“My Precious…” – Samsung’s Galaxy Ring reviewed

Gadgetry never ceases to both amaze and frustrate me all at the same time. This has long been the case with smartwatches that promise to help you track your health and get better sleep. Having a smartwatch that can tell you what your ticker is doing and if you’re getting enough sleep sounds awesome. Frustratingly, most smartwatches quickly become a vibrating notification-laden distraction that lack enough battery life to track your sleep when you go to bed. Instead, they spend the night charging, oblivious to your sleep patterns.

The irony of this hasn’t been wasted on Samsung, who have launched the Galaxy Ring, which does one thing, and does it very well. Samsung has taken much of the health tracking smarts baked into the Galaxy Watch and shrunk it to a ring-sized piece of kit.

When buying a Galaxy Ring, you first have to use a ring sizing kit with which to measure your digit. It’s a bit like the Goldilocks story. If the ring is too small, it’ll affect circulation and cause discomfort. If it’s too big, it’ll be too loose, and you risk it slipping off your finger and being lost. It turns out that my fat fingers were a size 13. The dummy sizing ring is fitted comfortably so that the real deal maintains enough skin contact to collect health data.

Samsung isn’t the first out of the gate with a fitness tracking ring, and comparisons with the earlier Oura ring are inevitable. I was pleased to note that, unlike the Oura, I wasn’t locked into paying for an ongoing subscription to access health data, which makes the Galaxy Ring significantly more appealing. The gotcha here, however, is that the Galaxy Ring is only supported on Android phones, so if you’re a fruity phone user, Oura may still be your best option.

On the design front, the Galaxy Ring is discreet. It comes in Black, Silver and Gold. The review ring was black, which isn’t what I’d have chosen, but it’s good to see that Goths’ health tracking needs are catered for. The ring is light and more comfortable to wear than it looks. Unlike a smartwatch, it doesn’t constantly demand attention. It simply tracks your health stats, and that’s totally fine with me.

After removing it from the designer charging case, I involuntarily uttered, “My Precioussss,” but alas, no Elvish runes illuminated it. Oh well.

The plain, un-Elf exterior of the ring hides some very intricate and clever tech. It consists of a bunch of sensors spanning approximately a third of its skin-facing surface. A Bluetooth 5.4 module plus a teensy tiny battery keep things connected to your phone (more on this later). Fitting all this into the inside surface of a teensy ring is quite the engineering feat.

While I prefer the unobtrusive nature of the ring, it cannot review health data directly and is instead reliant on Samsung Health on your Android phone. Speaking of health data, the Galaxy Ring tracks your heart rate and, if you are female, your menstrual cycle via a temperature sensor. It’ll detect exercise when you’re moving and also let you know if your heart rate is higher (or lower) than normal.

The area where Galaxy Ring excels is in sleep tracking. Using Samsung’s sleep AI algorithm, you get many useful sleep score indicators such as sleep latency, night-time movement and even a sleep animal (a nice way of reminding you of what kind of sleeper you are). This resulted in me learning much about my (frankly abysmal) sleep habits. I also liked that I got a daily energy score, which is based on exercise levels, recovery, sleep patterns, heart activity and more. In short, there wasn’t much that the ring didn’t track regarding health.

It isn’t all health tracking, though. Samsung has cleverly added the double pinch gesture to the Galaxy Ring. Wearing it on your middle or index finger lets you use its built-in accelerometer to detect when you make a pinch gesture with whichever finger it’s on. Provided you have a Samsung smartphone running One UI 6.1.1 or later, the ring can act as a remote camera button by pinching the ring finger and thumb twice to control the shutter or once to shut down alarms.

Because the ring isn’t powering a display and other energy-hungry smartwatch stuff, its battery (the capacity of which ranges from 18 to 23.5 mAh depending on your ring size) will give you at least 7 days of use from a single charge. This was borne out in practice, and as I was using the ring with the Galaxy Watch (which takes some of the battery load from the ring), I stretched that figure out by another day. Adding to its impressive battery life is that it can be worn in the pool and the bath/shower, so it can constantly keep track of your core health stats.

As clever and useful as the Galaxy Ring is, its charging case also warrants mention. Crafted out of clear plastic, it’s extremely stylish, sporting a mount that the ring clips into. Underneath the mount is a ring of white LEDs that can tell you how much charge is left in the ring or the case. The case can be charged using USB-C or Qi wireless, and its 361 mAh battery gave me two full charging cycles.

While the Galaxy Ring’s $699 price tag gave me pause for thought, using it with Samsung Health costs nothing. The Galaxy Ring is hard to fault and ideal if you can afford it and happen to be an Android phone owner.

https://www.samsung.com/nz/support/mobile-devices/how-to-use-the-samsung-galaxy-ring/