The Samsung Galaxy Ring is brilliant, but misses the mark in three key areas
I’m more excited about the Samsung Galaxy Ring than any other recent new product from a major tech company. The Galaxy Ring has surpassed my interest in the Apple Vision Pro as a product that people will actually find a use for and has found a place in my daily routine for one very simple reason: I don’t like wearing a watch all the time.
Samsung is onto something here with a device that fits into its health and wearables ecosystem in a very interesting way. Down to its core, the Galaxy Ring takes the health features of the company’s great range of smartwatches and crams them into a small ring. There are some health features the Ring can’t offer that the Galaxy Watch can, but this covers the basics; heart rate, body temperature monitoring, sleep and steps. For me, the best feature is the sleep tracking, especially because it is much more comfortable to have a ring on my finger in bed instead of a smart watch.
But it’s not a complete device and while it matches the features of the Oura Ring 4, it’s a very distinctive first generation. While I’m having a lot of fun with it (and it has successfully made me worry about my health and fitness) and I agree with Ny Breaking’s Samsung Galaxy Ring review, we’re talking about a pretty expensive device without much practical functionality. It’s tempting to say that the reason for the high price and low feature count is that it’s niche in terms of design, but I think changes can be made to make it more palatable and ultimately a more attractive device.
Let’s keep it to three points.
Why does it look like that?
Smart devices, including phones, are largely fashion statements in the right context. Of course, some people are more interested in good functionality, but you can’t ignore the style points and aesthetics of any product. The Samsung Galaxy Ring is emphatically a fashionable piece of technology, far more so than any other Samsung device that came before it… So why does it look so simple?
I’m not disputing the style of the ring; the chunky shape is necessary for its smart features, and the concave design is a clever way to prevent scratches, but the black and silver colorways look like plastic. The ring itself is made of titanium and coated in a similar paint to that of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (with comfortable and partially transparent plastic on the inside), but while the Ultra looks particularly premium with its epic colors, the Galaxy Ring looks almost look cheap in Titanium Black and Titanium Silver.
The Titanium Gold colorway looks good; it has a nice shine to it. The silver and black almost look like pieces of a Hasbro toy lightsaber. It’s probably a non-issue for many, but we’re talking about a new product that’s making big strides in the jewelry world. It has to look good.
It wouldn’t be long before we started doing this, but the Oura Ring 4, the Galaxy Ring’s closest competitor, looks particularly premium. Silver, Black, Gold and Rose Gold colorways are available at checkout, along with a matte black color called Stealth and a raw-looking color of Brushed Silver. The variety is greater, albeit some options are priced higher than others, and they have succeeded in their mission; the Oura Ring 4 looks premium. It looks like jewelry.
Why is it priced that way?
This criticism applies equally to the Oura Ring 4, and while it goes along with my third criticism that we will address below, it cannot be skipped. The Samsung Galaxy Ring is a $399 / £399 / AU$699 device, putting it on par with (or slightly above) the Galaxy Watch 7 44mm LTE in most markets, above cheaper watch options and above the lowest price Oura Ring 4 ($349 / £349 / not available in AU).
Samsung justifies the higher price over this competitor by not having a subscription service, while Oura charges its customers a $5.99 per month bill for all features and health insights in its app (billed in USD in all regions, regardless of local currency), but we can derive these pricing strategies at the pass; The unique form factor and purpose of these smart rings allow them to charge a significant amount of money. Development costs would also have been significant, and ultimately there just isn’t strong competition in this small market. If Apple, OnePlus, Oppo and Google got in at the same time, things would probably be a little different.
For a dedicated user obsessed with tracking their health, this device may be justified, but at this price, compared to accessories like earbuds and smartwatches, it’s too niche for a casual user to be that expensive. If, as written above, it was a bit more attractive or had the ability to add engravings or markings, perhaps it would be a different story.
Why doesn’t it do much?
When I talk to people about the Samsung Galaxy Ring, they are of course immediately interested in what it actually is do – and it’s perhaps not surprising that as much as I can pump up the Galaxy Ring, the takeaway they usually leave with is “not much.”
Make no mistake: Samsung’s health tracking technology is brilliant and has had a positive impact on the way I view my own wellbeing; step tracking, sleep tracking, and heart rate monitoring are all things the Galaxy Ring is capable of. I have no qualms about recommending it as a device that can have a positive impact on your health, but consumers will likely want to consider the competition as well.
The Oura Ring 4 has the same features and health trackers, minus the deep integration with Samsung’s Health suite, though this one is Compatible with iOS – The Galaxy Ring only works with Android devices.
But as far as a regular user is concerned when it comes to major tech products, health features are expected along with… normal features.
The Galaxy Ring do make gestures, which is great: squeeze your thumb and ring finger and you will stop alarms or activate the camera to take a photo. At the time of writing, these are the only two gesture options. No call answering, media controls or integration with specific apps, just these two things. It doesn’t help that gestures are exclusive to Galaxy smartphone users, and were also a celebrated feature of the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra, which launched at the same time as the Galaxy Ring, making it an even harder sell for watch owners. .
And that’s about it! Before the Galaxy Ring launched, I joked about being able to use different finger gestures to control my home’s smart lighting, like waving a magic finger, expecting the feature set to be a bit more comprehensive, but there’s nothing here not much going on. I’m not sure why, but I’ve also gotten into the extremely strange habit of checking the time on my ring as if it were a watch. There is no clock on it, but perhaps a digital readout would be useful for some. Other features a future iteration could include include NFC for payments, automatic phone unlocking based on proximity, capacitive buttons for quick functions, and hell, how about an RGB light strip (although we might think about that last one leaving ASUS with its ROG range).
But this goes so heavily against my other two points; if you pack any more features into this gadget you run the risk of making it bulkier and much less attractive. Any more fun tricks and you invite price increases.
So can we find the right balance?
I have been wearing the Samsung Galaxy Ring every day since I first received it and it has truly added to my lineup of Samsung devices. At the same time, I wish it did a little more. Samsung has been hitting all of 2024 out of the park with its newly released gadgets and the Galaxy Ring is definitely the most exciting, but if the Watch already does so many of the same things, why would even a health-focused Samsung user pick it up? ?
It’s a situation that undoubtedly many companies face when entering a new product category. For example, the Apple Vision Pro was heavily criticized for its limited support for VR apps, and if the past year of poor AI hardware has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes a new product isn’t better than just having an app.
But Samsung is on the right track with the Galaxy Ring. I’m really looking forward to what else the company has in store with this device.