an ECG chest strap for the same road ride

Reference standard

ECG chest strap

Sample size

4 participants

Riding on the road, the Ultrahuman Ring reads within twelve beats a minute of an ECG chest strap, on average.

Ultrahuman RingECG chest strapbeats per minute
90.4%agreement with the chest strap
11.8 bpmaverage difference
72%of readings inside the ±5 bpm / 10% tolerance
99–173beats per minute the reference covered in study
Figure 1 — One continuous stretch from a single recording. The figures beside it are for the study as a whole, not for the stretch drawn.
-60-40-200+20+4090100110120130140150160170upper limit of agreement (+32.5)lower limit of agreement (-23.7)average offset +4.4 bpmthe two devices averaged (beats per minute)ring minus chest strap (beats per minute)
Figure 2 — Every five seconds, against the chest strap
One dot is one paired five-second reading, as recorded, pooled across recordings.

On a bike your hands rest on the bars and barely move, which removes the motion that troubles an optical sensor everywhere else.

Two things work against that, and both arrive through the hands. Holding a bar is a sustained squeeze on the same vessels the sensor reads from, and road buzz travels up the frame into your palms as a constant fine vibration. Neither exists on a stationary bike, which is why this card sits just below the indoor one.