Samsung may have launched three new smartwatches this year, but the wearable I was most excited to see from the company was the Galaxy Ring. After months of teasing, Samsung officially announced the $399.99 smart ring at today’s Unpacked event — and I finally got to play with one. Granted, I’ve only had a short amount of time with the Galaxy Ring, but so far, I like what I’ve seen.
Right off the bat, the Galaxy Ring is pretty cool, though its overall design doesn’t stray too far from other smart rings. (I know because I showed up to practice wearing four other smart rings.) It comes in three colors: gold, silver, and black. They all have a titanium frame and look attractive, but as a bow tie, I found myself partial to the gold, as it had the shinier finish. I can’t speak to durability yet, but it has 10ATM water resistance and an IP68 rating.
At 7 mm wide and 2.6 mm thick, it late thinner when worn next to my Oura Ring, although that may be because the ring itself is slightly concave. It’s also light, though not noticeably so compared to other smart rings. It weighs between 2.3 and 3 g, depending on the size. Speaking of sizes, there are nine in total, ranging from size five to 13.
But while the Galaxy Ring didn’t stand out from other smart rings on my finger, its charging case is attractive. Samsung isn’t the first to put a smart ring in a charging case, but the ones I’ve seen don’t have this futuristic transparent design and LED situation. Not only does it look stylish, but it is also very practical. Some other smart rings, like the Oura Ring and the Ultrahuman Ring Air, come with ball-shaped docks that can be easily lost. A box like this is much easier to fit in your bag if you run out of stuff on the go. (It’s also more immune to pesky cats who like to take things off your nightstand.) The case itself holds 1.5 times the charge, and the rings will have six to seven days of battery life. Full charging takes about 80 minutes.
I also got to try Samsung’s sizing kit, which I highly recommend even if you know your standard ring size. You can order the kit online and it’s worth the extra effort as size really does matter with smart rings. Fingers can swell in hotter weather and no two fingers are the same size. In this case, I’m mostly a size 7.5 in non-smart rings, a size 8 in every other smart ring, and a size 9 for the Galaxy Ring. Not to mention, size will affect battery life. The smaller rings (sizes five to 11) get six days on a single charge, while the two largest get up to seven.
Samsung is mostly sticking to the tried and true for technology, too. Like the Oura Ring and the vast majority of smart rings currently available, this is primarily intended to be an alternative, more discreet health tracker. If you were hoping for something that can deliver notifications or have silent alarms like previous smart rings – you’re out of luck. There are no vibration motors, LED light indicators, or anything like that. In terms of sensors, you get an accelerometer, optical heart rate sensor (including green, red and infrared LEDs) and skin temperature sensor. In general, you’ll be able to track sleep, heart rate, and activity data, though Samsung is introducing some new Galaxy AI-powered metrics into the mix.
They include the new Energy Rating and Health Tips features. The former uses Galaxy AI to determine how you’re feeling based on your sleep, activity, sleep heart rate and heart rate variability during sleep. It’s similar to the various fitness metrics that other health trackers have started to include over the past few years. Meanwhile, based on your data, the latter delivers personalized insights into your well-being, again very reminiscent of what’s offered by Oura Ring and other competitors. Other health features include cycle tracking, high and low heart rate alerts, live heart rate readings, automatic exercise detection and inactive alerts.
Also like other smart rings, the Galaxy ring puts a big emphasis on sleep. Users will receive a sleep score that takes into account metrics such as movement during sleep, sleep latency, and heart and breathing rates. But although smart rings are ideal for tracking sleep, The Galaxy Ring will NO be getting the new FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection feature, nor is it capable of irregular heart rhythm notifications. They are limited to Galaxy watches.
As practical as this was, I didn’t get to test the Galaxy Ring’s software, tracking accuracy, or battery life. That said, Samsung has some interesting ideas for how smart rings should work within its own gadget ecosystem.
Sorry, iOS users, but Samsung spokesman Cole Hagedorn said threshold that this ring is Android only (provided your Android phone can run the Samsung Health app), but you’ll have a better experience if you’re in the Samsung ecosystem. For example, new Health AI features like Energy Score won’t be available if you have a non-Galaxy phone. Same with Find My Ring. It uses Samsung Find, which, again, requires a Galaxy phone. Meanwhile, if you use a Samsung Galaxy Watch with the Galaxy Ring, the Samsung Health app will be able to pick and choose which device to pull data from. If you are running and the signal from your watch is clearer than from the ring – it will go with the watch data. This, in turn, can lead to increased battery life.
But the coolest example of this is that if you have a Samsung Galaxy phone, you can use a double gesture to control your phone’s camera or dismiss an alarm. without hands. It’s basically the same as the double tap (aka pinchy pinchy) gesture for the Apple Watch. Is it cheating? Yes, and it was still pretty cool when I tried it on. Getting the gesture right requires a little trial and error, but I’ve yet to see this on any other smart ring. Unfortunately, it will be limited to the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 at launch. Samsung told me it’s coming to the S24 “very soon” as well.
Based on my extremely limited time with the ring, it already has a few things going for it. The device is great, and despite the $400 price tag, there are no additional subscriptions (looking at you, Oura). But the Galaxy Ring’s success depends on two things: accurate tracking and good battery life. If it can do this by incorporating these ecosystem-specific ideas, Samsung could very well take the lead in the smart ring category. And if not, an ambitious idea has been raised about where smart rings should go next.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is available for pre-order starting today, with general availability starting July 24.
Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge