Samsung proved it could still offer up surprises when it capped off January’s Unpacked with the reveal of the Galaxy Ring. The brief teaser was understood to be key validation for the nascent wearable form factor. While the smart ring concept isn’t entirely new, the category has thus far been dominated by Oura.
At Unpacked 2024, the company shared more details about the Galaxy Ring, which represents the first take on the category from a hardware giant. Samsung has effectively beaten Apple, Google and the like to the punch, with a health and fitness device that slots in nicely with the rest of its health efforts. It can be preordered starting Wednesday at $399.
Samsung has flirted with all number of different form factors; remember the IconX earbuds with built-in heart monitoring? Throughout the course of its efforts, however, everything always seems to come back to the Galaxy Watch. The addition of a ring to its wearable portfolio is promising for a couple of reasons. First, Oura and its ilk have already proved that plenty of customer interest exists. Second, the functionality here augments — rather than replaces — all of the stuff devices like the Galaxy Watch already do.
The ring design is limiting, with a sufficiently smaller footprint and no display. As such, these devices tend to take a more passive approach to tracking. Samsung describes it as “24/7 health monitoring,” owing plenty to a generous stated battery life of up to seven days — that is, not coincidentally, exactly how Oura rates its own ring.
The Galaxy Ring is starting with the most passive of all health tracking: sleep. The device offers up a sleep “score” based on various metrics, including movement, heart rate and respiratory rate. It also performs cycle tracking based on the wearer’s skin temperature while sleeping. The product’s small size makes it a much less obtrusive sleeping buddy that a larger smartwatch.
Of course, there’s some Galaxy AI implications here, as well, pulling together metrics from sleep, activity, sleeping heart rate and sleeping heart rate variability to pull together what Samsung calls “holistic insights and motivational encouragement.” Most intriguing of all, the aforementioned features are all available without a paid subscription. There’s no guarantee Samsung doesn’t go down that route eventually, but for now, that’s certainly a point it has over Oura’s $6 monthly fee.
Samsung’s Galaxy Ring ships July 24.