I’m a long-time Apple Watch user, but the Galaxy Ring beats it in one big way

For example, one day I looked at my Energy score of 78 in the app and it was “Good” but on the lower end of good, which was consistent with my perception of how I felt that morning. When I clicked into the Energy score, I found various metrics that contributed to it. Most of them were related to sleep but my lowest one was “Previous day activity.” It noted that my “moderate-to-vigorous exercise time” was only 6 minutes and recommended that I increase that to 33-87 minutes. So I got more disciplined about consistently increasing my cardio, which had the intended effect of giving me an energy boost — albeit for the short period I tested the product.

I also found the Galaxy Ring tracks stress accurately. It uses heart rate variability (HRV) from its optical bio-signal sensor — a very fancy name for its heart sensor. When I see my stress level spiking in the app, I can open a guided deep breathing session directly within the app. And in that “Breathe” section of the app, you can set the number of breathing cycles and the time per cycle, which lets you customize how long you want to do the exercises and how much you want to slow down your heart rate to hack your stress level. 

The Apple Watch can also track HRV and has a useful guided breathing exercise in its Mindfulness app. In fact, I’ve written about how these Apple Watch tools helped me uncover my toxic stress level and improve it. Apple, however, has never built these features into its smartwatch software, does not specifically call out stress, and doesn’t tie its data into useful health insights or coaching tips. 

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The design and build quality of the Samsung Galaxy Ring also impressed me. It’s a little bit thinner and lighter than the Oura ring and most of the other smart rings. The Ultrahuman Ring Air is the most comparable in size and weight. But the other unique design feature of the Galaxy Ring is that it’s slightly concave, which should help protect it against long-term scuffs and scratches. The Galaxy Ring also comes with a unique case and charging solution. The case is clear, has a battery, and charges independently from the ring so that you can recharge wirelessly on the go – compared to other ring chargers that are all docks that need to be charged via a wired cable.

Also: This smart ring for fitness freaks nearly beats Oura. Here’s how

Like most other smart rings, the Galaxy Ring is both a complex piece of technology miniaturized into an impossibly small package while also being a relatively simple device that features three sensors that have been around for a long time: an accelerometer, a skin temperature sensor, and a heart rate sensor. As mentioned above, Samsung’s heart sensor is called an optical bio-signal sensor and is one of the most advanced heart sensors on the market, as Samsung has been investing in health tech for years in its various smartwatches.

But that also brings us to one of the Galaxy’s Ring’s biggest drawbacks: the fact that its activity sensor tends to overestimate steps by about 10%, in my testing. It was off by even more in the first few days I tried the ring, overestimating steps by 20% compared to what was tracked by the Apple Watch Ultra 2<!–> and the Oura Ring I wore at the same time to gut-check it. The Galaxy Ring seemed to adjust over time and there were days when it was only about 5% higher, but it was still always above the steps count of Apple Watch and Oura. An activity tracker that overestimates your activity might make you feel better and more confident but could negatively impact your progress to your overall health and fitness goals. 

The other big drawback of Galaxy Ring is that it is Android-only and most integrated with Samsung smartphones and smartwatches. Android users on non-Samsung phones will still benefit from the best features of the Galaxy Ring, but iOS users will need to go in a different direction. Thankfully, we’ve got a couple of recommendations in that realm.

ZDNET’s buying advice

The software on the Galaxy Ring–> is smarter than my Apple Watch — and I never expected that would be one of my conclusions from this review. But the AI-powered insights in the Samsung Health app provide more directly actionable information from the Galaxy Ring than I’ve ever gotten from Apple. So if you’d like more actionable health and wellness insights than you get from the most popular smartwatches — and you have an Android phone — then the Galaxy Ring could be the product you’ve been waiting for. It also doesn’t have a display to distract you and only needs to be charged every four to seven days. 

If you’re reading about a smart ring, then there’s a good chance that you’re interested because 1.) you’d rather wear a ring than a smartwatch, or 2.) you’d like to track your sleep (and smart rings tend to be better sleep trackers than a smartwatch), or 3.) you’re a woman who would like to use a smart ring for cycle tracking to optimize your health. The Galaxy Ring is an excellent choice for the first two options, and ZDNET’s smart ring expert Nina Raemont is going to follow up with her assessment of the Galaxy Ring compared to the other smart ring options on the market and will evaluate how good it is for cycle tracking.

If you’re an iPhone user and you want the benefits of a device similar to the Galaxy Ring, ZDNET recommends the Ultrahuman Ring Air<!–> or the Oura Ring–>, since both work well with Apple’s iOS. 

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