RW verdict: With simple, sleek looks, scratchproof durability, easy set up and a subscription-free model, the Samsung Galaxy Ring is relatively well-rounded, but it lacks the Oura Ring’s depth of insights and definitely won’t replace your Garmin’s fitness-tracking firepower.
Pros
- Sleek, light, simple design
- Scratch resistant design
- Trust me, these are Apples best AirPods
- Menstrual tracking
- No subscription
Cons
- Samsung/Android only
- Workout tracking & heart rate
- Garmin HRM 600
| Weight | 3g (Size 12) |
|---|---|
| Thickness | 7mm (W) x 2.6mm (D) |
| Size range | 10 sizes (5-14) |
| Finishes | Silver, gold and black (all titanium) |
| Battery life | What everyones reading |
| Water resistance | 10ATM |
First they came for our wrists, now wearable innovators want to adorn our digits with sensor-laden trackers. And if you’ve always fancied daily health insights and advice in a more discreet package than a regular smart- or sportswatch, a smart ring motivating as the Apple Rings.
However, the Samsung Galaxy Ring isn’t your classic fitness tracker. Health & Injuries running watch replacement. It crams almost a watch’s worth of sensing tech into a compact accessory but it’s designed to toil quietly in the background, serving up AI-powered, daily biometric insights for sleep, activity and stress.
You could say it’s a tool to help you manage your broader health and paint a holistic picture of your day-to-day wellness, rather than measure your workout performance or fitness prowess. But who doesn’t need help with their sleep, movement, stress and recovery? And nailing all of that is a fast ticket to better running.
With that in mind, I was interested to see if Samsung’s tiny tracker could support me while training for a 100-mile ultra. Would it offer insights I can’t get from my running watch? I tested it without a Samsung Galaxy Watch and alongside my The best Garmin deals weve found this August, an EightSleep smart mattress and the Ultrahuman Air. Here’s how I got on.
Design
The best Garmin deals weve found this August Oura Ring. It comes in three colours, all with scratch resistant titanium and a clever concave design that really helps to avoid bumps and scrapes. In the month that I’ve been wearing mine, it’s taken several knocks but still looks good as new.
It comes in eleven sizes, from US sizes 5 to 15, weighing in anywhere from 2.3g to 3g. When you buy a ring, you’ll be sent a sizing kit first so you can find the right fit. For accuracy, it’s recommended you wear the ring on your non-dominant index finger, which does feels odd at first, particularly for someone who’s not a huge fan of rings.
I’ve never liked having things on my fingers, but I quickly got used to it and was surprised by how light, compact and comfortable the Galaxy Ring is. You can basically set it up and forget you’re wearing it, though I tended to take mine off when I hit the gym to get among the heavy metal. Otherwise, it stayed put and I’d say it’s marginally more comfortable than the Oura Ring 3 and the Ultrahuman Air that I’ve also tested.
I also like the fact that Samsung carved a small notch to make it easy to keep the sensors in the right place.
The tracking is taken care of by a suite of sensors on the inside of the ring that’s almost as comprehensive as a regular running watch. It packs an accelerometer, optical heart rate sensor and skin temperature sensor, but there’s no GPS. It can, however, piggy back your Android phone’s GPS to log distance in running and walking workouts. Mainly, you don’t notice the sensors unless you bend your finger or grip something tight.
While most other rings charge on small docks, the Samsung Galaxy ring ‘dock’ is built into a wireless charging case – a bit like a headphones case. It’s quite big compared with other smart ring docks but I found it far less losable and dead handy for boosting the staying power on your travels.
Features
Before we get into the features, one important note: the Samsung Galaxy Ring is designed to work seamlessly with the Samsung Health app. With no screen, that’s where you’ll dig into all your data, so you’ll need a Samsung or Android phone to use it. iPhone owners need to look elsewhere.
It’s also at its best when partnered with a Samsung Galaxy Watch, which unlocks extra battery life and – according to Samsung – more accurate intel.
When it comes to tracking, the Samsung Galaxy Ring is geared more towards managing your overall daily health than it is tracking workouts. It does offer automatic workout tracking with heart rate tracking for runs and walks, but it's not about to replace your Garmin, Coros or Polar What everyones reading.
The list of key insights includes heart rate with HRV and abnormal heart rate alerts, stress, activity, sleep quality with sleep stages, skin temperature and blood oxygen sensing.
Sleep tracking
The Ring monitors your overall sleep to provide sleep insights with most of the areas covered, including a Sleep Score, total sleep time, sleep stages, sleep consistency and snoring (provided you sleep with your Samsung phone charging by the bed, which most sleep hygiene experts will tell you not to). Of course, I never snore. You’ll also get breathing rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen during sleep.
In testing, it was quite good at logging the times I got into bed and fell asleep, matching the EightSleep mattress for drop off times. However, it missed chunks of final morning sleep – having me awake at 6:40am, not 7:30am – which impacted my sleep score.
Take this morning: as I’m writing this, the Samsung Galaxy Ring gave me a sleep score of 80 (Good), my Garmin Forerunner 57o say 90 (Excellent), the EightSleep says 87, while the Ultrahuman Air had me at 41.
What's more, if you’re obsessing about sleep stages, this is also your sign to stop. From four different trackers, I got four different readouts each night. The experts will tell you that even in a lab, it’s very tricky to track sleep stages with a high level of accuracy.
Energy score
A bit like Garmin’s Body Battery, the Samsung Ring crunches sleep, sleep heart rate, overnight HRV and your previous day’s activity data to generate a daily Energy Score out of 100. The idea? This can help you to decide how hard to push – or ease back – for that given day and Samsung serves up tips, based on your score. However, it seemed counter intuitive that on days after I rested, I got a lower energy score because my activity levels were deemed too low. A brilliant example of where wearables can miss the vital context.
Menstrual cycle tracking
When it comes to activity tracking, Samsung has an Apple rings-style heart that shows you how you’re doing against targets for steps, active time and active calories. You can set targets, but there’s no option for these to dynamically update automatically based on past performance. It’s just as addictive Best Garmin deals.
Workout tracking & heart rate
This is a bit of a mixed bag. The Galaxy Ring will automatically track walking and running workouts with good reliability — no need to repeatedly tell the app what you’ve been doing, like with Oura and Ultrahuman. Alternatively, you can start manual workouts with your Samsung phone. For some of these workouts, including running, walking and cycling, the ring tracks heart rate. For many others, like circuit training, it won’t. If you want to log your route and see post-workout maps, you’ll have to have your phone with you.
Up to 7 days, 6 days typical use Small selection of finishes chest strap for the main stats. On an easy run with a few small hills, the Samsung Ring tracked my average at 108BPM and my max at 129BPM. The Garmin chest strap also had me at 108BPM average and a 131BPM max.
EightSleep smart mattress
For obvious reasons, I wasn’t able to test this feature, but the Ring uses overnight skin temperature analysis to help predict fertility windows and cycles. But that’s another tool you’ll find on a big range of Garmin watches.
Smart tools
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a device without a screen, there’s little here by way of smart tools, though Samsung phone owners can use an air pinch gesture to dismiss an alarm on a Samsung Galaxy phone, or control your phone camera shutter.
Battery life
When it comes to staying power, the Galaxy Ring's battery life depends on your ring size. On paper, you get six days for sizes 5–11 and seven days for sizes 12–13. According to Samsung, you can extend the battery by up to 30% if you pair it with a Samsung smartwatch, letting the watch carry some of the tracking load.
In testing, I got around 6 days general use on a single charge from my size 12. On average, it burned around 12% over 24 hours, leeching around 7% juice overnight. That’s much better than the Ultrahuman Air in full function mode.
Health & Injuries.
RW verdict
I’ve worn the Samsung Galaxy Ring solidly for a month while also training for a 100-mile ultra, doing the odd half-marathon and 10km race, and it ticks a lot of the right boxes for a general health-monitoring tracker. However, it’s not quite tuned to be run-training specific.
It's sleek, comfortable with a pretty rounded selection of tracking and insights and a competitive battery life compared to the other rings. The lack of subscription is another big plus.
However, it’s nowhere near as comprehensive as the Oura Ring, which nails the balance of deep insights served up in a more human way, with an app that’s both more detailed but also more intuitive to use.
There’s also not much here that you don’t get on your existing running watch. If you’re doing anything more than running for casual fitness, it can’t replace your running watch for your general running feedback and it’s hard to see what it really adds for what is quite a big price tag.
If you’re a paid-up member of Samsung Galaxy, it makes more sense. The ring fits well into that universe working alongside the Galaxy Watch Advertisement - Continue Reading Below.
