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Your heart rate through a working day

Sitting at a computer
OPTICAL

Accuracy

96.1%

Desk Work Heart Rate Agreement

checked against an ECG chest strap over the same working hours

Reference standard

ECG chest strap

Sample size

22 participants

Through a stretch of desk work the Ultrahuman Ring stays within four beats a minute of an ECG chest strap, on average.

Ultrahuman RingECG chest strapbeats per minute
96.1%agreement with the chest strap
3.2 bpmaverage difference
+2.8 bpmthe ring reads high, on average
54–123beats 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. Average difference tells you how far a typical reading is from the reference, regardless of whether it is high or low. Average offset tells you the direction of that gap — whether the ring reads high or low, on average.
-10-50+5+105060708090100110120upper limit of agreement (+8.3)lower limit of agreement (-2.7)average offset +2.8 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.

Desk work is where most of the waking day actually goes, and it is deceptively busy for a sensor. Your heart rate sits low, where a few beats is a large share of the whole number, while your hands type, reach, scroll and gesture almost without pause. Small, fast hand movement over a low, slow pulse is one of the harder combinations to read cleanly, and it is best measured in ordinary offices rather than in a laboratory.

Two clear lifts run through the trace below, the kind a phone call or a walk to the printer produces. The Ultrahuman Ring picks up both, and comes back down with the reference on the other side of each.

Typing, reaching and gesturing never show up as jumps in the reading.