Evie Ring Review: I Wore The New Smart Ring For Women For 1 Month

It's an all-too-common experience for women who wear fitness trackers: Around the same time every month, your watch or ring alerts you that your temperature is up, your sleep is suffering, and your activity level is lower than usual. Time to rest up, the tracker says, as you might be getting sick.

In reality, these changes are caused by the natural hormonal fluctuations that happen during a woman's cycle and are not necessarily cause for concern. The (male-dominated) health tech industry just hasn't figured out how to account for them yet. Enter: Evie Ring, a new smart ring designed specifically for women.

Evie is a smart ring that's designed for women (though, you don't have to identify as a woman to wear it). In addition to the typical metrics you'd expect from a health wearable like heart rate, sleep, and step count, Evie allows women to track their menstrual cycle, mood, and energy—and how they shift alongside hormonal changes.

The team at Movano Health, Evie's parent company, made the device after identifying a need in the market. "Women have been underserved by health care," Stacy Salvi, Movano's VP of strategy, tells me on a call. "Historically, there's been a lack of research on what's going on within women's bodies, particularly given the amount that women's bodies change over time."

She notes that most existing health trackers have been designed by men who (rightfully so) built something they would want to use—and hoped that just making the device smaller would make it suitable for women too.

Evie is the first health tracker specifically designed to monitor women's menstrual cycle, mood, and energy from the jump. "It was definitely very refreshing to make something that puts women's needs first," Salvi says.

I first heard about Evie while editing this article about the future of women's health care late last year, and I was eager to get my hands on (in?) an early model.

Once I used Evie's kit to figure out my size, the team set me up with my ring in late January. At first, I had some issues pairing my ring to my phone, but the Evie customer service team was able to help me out, and I was up and running by February.

I used the app to set goals for the amount of sleep I wanted to get each night (eight hours) and the number of active minutes I wanted to hit a day (60). When I achieved these goals, the app let me know, which gave me a nice little dopamine hit.

After about four days of using the ring around the clock, I realized that I hadn't charged it. I appreciated the long battery life, and its accompanying portable charging case (which can handle 10 charges without being plugged in) made it easy to juice up on the go.

I got into the groove of checking the app first thing in the morning, mostly to see my heart rate variability during sleep. This is a health metric I'm trying to increase by managing my stress and resting more, and it was nice to have a way to track my progress. I did notice that sometimes the app overestimated the amount of sleep I got and didn't account for all of my midnight wake-ups.

I run a lot, and the ring picked up on this activity on its own. But when I spoke with Movano's CEO, John Mastrototaro, he alerted me that manually "starting" a workout in the app would help the ring take even more accurate data during movement. Once I did, the ring sensors lit up lime green, letting me know that it was taking a consistent heart rate reading.

The daily journal was a nice place to check in with myself, my mood, and my energy levels during the day.

I look forward to continuing to track my period over the next few cycles to give the ring enough data to start making recommendations.

All in all, I really love the Evie ring's comfortable, stylish, and durable design. Its long battery life and on-the-go charging capabilities are also a big plus. Wearing it is an unobtrusive way to monitor how I'm tracking toward my movement and HRV goals. Since I've only been using the ring for a month, I haven't really seen its menstrual cycle insights in action, but I appreciate that a wearable company has finally stepped up to the plate to make those more prominent.