Co-Owner of Art and Soule . Husband . Father . Teacher . Caregiver . Woodworker . Artist . YouTuber
Ring Sizing: There’s An App For That, But Should You Use It?
Daniel Soule
Knowing (or accurately determining) your ring size is a key part of ordering a ring online. While we take care of our customers with a one-time exchange if they order the wrong size, it still makes for a disappointing shopping experience. Think about it. You get your new ring in the mail. You open it up, all excited to wear it. You put it on, and you find that it’s too big or too small. You bought from us, so we’ll take care of you. But the wait continues...
Recently we’ve had a few of our customers use an app to figure out their ring size. Each time they have ended up ordering the wrong size. We decided it would be a good idea to investigate these apps and see if they can really be used to accurately gauge your ring size.
The Choices
We’re Android people, so we searched the Play Store for ring size apps. The search yielded over a dozen choices. Looking through them all we found that they basically work the same. So, we decided to go with Ring Size from developer LXNDR. At the time of our test, that app had the most downloads and the best reviews. We figured if any of them had a chance of working properly it had to be the one with the best reviews and most downloads.
Setting Up The App
Reading through the reviews proved to be important here. One of the biggest tips that reviewers were giving was that you needed to be sure to calibrate the app properly. Once we had the app installed we heeded this advice and took the time to calibrate. It was a simple process. You had to take a ruler and adjust the on-screen ruler to match it. Before being calibrated the ruler on the screen was a half inch off, so taking the time to perform this task was clearly important. Other than making that one adjustment the app was ready to go.
Using The App To Measure A Ring
According to the app’s instructions, this was to be a simple process. You place the ring on top of a yellow circle on the screen. You adjust that circle until it fit perfectly inside the ring, and then you would have your ring size. In actuality, it wasn’t quite that easy. First, it became clear that we would need to move the ring once or twice. We have an eye for circles. After all, much of our business is based on circular things. However, placing the ring so that the circle on the screen would fit perfectly inside the ring required a precise eye that even we didn’t have. Second, when we went to move the ring to get it centered properly, we would often inadvertently hit the screen with a finger and throw the adjustment off. Bottom line… It took practice to finally get the measurement process to work right.
For this test, we used a size 12.5 metal ring from our personal collection. On the app, that yellow circle, if set at a 12.5, did not fit perfectly inside the ring. It came up short. We went back and triple-checked the calibration and we had it spot on. In the end, the app placed the ring at a size 13.25. That’s almost a full size off from the ring’s actual size. We then took a couple other rings from our collection and tried it with those. We got similar results each time. The app was telling us that the ring was bigger than it actually was.
Using The App To Measure Your Finger
The other thing that this app did was measure your ring size from your finger. The process was relatively simple. You take a strip of paper and wrap it around your finger. You make a mark on the paper where it meets. Then, you are supposed to simply hold that paper to the right part of the screen and see where the mark hits the on-screen measurements. That’s supposed to be your ring size.
To check out how the app did, we picked Dan’s ring finger (a size 14.) Using this process, the app came up with a size of 15.5. We again checked the calibration of the app and it was spot on. So, we tried it on a few more fingers and again got similar results. Each time the app thought the ring size was larger than reality.
Our Conclusion
First, we want to say that we mean no disrespect to the developer of this app or any of the other ring sizing apps. It’s a great idea. The two of us are also geeks. While we’ve chosen to make a living working with wood and other materials, both of us are also well-schooled programmers. We have a high-tech home and love our devices. All of this means we have an appreciation for the efforts that go into making even the simplest of apps. That having been said…
We are not of the opinion that using an app to determine your ring size is a good idea. After testing this app, we went ahead and downloaded three more and tried them. The results of those were also all over the board, with none of them actually being accurate. It’s hard to believe that you would get an accurate ring size based on our experience as well as the experience reported by our customers.
Some things in life you simply need to do the old-fashioned way. We will continue to recommend that you first read our insights on choosing a ring size. We will then continue to recommend that you take the time to visit a jewelry counter near you and get sized. You will get a more accurate measurement that way, and you will be a lot less likely to be disappointed when that package with your new jewelry arrives in the mail.
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