Samsung Galaxy Smart Ring

Samsung’s dip into a fresh new format is seriously good, albeit a tad overpriced

- Nick Odantzis

Up until now, smart rings have been the province of a few startups like Oura, Ultrahuman and Ringconn, with the possible exception of Chinese wearables brand Amazfit. All of these take the basic smartwatch sensors and squeeze them into a much smaller form factor so they can read your heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature and all the rest from your finger, rather than your wrist. Until the Samsung Galaxy Ring came along, none of the big fish in the smartwatch world thought to bother with the form factor.

Samsung has knocked it out of the park on its first go here. It has taken its existing, excellent working ecosystem of the Samsung Galaxy Watch, the comprehensive Samsung Health app and the all-new Galaxy AI, then stripped the Watch down to its basic sensors and crammed them into a sleek, slender ring. The end result is the same synergy you get with Samsung's other gadgets without a big screen on your wrist: without a way to interact with the device as you would a smartwatch, Samsung describes it as a 'set and forget' wearable, and that's pretty accurate.

SPECIFICATIONS

Sizes US ring sizes 5-13 Colours Titanium Black, Titanium Gold, Titanium Silver Material scratch-resistant titanium, plastic innards Weight 2.3g-3g Sensors accelerometer, skin temperature, optical bio-sensor Features step tracking, heart rate, sleep score, energy score, auto-workout tracking

Form and function

Your journey starts when you get a sizing kit full of eight plastic rings, ranging from US size 5 to 13. After picking the size you want and feeding the information back to Samsung, you'll then get sent the Ring for real: a titanium band in either black, gold or silver with a slight concave shape to prevent scratches on its face, with a plastic interior dominated by a little Samsung logo and a trio of sensors.