Fitness trackers have firmly established their place in the tech and fitness worlds, and the market is full of options tailored to your needs and budget. At AED 1,499, the Samsung Galaxy Ring isn’t the cheapest option to consider, but it does an excellent job of being incredibly discreet while still tracking vital signs.
From sleep quality to stress and energy levels, the Galaxy Ring is an excellent option for anyone who doesn’t want the constant interruptions of notifications on their wrist. There are a few tradeoffs to make, however, with the biggest one being that you’ll get the most out of the Galaxy Ring by pairing it with a Samsung phone for the best health insights and advice.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is a great fitness tracker that is lightweight and offers excellent insight into your health. But unstable battery life and phone compatibility hold it back.
- Lightweight design
- No subscription fees
- Good health insights
- Unreliable battery life
- Works best with Samsung phones
Design: Easy to Wear, Easier to Forget
Perhaps the biggest complaint with wearing a smartwatch or fitness tracker on your wrist is that you’re acutely aware that it’s there. With the Galaxy Ring, it’s easy to forget that you’re wearing it, thanks to its slim and lightweight design.
Available in black, silver, or gold, the Galaxy Ring comes in a variety of sizes. Additionally, a special kit is available for purchase from Samsung to help you determine your correct size. The ring has a sleek finish and is designed to be worn on your index finger for best results. However, I wore mine on my ring finger for a more comfortable fit.
There’s a small bump that’s meant to face your palm – this orientation aligns the various sensors inside the ring to track and take measurements as you go about your day. The ring doesn’t vibrate or emit any sounds, so everything you need to know can be obtained from the Samsung Health app. You can also quickly check the battery life: removing the ring will cause the sensors to blink rapidly. Green indicates a suitable charge remains, and red means it’s time to place it in the case for recharging.
Speaking of the case, this small transparent brick is stylish enough to leave on your desk or bedside table, or slip into your bag for quick charges on the go. When you open the lid with the ring inside, a circle of LEDs will indicate the remaining charge on your Galaxy Ring. Opening the case without the ring inside will then report on the battery life of the case itself.
The case can carry 1.5 charges, and recharging the Galaxy Ring takes a little over an hour – you’ll also receive a notification on your phone when charging is complete. While the case does bundle with a USB-C charging cable, no brick charger is provided.
Durability is the name of the game here, and the Galaxy Ring is designed for everyday wear and tear. Made from titanium and weighing just under 3g, it also has IP68 water and dust resistance, and can withstand 10 ATM water pressure from swimming, washing hands, and showering. Samsung quotes battery life as up to 6 days with typical use, but having worn the Galaxy Ring for a little over three months, this doesn’t seem to be holding true for very long.
Set up: One Snap and You’re Done
Getting up and running with the Galaxy Ring is easy – open the case next to your Samsung phone, and you’ll get a prompt to connect and continue the setup process. For other Android phones, you can manually connect via Bluetooth and use the Samsung Wearable app to complete the pairing process.
Once connected, the Samsung Health app is where you’ll find all the information you need – this is bundled on any Samsung phone, but you’ll have to download it for any other Android phone. The app then lets you configure exactly what you would like to track, and toggling advanced features will, of course, affect battery life.
The Galaxy Ring also offers gesture controls, again only with a Samsung phone. Tap your fingers together twice to dismiss a phone alarm or take a photo. It might not seem like a feature worth talking about, but as someone with a daily phone alarm, it’s an absolute treat to tap my fingers to silence my morning alarm, rather than trying to fumble for my phone before I’ve even rolled out of bed.
Track What You Care About
The Health app is a treasure trove of information, and you’ll need to wear your Galaxy Ring for seven consecutive days before it can create an accurate map of your activity and sleep patterns. This also involves assigning you a ‘sleep animal’ that mirrors your sleep patterns. Mine was a lion, because I like to take long, deep sleeps at set times (no lies detected).
Based on your activity levels, you’re given a daily Energy Score. Maintaining a score in the high 80s/90s reflects a fairly healthy outlook, and you can drill down further into the metrics to identify areas for improvement. Perhaps you need to move around more during the day, or fall asleep at an earlier time to rest properly. All of this can be easily determined in the Health app, and there are useful tidbits of information that break down complicated-looking numbers into much simpler terms.
Sleep quality is definitely an area worth spending time on, as the Galaxy Ring maps a fairly accurate picture of what your sleep patterns are like. Breaking down your sleep into Active, REM, Light, and Deep stages, the app analyses your sleep and provides helpful suggestions to improve, such as going to bed earlier, practising meditation, or turning off screens before settling in for the night.
These tailored bits of information are usually quite accurate and tap into Samsung Galaxy AI to provide meaningful advice. For example, after a particularly active session at the gym, my sleep was a bit restless that night. The next morning, the app reflected the quality of my sleep and suggested that, after my hard workout, my body was too tired to fall asleep properly. It advised me to focus on relaxation and avoid anything too demanding until I had fully recovered.
The Galaxy Ring can automatically track two kinds of workouts – walking and running. Any other workouts, such as biking, swimming, or circuit training, must be manually toggled in the Health app. You’ll then receive a small timer in your phone’s notification bar that counts down the time you’ve been working out and estimates the approximate calories burned. You can also track your daily steps, and the app will prompt you when you’ve reached your goal.
It’s worth mentioning that everything that the Galaxy Ring does, it does for free. Once you buy it, there are no hidden charges or recurring subscriptions, which is certainly good to hear. The Health app is packed with mindfulness activities, including breathing exercises and meditation, and the Fitness section is filled with workout videos and fitness plans you can follow. That’s excellent value for money, as the sheer variety of activities and programs means that you can easily switch things up as you improve your fitness levels.
Where things turn a bit sour is with the Galaxy Ring’s battery life. Samsung touts it as lasting for six days, and while I was certainly getting that in my first month or so of usage, the battery life has now drastically fallen behind without any change at all in what I’m monitoring. In my third month of usage, I now have to recharge my Galaxy Ring every two to three days.
You’ll be notified on your phone when the battery level dips to 15%, but if you forget to bring your charging case along, you’ll soon be left with just a nice piece of jewellery rather than a fitness tracker. There have also been numerous times when the Galaxy Ring ran out of battery while I was sleeping, which in turn affected the number of hours of sleep tracked, jeopardising my overall Energy score the next day.
Verdict: A Great Fitness Tracker for the Samsung Crowd
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is a very competent fitness tracker that offers plenty of data to pore over if you’re interested in improving your sleep and overall living habits. The Health app provides constant encouragement with easy-to-understand metrics, and the AI tips (on Samsung phones) are usually on point and helpful.
There’s no subscription to keep track of, thankfully, though the high price point is a reflection of this. For Samsung phone owners, the Galaxy Ring offers incredible value and looks great when worn. However, for everyone else, you may have to make peace with a few software omissions or consider an alternative fitness tracker altogether.
