Samsung Galaxy Ring beats an Apple Watch in one big way - and it's not sleep tracking

Jason Hiner/ZDNET

ZDNET's key takeaways

The Samsung Galaxy Ring delivers a smart ring that is outstanding at overall wellness tracking, especially for delivering actionable insights about the data it collects to help you improve areas of your health that could use some attention.People interested in digital health tracking will appreciate the Galaxy Ring's minimalism, comfort, long battery life, and lack of notifications compared to wearing a smartwatch.At $399, the Galaxy Ring is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it does not require a $5.99-per-month subscription like its biggest rival, Oura; and while Oura Rings start at $299, some of the nicer finishes cost more than comparable Galaxy Ring versions. 

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Wearable technologies have seized 2024 as their moment to shine, with the surprising popularity of the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, the long-awaited arrival of the Apple Vision Pro, and now an emerging runaway hit in the Samsung Galaxy Ring.

Also: We've entered the era of the smart ring. Here's how it will shake up the wearables market

The smart ring market has been dominated by startups like Oura and former pioneer Motiv for the past decade, but Samsung is the first big tech company to launch a ring of its own, taking the smart ring to new heights.

I've used a matte black size 10 Galaxy Ring ($399) on my index finger for the past two weeks -- after testing the matte black Oura Horizon Stealth ($449) for the past month and the Motiv ring for about six months back in 2018. I've also been a perennial Apple Watch user since it launched in 2015 and a Fitbit user for several years before that.

Also: ZDNET's picks for the best smart rings you can buy

I've been very surprised at how polished and useful the Galaxy Ring is. It doesn't feel at all like a 1.0 product. Samsung has clearly taken the lessons from other smart rings and smartwatches and delivered a device that is beautifully designed, easy to use, and communicates health information in ways that are as useful as any fitness tracker on the market.

In fact, I thought the Galaxy AI stamp on the Galaxy Ring was mostly Samsung marketing, but when it comes to the overall "Energy" score that the ring gives you -- as well as the sleep and stress reporting in the Samsung Health app -- it delivers much more actionable insights than I've ever gotten from the Apple Watch.

Jason Hiner/ZDNET

For example, one day I looked at my Energy score of 78 in the app, and it was "Good" but on the lower end of good, which was consistent with my perception of how I felt that morning. When I clicked into the Energy score, I found various metrics that contributed to it. Most of them were related to sleep, but my lowest one was "Previous day activity." It noted that my "moderate-to-vigorous exercise time" was only six minutes and recommended that I increase that to 33 to 87 minutes. So I got more disciplined about consistently increasing my cardio, which had the intended effect of giving me an energy boost -- albeit for the short period I tested the product.

I also found that the Galaxy Ring tracks stress accurately. It uses heart rate variability (HRV) from its optical bio-signal sensor -- a very fancy name for its heart sensor. When I see my stress level spiking in the app, I can open a guided deep breathing session directly within the app. In that "Breathe" section of the app, you can also set the number of breathing cycles and the time per cycle, which lets you customize how long you want to do the exercises and how much you want to slow down your heart rate to hack your stress level. 

The Apple Watch can also track HRV and has a useful guided breathing exercise in its Mindfulness app. In fact, I've written about how these Apple Watch tools helped me uncover my toxic stress level and improve it. Apple, however, has never built these features into its smartwatch software, does not specifically call out stress, and doesn't tie its data into useful health insights or coaching tips. 

Kerry Wan/ZDNET

The design and build quality of the Samsung Galaxy Ring also impressed me. It's a little bit thinner and lighter than the Oura ring and most of the other smart rings. The Ultrahuman Ring Air is the most comparable in size and weight.

The other unique design feature of the Galaxy Ring is that it's slightly concave, which should help protect it against long-term scuffs and scratches. The Galaxy Ring also comes with a unique case and charging solution. The case is clear, has a battery, and charges independently of the ring so that you can recharge wirelessly on the go -- compared to other ring chargers that are all docks that need to be charged via a wired cable.

Also: This smart ring for fitness freaks nearly beats Oura. Here's how

Like most other smart rings, the Galaxy Ring is both a complex piece of technology miniaturized into an impossibly small package while also being a relatively simple device that features three sensors that have been around for a long time: an accelerometer, a skin temperature sensor, and a heart rate sensor. As mentioned above, Samsung's heart sensor is called an optical bio-signal sensor and is one of the most advanced heart sensors on the market, as Samsung has been investing in health tech for years in its various smartwatches.

Screenshot by Jason Hiner/ZDNET

That also brings us to one of the Galaxy's Ring's biggest drawbacks: the fact that its activity sensor tends to overestimate steps by about 10%, in my testing. It was off by even more in the first few days I tried the ring, overestimating steps by 20% compared to what was tracked by the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the Oura Ring I wore at the same time to gut-check it. The Galaxy Ring seemed to adjust over time and there were days when it was only about 5% higher, but it was still always above the step count of the Apple Watch and the Oura Ring. An activity tracker that overestimates your activity might make you feel better and more confident but could negatively impact your progress to your overall health and fitness goals. 

The other big drawback of the Galaxy Ring is that it is Android-only and most integrated with Samsung smartphones and smartwatches. Android users on non-Samsung phones will still benefit from the best features of the Galaxy Ring, but iOS users will need to go in a different direction. Thankfully, we've got a couple of recommendations in that realm.

ZDNET's buying advice

The software on the Galaxy Ring is smarter than my Apple Watch -- and I never expected that would be one of my conclusions from this review. The AI-powered insights in the Samsung Health app provide more directly actionable information from the Galaxy Ring than I've ever gotten from Apple. So, if you'd like more actionable health and wellness insights than you get from the most popular smartwatch -- and you have an Android phone -- then the Galaxy Ring could be the product you've been waiting for. It also doesn't have a display to distract you and only needs to be charged every four to seven days. 

If you're reading about a smart ring, then there's a good chance that you're interested because 1.) you'd rather wear a ring than a smartwatch, or 2.) you'd like to track your sleep (and smart rings tend to be better sleep trackers than smartwatches), or 3.) you're a woman who would like to use a smart ring for cycle tracking to optimize your health. The Galaxy Ring is an excellent choice for the first two options, and ZDNET's smart ring expert Nina Raemont is going to follow up with her cycle tracking assessment of the Galaxy Ring compared to the other smart ring options.

If you're an iPhone user and you want the benefits of a device similar to the Galaxy Ring, ZDNET recommends the Ultrahuman Ring Air or the Oura Ring, since both work well with Apple's iOS.