For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been wearing the Samsung Galaxy Ring. It’s Samsung’s first-ever fitness tracking ring, and it’s the most prominent competitor to the widely acclaimed Oura Ring.
Smart rings are a young category in the tech space. As smartwatches have become the primary way we track our fitness progress, rings oftentimes are overlooked, whether because they’re foreign objects to folks or the fact that options are a bit scarce. With Samsung’s entry into the space, it’s clear that the smart ring is here to stay, and there’s a lot of questions that need answers.
Is fitness tracking accurate? Does it interfere with other workout styles? Does Samsung’s ring keep you locked to the Galaxy ecosystem? Should you spend $399 on it?
Here’s the short answer: it’s a very good ring, but only for a number of people.
The Galaxy Ring is Samsung’s first smart ring with sleep tracking, Energy scores, cardio fitness tracking and more. While it’s expensive, it’s one of the most beautiful fitness trackers you can buy. Plus, it lasts a whole week on a charge.
What we liked about it
A sleek design that blends right in
The best thing about wearing a smart ring is that it’s basically impossible for it not to blend in with whatever you’re wearing. Watches can be bulky and cumbersome, but the Galaxy Ring is sleek and sophisticated, which also makes it easy to forget about when you’re wearing it.
Samsung offers the ring in nine different sizes, and you can order a free sizing kit before placing the order for your actual ring. I’ve been wearing size 10 which is one size smaller than my Oura Ring, and while I do think I could’ve used a slightly larger ring since my fingers tend to swell up throughout the day, the ring was comfortable to wear for the most part. It’s made of lightweight titanium and comes with a matte black finish, but if that’s not your style, you can always grab one in silver or gold.
What I like about the Galaxy Ring’s design the most is the concave design. Whereas the Oura Ring is a bit rounder on the outside, Samsung’s ring caves in a bit. It makes it feel thinner on your finger and easier to get used to wearing.
You’ll have to wear the ring on your index finger if you want the most accurate fitness tracking, although Samsung says you can use other fingers if you prefer. I kept mine on my right index finger and got used to it immediately.
The best part is you don’t have to worry about taking it off when your hands are going to get messy. The Galaxy Ring is rated 10ATM water resistant so you can get it as wet as you want, plus it offers IP68 certification so dirt and other gunk can’t ruin it.
Great for tracking stress, recovery and sleep
This tiny fitness tracker has a few different sensors you can see in the bumps on the inside. Align them with the inner side of your finger and you’ll be on your way to tracking things like heart rate, skin temperature, stress levels, sleep, recovery and even some cardio.
One of the most popular ways to use a smart ring is tracking your recovery and readiness, and Samsung delivers with the Galaxy Ring. Since you’re wearing it all day and night, the ring is always on top of your stress levels, your workouts, how many steps you took and your sleep quality. The company’s Galaxy AI takes that data and boils it down to an Energy score, which you can find in the Samsung Health app. It’s very similar to the Readiness Score you get from an Oura Ring.
While it’s not a great idea to rely completely on this score to determine how you’re feeling each day (listen to your body, folks), it’s a nice way to know whether you’re doing the right thing to keep your health in check. If the system thinks you can improve your score, it’ll proactively recommend ways to do so, such as limiting certain habits or adding a couple extra hours to your sleep each night.
My scores were generally in line with what I’d expect from my behavior: on days when I’d get a couple workouts in and go to sleep at a reasonable time, my score would hover between 80 and 95 out of 100. If I had a particularly late night and had one too many before heading to bed, my score would range between 40 and 60. I regularly had results that were also reflected by my Whoop strain levels, which I typically use as my defacto standard when testing fitness tech.
Sleep tracking is another key area of smart rings, and the Galaxy Ring is good at it. It automatically records your sleep without needing to manually start or stop tracking, and the results I got were pretty accurate (or at least as accurate as they could be). Compared to my Whoop band and Apple Watch, the ring was always in line with my various sleep stages and the amount of time I spent in them. Some nights I caught up on REM (or deep) sleep, while others were a bit lighter with a nap recommended the following day. Over time, the Samsung Health app will even tell you what kind of sleeper you are in the form of a cartoon animal, which is as curious a feature as it is adorable.
Throughout the day, the ring also measures your stress levels which you can see in the Samsung Health app. Using the same technology, it can also help you keep track of your menstrual cycle, although I wasn’t able to test this myself.
Week-long battery life with a nifty charging case
It’s seriously impressive to me how companies can make smart rings last a week on a charge. These tiny batteries have to power various sensors and radios, yet the Galaxy Ring is ready to take all that on.
From 100%, you can easily cruise through a full week without having to recharge the ring. Pair it with a Galaxy Watch 7 or Galaxy Watch Ultra and it’ll last even longer; Samsung lets the ring and watch talk to each other to occasionally use each other’s sensors, which can translate to 30 percent longer battery life on either device. With the ring, that means an extra day or two before having to plop it down to recharge.
Speaking of which, Samsung is an absolute genius for coming up with the way you charge the Galaxy Ring. Every other smart ring I’ve seen and tried comes with a simple dock you plug into the wall, but Samsung’s charger for the Galaxy Ring is a rechargeable case, much like that of a pair of wireless earbuds. Slot the ring onto the charger inside the case and it’ll begin juicing back up. You can even see its progress thanks to an LED light that surrounds the ring. Does the case itself look like a pair of Nothing Ear buds? Yes. Does it matter because of how dope it is? Absolutely not.
Three words: no subscription fees
Many fitness tracking platforms have resorted to charging you a monthly fee to get access to all the features of your new wearable, including the Oura Ring which charges $4 per month. Fortunately, Samsung hasn’t joined that club, at least not yet.
When you buy the Galaxy Ring, you can start using all its features right away, no subscription required. That includes the Energy score, a feature that’s commonly reserved for whatever subscription service the device maker tries to sell you. It’s worth noting that in the future, Samsung has said it might introduce some type of subscription feature, but it won’t be locking away any of the features currently available.
What we didn’t like about it
It’s Android-only and pairs best with Galaxy devices
Samsung clearly doesn’t want every single fitness guru to buy the Galaxy Ring. The company’s wearable is Android-exclusive, which means you can’t pair it to an iPhone like you can with other rings from Oura and Ultrahuman.
What’s more, the ring works best when paired with other Galaxy devices, because of course it does. The Samsung Health app, which is available for most Android phones, won’t give you detailed insights behind your Energy score unless you’re using it on a Galaxy phone. Want more battery life? You need to be wearing a Galaxy Watch. There’s also a sweet feature that lets you double-pinch your ring finger and thumb to trigger the camera shutter on your phone, but it’s only available on Samsung devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to get around these limitations, which means you’ll have to be invested in the Galaxy ecosystem first to get the most out of the ring.
Like other rings, it can’t be your only fitness companion
While the Galaxy Ring is great for tracking simple things like stress and sleep, it’s not equipped to be your main fitness tracking companion.
The only two workouts you can track with the ring are walking and running, which is fine for the cardio-obsessed among us but terrible for literally everyone else (read: me). Both of those workouts can be tracked automatically which is neat, but the results you collect won’t be all that helpful (more on that in a bit).
For all other workout types — like cycling, rowing, strength training and more — you’re out of luck. You’ll have to use a smartwatch or some other tracker to record those workouts (especially strength training since the ring hurts your finger when lifting weights). Of course, Samsung never promised the Galaxy Ring would be the end-all, be-all fitness device in your arsenal, but its limiting nature is still annoying.
Fitness data can be pretty spotty, especially blood oxygen
When you do track a walk or run, you’ll find that the data collected by the Galaxy Ring is pretty useless.
I’ve gone for plenty of walks while wearing the ring, and when I go to check my results in the Samsung Health app, my step count and heart rate are always misaligned with what I got from my other fitness trackers. Step count was always wildly inaccurate; while my Apple Watch would say I took 7,000 steps in a day, the ring thought I took 17,000 steps. In a matter of minutes after waking up in the morning, my ring would report about 500 steps have been taken, when in reality I walked 30 feet to my kitchen for a cup of coffee.
The ring also doesn’t have a GPS, so while you can technically record a walk or run without your phone, you won’t know how far you went without it.
The inaccuracies don’t stop there. The Galaxy Ring is capable of tracking your blood oxygen levels during the day and while you sleep, and I have to be honest, it’s given me the most inaccurate readings I’ve ever recorded with any blood oxygen sensor.
Doctors recommend that if your blood oxygen levels are around below 90%, it’s cause for concern and you should go to the hospital. According to my Galaxy Ring, I should probably be dead. After a few days, I checked the numbers it reported in the Samsung Health app, and apparently my blood oxygen ranges from around 96% to 77%. I feel completely fine, by the way, and the blood oxygen sensor in Samsung’s own Galaxy Watch Ultra refutes the ring’s data entirely. But it’s hilarious yet a bit frightening how bad the sensor is. If you ever use it, don’t take it seriously.
It’s expensive
The single biggest issue with the Galaxy Ring is the price. It costs $400, and in exchange, you get what’s essentially an accessory to your Galaxy Watch.
Sure, it’s convenient to wear to bed given how small it is, and it’s good at tracking your recovery every day. But are those two features worth $400 to you? Can you simply not stand wearing a watch to track your sleep that you’re willing to drop $400 after spending that same amount of money on a watch?
It’s also not feasible to only buy the Galaxy Ring. Like I said before, it relies heavily on the Galaxy Watch and a Galaxy phone to work, and it can’t be used for anything more extensive than walking or running. Does that sound like a $400 value to you?
Of course, it’s not just the Galaxy Ring that’s so expensive. The Oura Ring ranges between $300 and $400 depending on the model you buy, and it’s limited to a similar feature set. But that ring works with both Android and iOS, and it’s not reliant on you owning a Galaxy Watch or phone to get access to all its features. There may be a subscription attached, but I can see that being a viable compromise for those who don’t want Samsung’s limitations.
Bottom line
The Galaxy Ring is a very expensive tech-savvy accessory for those in the Galaxy ecosystem. It’s plenty useful for some things, and falls apart with others. At $400, it’s tough to recommend, especially since it’s a first-generation product.
If all you want to do with your next fitness tracker is track your sleep, your runs and forget about charging it for a week — and you have a Galaxy phone and $400 to burn — sure, get the Galaxy Ring. But for everyone else, the compromises are simply too much, and you’ll have better luck fulfilling your smart ring desures with the Oura Ring.