The Samsung Galaxy Ring is finally here – and we have a full early hands on with the device ahead of our review.
Smart rings are enjoying a moment in the sun, and the Galaxy Ring is now fully official, offering users quality health tracking features away from the wrist.
The form factor has largely been driven by Oura since 2013. Since then, a host of rivals have emerged, but, until the Samsung Galaxy Ring, the giants of consumer tech have stayed clear.
That is what makes the Samsung Galaxy Ring exciting and notable.
Like Oura (and RingConn, Circular, and Movano), it’s focused on health tracking.
Compare: Oura Ring Gen 3 vs Samsung Galaxy Ring
Reviewing and evaluating wearables is different from smartphones and other types of consumer tech because the real data takes weeks to analyze. And smart rings are an extreme example of that.
In the Samsung space at Kings Cross, where we got hands-on with the Galaxy Ring, this loop of Grade 5 titanium offered no clues as to how it will eventually perform as a health and wellness device.
But its rostrum of insights don’t stack up to Oura, which has been adding new features weekly for most of this year. But the core features of the Galaxy Ring do cover what I’d consider the main aspects of a fitness/wellness smart ring.
Let’s dive in to see what it does and how it looks.
Price and availability
The Samsung Galaxy Ring will cost $399/£399, launching on 24 July 2024.
That means it’s $100/£100 more expensive than the base edition of Oura’s Gen 3 ring – and it will only work with Android smartphones.
The good news is that there’s no subscription – unlike Oura – which charges $5.99/£4.99 per month. Of course, you will still need to wear the Galaxy Ring for nearly two years to break even on Oura, and forgo many of Oura’s superior insights along the way.
It’s surprisingly unaggressive from Samsung, who are giving people good reasons to stick with Oura on price.
Design and build
The Galaxy Ring looks like most smart rings – slightly chunkier than any ordinary ring and not exactly unnoticeable on the finger, no matter what manufacturers like to tell us.
On my fingers, a smart ring stands out like a sore thumb. I’ve gotten used to it over time, but it’s hardly unobtrusive.
The Galaxy Ring does stack up well compared to rivals in terms of size. It’s up there with the lightest and thinnest smart rings – and offers a market-leading seven days of battery life.
Of course, I tried it on. Samsung had a sample to try in Size US11 (I’m a US10) so it was slightly big, but it was a light, comfortable fit.
It’s concaved slightly, which offers a little bit of detail and interest to what is essentially a titanium circle. I wear a gold wedding band, and the gold Galaxy Ring looked best on me. It certainly suited me better than my black, angular Oura Ring Gen 3 Heritage, so it’s certainly a good start from Samsung in the looks department.
- Three colors: Silver/Black/Gold
- Nine ring sizes (US sizing)
- 100m water resistance – 10ATM/IP68
- 7mm wide/2.6mm thick
- 2.3-3 grams
To choose a size, Samsung will ask customers to pay for a sizing kit. If they go ahead and purchase, they can recoup the price off the Galaxy Ring. If you know your US ring size, you can go right ahead and order – or get a ring sizing kit online.
It does make it simpler than ordering a ring, getting a sizing kit, and then sending the result to get the final ring. But if you’re a newbie to the smart ring space – take it from me – getting the right fit is SO important. It must be tight for good-quality readings, and also to save it from flying off when you wash your hands. So make sure you don’t skip this step.
Battery life and charging
Right off the bat, the Samsung Galaxy Ring offers a week’s worth of charge, which is a big boon for a smart ring.
RingConn, previously the battery life leader, boasts 5-6 days. Although the teased RingConn 2 will allegedly go to 12 days.
Interestingly, Samsung confirmed that users of Galaxy smartwatches will be able to get 30% extra battery life. That’s because when the Galaxy Watch is worn, the Galaxy Ring will reduce its heart rate capture frequency to save battery life. This theoretically could extend its life to 8-9 days.
One thing that Samsung has got right – and Oura has got wrong (in my opinion) – is the use of a charging case.
You get three complete charges from the case, which houses the Samsung inside, much like a pair of wireless earbuds. The case isn’t the smallest, but it’s not something you need to keep in your pocket. And it adds so much convenience.
By comparison, Oura uses a small puck. That means you need to plug it in to charge, while, with Samsung, you could pop it in your bag on the way to work, and by the time you get to the office, it’s good to go for another week. The puck also has a habit of falling off the bedside table, or twisting and unseating the ring – so this is a smart move from Samsung.
‘AI Coaching’ and wellness features
Like most brands, Samsung is talking up its AI features – and its own Galaxy AI does extend to the smart ring.
Most of Samsung’s AI focus is on the Galaxy smartphone range, and they can do all sorts of useless and tiresome things like putting sunglasses on pictures of dogs.
The AI implementation on the Galaxy Ring appears quite limited – to the point that it’s really just some basic machine learning analysis and suggestions.
You can set up goals in the Health platform, such as getting more exercise or better sleep. Then, when you go to bed at 1 am drunk, the next day the Health app will tell you to go to bed earlier if you want more sleep. It really is AI at its most incisive.
Likewise, if you don’t do any exercise, it will suggest doing some exercise.
There are rumors that a LLM (Large Language Model) chatbot experience will land as part of the app, but, as above, the feature itself is secondary to the implementation, so let’s see how that works out long-term.
The Galaxy Ring also has the following core fitness and wellness features – and while there was no way of evaluating any of their effectiveness in the briefing – there are some key observations below.
- Insights from the Galaxy Ring are led by the Energy Score (which has been shown as ‘My Vitality Score’ in some materials before renaming). This is a single score derived from the usual array of HRV, HR sleep, stress, and other factors. We’ve seen the like from Oura, Whoop, Garmin, Fitbit, and nearly all wearables (notably not Apple Watch) as a way of determining your overall wellness on any given day.
- Personalized health suggestions via ‘Galaxy AI’ – As outlined above these seem quite basic, obvious insights, although some information on trends within your data can only be a good thing.
- Galaxy Ring features the same sleep metrics as Galaxy Watch – including analysis and chronotypes. We praised sleep tracking in our Galaxy Watch 6 testing, so this could be a strong suit for the ring. Samsung says its expanded the metrics to include “movement during sleep, sleep latency, heart and respiratory rate to provide a detailed and accurate analysis of sleep quality.”
- Snoring detection (via Galaxy smartphone).
- Workout tracking – This comes with a huge dollop of skepticism from us, given that we haven’t experienced any smart ring that’s come close to workout tracking competence.
- Heart rate monitoring.
- Cycle tracking – This is done via skin temperature sensing from the ring, which is good news.
- Inactivity alerts are delivered by smartphone.
- Smart gestures – you can take a photo or dismiss an alarm on your smartphone using a double tap gesture with the ring finger. This is an expansion of what we’ve seen on Galaxy Watch 7 (and before that, Apple Watch) – and the first time we’ve seen this functionality on a smart ring.
Wareable’s Early Verdict
The Galaxy Ring offers lovely build quality and rich features that make it an attractive smart ring.
The minimal size and big battery life give Galaxy Ring a great start in life – and, if you’re already using a Samsung smartwatch/phone, this is a great complementary device.
It looks harder to recommend when it comes to those simply shopping for a smart ring. The high price means Oura is still favorable, especially when the company is adding new features (particularly for women) very frequently.
But as I wrote at the outset, the only way to truly evaluate a smart ring is to live with it – not look at it.
And we’ll be doing exactly that before it drops on 24 July 2024.
