Samsung Galaxy Ring review: What can a smart ring do for your stress levels, sleep and step count?

Now Samsung’s Galaxy Ring, first released in July 2024, is finally launching in Aotearoa. I’ve been a Samsung user for several years now, so I’m already familiar with its health tracking, which made it an easy adjustment when I got the opportunity to trial the Galaxy Ring for a couple of weeks.

If you use a Samsung phone and earbuds, you’ll be familiar with its Galaxy Wear app, to which the ring connects seamlessly via Bluetooth.

Through my phone, Samsung Health can already roughly track my steps and guess my sleep time. However, my phone isn’t always in my hand, so a wearable is going to be much more accurate.

About the Samsung Galaxy Ring:

The ring is available in titanium black, titanium silver and titanium gold colourways, comes in sizes ranging from five to 15, and will retail for $699 from April 2.

To find your size before buying a ring you can order a free sizing kit, which includes all available sizes. Samsung recommends trying a few different ones for more than 24 hours to ensure a comfortable fit.

It’s recommended to wear the ring on your non-dominant index finger for the most accurate tracking.

The ring is water-resistant and features three tiny sensors that fit comfortably into the base of your finger: a skin temperature sensor, optical bio-signal sensor (which tracks your heart rate) and an accelerometer.

The battery lasts seven days and the ring comes with a sleek, clear wireless charging case, with a circular LED to show the level of charge.

It tracks your time spent sleeping and your sleep stages, from light to deep to REM sleep, as well as snoring. After a week of detecting your sleep, the app offers sleep coaching based on your sleep type – suggesting deep breathing before bed, getting up as soon as your alarm goes off, getting sunlight in the morning and resisting the urge to nap.

Each morning, the ring calculates your overall “energy score” based on your physical activity, sleep and heart rate from the previous day.

The ring measures your stress levels and suggests breathing exercises or meditation to lower them. It also reminds you to get moving when you’ve been sitting still for 50 minutes.

The Galaxy Ring can also track your menstrual cycle using your skin temperature through the app’s Natural Cycles tracking feature. As I’m trialling the ring for two weeks there’s not enough time to track a full cycle but a quick glance to compare the ring’s predictions with my period tracker app shows they match up, which is promising.

You can set up Gestures, which allows you to pinch your thumb and forefinger together to take a photo or snooze your alarm. I decide against testing this feature because I already sleep through my alarm far too easily.

The trial:

When you set up the device, you’re prompted to input your usual activity levels and sleep habits, as well as set goals and areas you want to focus on. For me, those goals are to get better sleep, hit at least 6000 daily steps and reduce stress.

I wear the ring for two weeks, day and night, without making any significant changes to my daily routine. I sit at a desk for most of my work day, go for 20 or 30-minute walks most days and do Pilates at home two or three times a week.

I only take the ring off to shower; this isn’t necessary as it’s water-resistant, but it’s a good time to charge if it needs a top-up.

My first impressions are that it’s comfortable and stylish – the slightly concave design makes it appear smaller than others on the market.

A few hours into wearing it, it’s still comfortable and it’s clear that I’ve been doing many more steps than I thought I had.

When tracking steps with just my phone, it seems like it takes ages to hit 6000. But when wearing the ring, it suddenly seems easier to hit my targets and gradually raise them, which has me taking more walks during the day and opting for the stairs over the lift in the office and at home.

I often feel that I don’t get quite enough sleep, as I generally wake up around 5.30am for work and go to sleep around 11pm.

After a full week of recording my sleep, I’m told my sleep type or “sleep animal” is a Sensitive Hedgehog. Samsung doesn’t claim this is strictly scientific, though some sleep experts use the concept of sleep animals or chronotypes . However, the coaching suggested for each type is based on recommendations from the US National Sleep Foundation.

According to the app, “Hedgehog sleepers are getting enough total sleep time, but spend too much of that time awake and have inconsistent sleep times from day to day”. It’s accurate; I do nap occasionally in the afternoon if I haven’t slept well the previous night and get around six hours of sleep most weeknights – and seven to nine on weekends, according to the ring.

The ring soon shows that my stress levels tend to be highest in the morning when I’m rushing to work, preparing for meetings or planning out my day, and lower towards the evening.

The app also sends you notifications each evening asking how you’re feeling and suggesting ways to wind down, prompting a moment of reflection and the chance to reset before bed, which I find is a great way to end the day.

The verdict:

In the plus column: the convenience of the sizing kit, as well as the size, comfort and style of the ring itself. The battery life is excellent; in two weeks of wearing it, I only had to charge it twice to top up the battery and it was fully charged within minutes.

While it automatically tracks walking and running, you can also track different types of workouts and personalise them, which I found incredibly useful as I could see how much energy I typically burn during 30 minutes of Pilates.

However, I feel I got the most out of the sleep-tracking features. If I had poor sleep one night, I would get practical tips for recovery throughout the day and a better sleep the following night.

If you’re weighing up whether to purchase a smart ring over a watch, the price might give you pause. The Galaxy Ring is $699, slightly pricier than other smart rings on the market - the Ultrahuman is $649 and the Ryze Element smart ring is $298 at most New Zealand retailers. Meanwhile, the Oura ranges in price from $599-$857.

However, it’s important to note the Oura Ring also requires a monthly subscription, which will add up over time.

You can only use the Samsung ring if you have an Android phone – if you don’t have a Samsung phone, you can still download Samsung Health on your Android, but iPhone users will have to look elsewhere.

If you already use the Samsung ecosystem and want to add a wellness wearable to the line-up, then it’s a no-brainer if you can justify the cost.

After just two weeks, I can’t say I’ve made any drastic changes to my health – but having access to so much detailed information about my wellbeing is invaluable.

Who knew that an afternoon nap, a glass of wine with dinner or late-night snacking could affect my sleep at night? We all did, but it’s a game-changer to see the effects on your energy score the next day.

I can see how easy it would be to become obsessed with checking your health data – a temptation that comes with all wearables.

For me, it helps to have a visual for my stress levels. If a glance at an app can show me that I’m feeling physiological signs of stress or anxiety then I can understand them better and I’m able to take steps to deal with stress, such as deep breaths or a moment of quiet.

When it comes to making good health choices or changes, it seems I need someone or something to tell me what to do. Why shouldn’t it be a tiny robot telling me I haven’t done enough steps or got enough sleep, and gently urging me to do better next time?

Bethany Reitsma is a lifestyle writer who joined the Herald in 2019. Based in Auckland, she covers real-life stories, health and wellness and more – from the cost of living with endometriosis to the truth about supplements