Samsung Galaxy Ring beats Apple Watch in one big way — and it’s not sleep tracking

ZDNET Key Points

• The Samsung Galaxy Ring offers a smart ring that excels at tracking overall health, especially providing useful insights into the data it collects to help you improve aspects of your health that need attention.
• Those 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 doesn’t require a $5.99-a-month subscription like its biggest rival, Oura; and while Oura Ring With a starting price of $299, some of the nicer finished models cost more than comparable Galaxy Ring versions.

Wearable technology has seized 2024 as its moment to shine, with the surprising popularity of Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glassesthe long-awaited arrival of Apple Vision Proand now a new runaway hit is emerging in Samsung Galaxy Ring.

Also: We’ve Entered the Age 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 Engine over the past decade, but Samsung is the first major tech company to launch its own ring, taking the smart ring to the next level.

I’ve been using a size 10 matte black Galaxy Ring ($399) on my index finger for the past two weeks — after testing the matte black Oura Horizon Stealth ($449) in the past month and Engine Rings for about six months in 2018. I’ve also been a longtime Apple Watch user since it launched in 2015 and a Fitbit user for years before that.

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

I was pleasantly surprised by how well-built and useful the Galaxy Ring is. It doesn’t feel like a 1.0 product. Samsung has clearly learned from other smart rings and smartwatches and delivered a device that’s beautifully designed, easy to use, and communicates health information in a way that’s as useful as any fitness tracker on the market.

In fact, I think the Galaxy AI stamp on the Galaxy Ring is mostly marketing gimmickry on Samsung’s part, but when it comes to the overall “Energy” score the ring gives you — as well as sleep and stress reports in the Samsung Health app — it provides much more useful insights than I’ve ever gotten from an Apple Watch.

For example, one day I looked at my Energy Score of 78 in the app and it was “Good,” but it was lower than good, which matched my perception of how I felt that morning. When I clicked on Energy Score, I saw a bunch of different metrics that contributed to it. Most of them were related to sleep, but my lowest was “Active in the previous day.” It noted that my “moderate to vigorous exercise time” was only six minutes and recommended that I increase that time to 33 to 87 minutes. So I was more disciplined about consistently increasing my cardio, which had the desired effect of giving me a boost in energy — albeit in the short time I was testing the product.

I also found the Galaxy Ring to be accurate at tracking stress. It uses heart rate variability (HRV) from its optical biosignal sensor — a fancy name for its heart sensor. When I saw my stress level spike in the app, I could open a guided deep breathing session right in the app. In the “Breathing” section of the app, you can also set the number of breathing cycles and the duration of each cycle, allowing you to customize how long you want to do the exercises and how much you want to slow your heart rate to reduce your stress level.

The Apple Watch can also track HRV and has helpful guided breathing exercises in the Mindfulness app. In fact, I wrote about how these Apple Watch tools helped me discover my toxic stress levels and improve them.But Apple has never built these features into its smartwatch software, doesn’t explicitly address stress, and doesn’t link its data to useful health insights or training tips.

The design and build quality of the Samsung Galaxy Ring also impressed me. It’s a bit thinner and lighter than the Oura Ring and most other smart rings. The Super Ring have the most similar size and weight.

Another unique design feature of the Galaxy Ring is that it’s slightly concave, which helps protect it from scratches and bumps over time. The Galaxy Ring also comes with a unique carrying case and charging solution. The case is transparent, has a battery, and charges independently of the ring so you can charge wirelessly on the go — compared to other ring chargers that are docks that require wired charging.

Also: This Smart Ring for Fitness Enthusiasts Almost Beats Oura. Here’s How

Like most smart rings, the Galaxy Ring is both a complex piece of technology shrunk into an impossibly small package and a relatively simple device with three long-standing sensors: an accelerometer, a skin temperature sensor, and a heart rate sensor. As mentioned above, Samsung’s heart sensor is called an optical biosignal sensor and is one of the most advanced heart sensors on the market, as Samsung has been investing in health technology for years in its various smartwatches.

That also brings us to one of the Galaxy Ring’s biggest drawbacks: the fact that its activity sensor tended to overestimate steps by about 10%, in my testing. It was even more misleading in the first few days I tried the ring on, overestimating steps by 20% compared to what was tracked by Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the Oura Ring I wore at the same time to test the intuition. The Galaxy Ring seemed to adjust over time, and on some days it was only about 5% higher, but it was still consistently higher than the Apple Watch and Oura Ring step counts. An activity tracker that overestimates your activity may make you feel healthier and more confident, but it can negatively impact your progress toward your overall health and fitness goals.

Another big downside to the Galaxy Ring is that it’s Android-only, and it integrates best with Samsung smartphones and smartwatches. Android users on non-Samsung phones will still get the best features of the Galaxy Ring, but iOS users will have to go in a different direction. Thankfully, We have a few recommendations. in that field.

ZDNET Buying Advice

Software on Galaxy Ring smarter than my Apple Watch — and I never expected that to be one of my conclusions from this review. The AI-powered insights in the Samsung Health app deliver more actionable information directly from the Galaxy Ring than I’ve ever gotten from Apple. So if you want more actionable health and fitness insights than you get from the most popular smartwatch — and you have an Android phone — the Galaxy Ring might be what you’ve been waiting for. It also has no screen to distract you, and it only needs to be charged every four to seven days.

If you’re reading about a smart ring, chances are you’re interested because 1.) you prefer wearing a ring over a smartwatch, or 2.) you want to track your sleep (and smart rings tend to be better at tracking sleep than smartwatches), or 3.) you’re a woman who wants to use a smart ring to track her cycle to optimize her health. The Galaxy Ring is a great choice for the first two, and ZDNET’s smart ring expert Nina Raemont will continue to evaluate the Galaxy Ring’s menstrual cycle compared to other smart rings.

If you’re an iPhone user and want the benefits of a device similar to the Galaxy Ring, ZDNET recommends using The Super Ring or Oura Ringbecause both work well with Apple’s iOS.