- VERDICT
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is an amazing yet discreet product that will not only surprise you with the amount of data it can collect but also provide the right advice on how to improve your health, wellness and sleep.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is a remarkable product – it’s the company’s smallest wearable and it does a great job tracking your health, fitness and your sleep.
What’s really impressive is how much data Galaxy Ring can gather.
This is a ring with three sensors on the inside that can track your heart rate, resting heart rate, your steps, your exercise, blood oxygen level and the length and quality of your sleep.
I’m used to having these metric recorded either through a smartphone, smartwatch and both at the same time.
One thing I didn’t regularly track was my sleep.
I’m not a fan of wearing a watch to bed so the extent of my sleep tracking till now was just taking note of the time I went to bed and the time I woke up.
When the Galaxy Ring arrived I knew this was going to be the way I can finally, and discreetly, track my slumber every night.
The Galaxy Ring has three finishes – Titanium Black, Titanium Silver and Titanium Gold – and has a deliberate unisex design so it suits a man or a woman.
I wore the Titanium Black Galaxy Ring on the third finger (ring finger) of my right hand.
Getting the right size is important which is why Samsung provides a sizing kit which can be accessed in a Samsung Experience store or sent to you via the Samsung website.
I was sent the Galaxy Ring sizing kit a few weeks earlier. Sizes go from 5 all the way up to 13 and Samsung recommended choosing the best fit and wearing it for 24 to 48 hours to ensure it was comfortable.
There are sensors on the inside of the ring after all and these need to always contact your skin.
I started out with the 12 but it felt a little snug and was hard to get on and off and I decided that 13, the larger size, was the one for me.
My usual ring size is 11 but having the sensors on the inside of the ring meant I had to opt for a larger size.
Galaxy Ring works with Samsung Galaxy smartphones naturally as well as Android devices running Android 11 or higher.
We paired with our Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
The added benefit of connecting to a Galaxy smartphone is the easy pairing when the Galaxy ring is detected on the home screen and gesture control.
If you double tap your thumb on the finger wearing the ring you’re able to dismiss an alarm or take a picture or video.
With our ring on our ring finger on our right hand this gesture for us was hit or miss – it only worked half the time.
Galaxy Ring is waterproof and can be worn when swimming, showering and when washing your hands which means you never need to take it off.
The Galaxy Ring must be worn in a certain way with the sensors contacting the bottom of your finger on the palm side.
To make the orientation easier there is a small line on the ring that needs to be positioned on the palm side of your finger.
The Galaxy Ring looks at all your activities including your heart rate and sleep and uses Galaxy AI to come up with a daily energy score.
This tells you where you’re at and pushes you to improve bit by bit each day.
It so happens that the week I was trying Galaxy Ring I didn’t have the greatest sleep and was also unable to fit in most of my regular exercise.
And Galaxy Ring picked up on this. My energy score for the week ranged between 73 and 63 and was rated as Fair.
So right off the bat I was able to easily see where I could improve. Let’s just say I’m back to my regular exercise and I’ll be trying to go to bed earlier each night.
On the sleep side, Galaxy Ring can provide so much information including sleep time, sleep stages blood oxygen during sleep, skin temperature, heart rate and respiratory right.
All this data can be seen on a dashboard in the Samsung health app on your smartphone.
The Galaxy Ring also gives you a sleep score which you can track day by day.
But it doesn’t just stop at the data.
Galaxy Ring also offers advice on how you can improve with suggestions like not snacking or browsing your phone in bed (I never do either) and having a consistent bedtime (which I don’t).
After seven consecutive days Galaxy Ring also designates your sleep animal based on your habits and how much you sleep.
I was told I was a walrus sleeper because the walrus can get by without a lot of sleep.
In the case of sleep I was told that I had a decent 93 per cent sleep efficiency but I needed to sleep longer.
I usually sleep between five and six hours a night and earned a sleep score of 76 which Galaxy Ring told me is five points higher than the average for my age group.
In terms of other tracking, I did keep an eye on my steps which Galaxy Ring was also able to easily track.
I was also wearing a smartwatch at the time and I found Galaxy Ring was generous and gave me more steps than my smartwatch.
There were some days where Galaxy Ring would award me 20 per cent more steps than my smartwatch yet other days that were within 100 steps of each other.
We could argue which device was more accurate for hours but sticking to one device and trusting its accuracy and regularity would be the best move.
The Galaxy Ring on its own can provide those metrics and suggest ways for you to improve.
The Galaxy Ring doesn’t have a screen and doesn’t offer you vibration alerts on your finger – it completely relies on your Samsung or Android phone to provide the detail.
But Galaxy Ring can operate on its own.
You don’t need to have your smartphone with you for it to track you and gather your data.
In fact, Galaxy Ring can store up to six days of data which is then immediately uploaded to your smartphone as soon it comes near it again.
Is Galaxy Ring better than a smart watch?
No it’s not.
A smartwatch has a screen and can track you in many other areas as well as providing your notifications and even allowing you to answer your phone calls.
We’d say Galaxy Ring is ideal for the user who doesn’t have a smartwatch but still wants to track their health, wellness and sleep.
Wearing a smartwatch and Galaxy Ring like I did is a bit of overkill, but we’d say it’s probably best to choose one or the other.
Another strong feature of Galaxy Ring is the battery life which for us lasted just shy of seven full days.
It’s not powering a screen or any type of haptic feedback, so we expected the battery life to be quite generous.
It does come with a cool charging case which, like your earphones charging case, can be used on the move to charge your ring if needed.
User simply slip the ring onto the sensor and a light will illuminate to tell you the current battery level of the ring.
You can also see the battery level of the case itself when you open it before placing the ring inside through that same light.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is priced at $699.
That’s not cheap but you have to remember it is a small device that is packed with technology and that’s not easy to do.
That price is also an investment in your health and wellbeing because it can genuinely point you in the right direction to improve your quality of life, your fitness, your health and your sleep.
A product like Samsung’s Galaxy Ring can help you maintain your current health and head off any future health issues as well
VERDICT
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is an amazing yet discreet product that will not only surprise you with the amount of data it can collect but also provide the right advice on how to improve your health, wellness and sleep.
