Samsung Galaxy Ring review: Full circle

Oura's reign as the lord of the smart rings might be up. Aside from odd crowdfunded gadget, the startup that's made itself synonymous with smart rings has enjoyed little in the way of competition. With the arrival of Samsung into the emerging category, that seems certain to change.

The Samsung Galaxy Ring has been a long time coming and, on paper, it has the makings of a fresh but formidable extension of the brand's expansive ecosystem of wearable tech.

Oura might have a head start but this is Samsung's fight to lose. At least, until it generates enough noise that Apple decides it wants a piece of the action. For now though, the Galaxy Ring is more than a decent substitute for the Oura Ring. It's a decadent alternative that hits its rivals where they are weakest without diluting the central appeal of the form-factor involved.

In Australia, the Samsung Galaxy Ring starts at $699. Those looking to pick one can find it through both the Samsung website and the company's retail locations.

If you're buying online, Samsung will set you up with a sizing kit before sending you the wearable proper. It's important to note that the sizes here do not correspond to traditional ring sizes so you'll want to go through the fitting process to make sure you don't end up with wearable you can't actually wear.

Once your kit arrives, you'll have 21 days to lock in your order or receive a full refund. In addition to that window, Australian consumers are also getting the benefit of an extended 'change of mind' warranty when it comes to Samsung's first smart ring.

That's the good news. The bad news is that even with the currency conversion that you're looking at with the Oura Ring, the Galaxy Ring is the more expensive of the two. That said, the former does come with a $6.99 per month subscription service while Samsung's wearable has no equivalent.

Originally shown off back at Mobile World Congress, Samsung's first finger-friendly wearable is designed to work just as well as a complement to the Galaxy Watch as it is a substitute to it. At the simplest level, the sell here is that you're getting a comparable amount of fitness tracking tech in a more compact and convenient form-factor.

With an exterior made from polished titanium, the Galaxy Ring is just 2.6mm thick. It comes in nine sizes and three colors (gold, black and silver). Regardless of what shade you settle for, you'll come away with hardware that's built to last with 10ATM water resistance and IP68 durability.

Despite the slim profile, Samsung's first smart ring packs in five sensors that cover most of what you'd usually get from a traditional smartwatch like the Apple Watch. The headliners here are heart-rate, sleep and activity tracking. As for what the Galaxy Ring doesn't do, most of what you're missing out on is more niche and nice-to-have stuff like ECG.

Sans the universal sizing, those sensors and the presence of an OLED display, the setup process for the Galaxy Ring is more-or-less identical to that of Samsung's other smartwatches and wearables. You take it out of the box, pair it to your phone via Bluetooth and then set it up using the Samsung Wear app.

One key difference is that the Galaxy Ring arrives inside its charger rather than merely alongside it. This accessory is partially-transparent, pocket-friendly and shaped like a jewelry box.

While the ring itself is good to go for seven days on a single charge, the charger picks up the slack when that window ends. The design mostly speaks for itself. For everything else, there's a multi-purpose button that activates a set of lights that convey how much battery life is available when pressed. This input can also be used to set the Galaxy Ring into pairing mode. 

In any case, the level of functionality here makes for a stark contrast to the charger for the Oura Ring. Where that accessory required a power source, the charger for the Galaxy Ring can offer a charge and a half on the go. It takes around 80 minutes to fully top up the Galaxy Ring and 90 more for the case, which charges via USB-C.

It's not the end of the world if you lose the charger as well. If your partner has the same sized Galaxy Ring as you, their charger should work in a pinch and while Samsung Australia told Reviews.org that it would be looking to sell the charger separately later down the line, it will offer replacement cases via their customer service channels for customers who lose theirs in the interim.

The everyday experience of using the Galaxy Ring as a fitness tracker is largely what you'd expect. A Galaxy Watch without a screen isn't just a great sales pitch for those looking to peek at less pixels, it's the name of the game here. It's all very set and forget.

Compared to the Oura Ring, Samsung's smart ring is a perfect circle rather than an irregular one. That might sound like a small detail but it goes a long way towards making it easier to wear on the daily.

And so long as you remember to recharge it once a week, the Galaxy Ring does a great job of automatically tracking your activity. However, that ambient data collection is very much limited to basic workouts like walking and running. You can still activate and use the Galaxy Ring to collect data for any of the workouts available within the Samsung Health app. However, having to go though even that one extra step further made me much less likely to do it.

That said, that's not necessarily going be a deal-breaker. When it comes to stuff like lifting weights or rock climbing especially, wearing a ring might not always be advisable. Samsung might have built a better smart ring but if you suspect you'll run into the hard limits of the form-factor then it might be worth taking a look at the Galaxy Watch instead. If you're wearing both the Galaxy Ring and one of Samsung's smartwatches the app will use whatever wearable is better suited to gathering a given type of data, which is a neat touch.

In any case, the experience you're getting with this software companion is more or less on par with what you can expect from Samsung's latest smartwatches. The user inferface and experience here is less striking in its aesthetics than what you can get from Oura app. Then again, it also doesn't require a subscription to get the most out of it.

Although the Galaxy Ring can be used with any Android smartphone, Samsung are keeping a few features in reserve for those who pair it up with one of its devices. These Samsung-exclusive features include pinch-based gesture controls, SmartThings Find integration and faster pairing. Like most ecosystem exclusives, they're nice to have but not enough so that you want to go too far out of your way to use them.

All told, the Galaxy Ring is very much what it appears to be. It's exactly the kind of spin that you'd expect Samsung to have on the idea of a smart ring. It feels as premium as you'd expect for the price but packed with ecosystem-specific enhancements and clever touches that elevate it above its biggest rival.