Samsung is joining the smart race with the debut of its Galaxy Ring at the Galaxy Unpacked event in Paris, France on Wednesday. Smart rings are a category of connected devices designed to track your health and fitness more discreetly than a smartwatch or fitness band.
The eponymous Oura Ring is perhaps the best-known smart ring, offering users information on everything from sleep variability and heart rate to skin temperature and automatic exercise detection. But the overall market is still relatively small compared to the smartphone space. Now Samsung is looking to get in on the action, becoming the biggest tech company to offer a smart ring.
The Galaxy Ring, which Samsung says gets a shot of generative AI capabilities through its Galaxy AI platform, starts at $399 and will come in nine sizes. Customers can visit their nearest Samsung retailer to try on different sizes in person or order sizing kits online.
My wedding ring is a 10.5 but I went for a size 12 when I tried the Galaxy Ring as it was the most comfortable fit. I’ll blame it on swollen fingers from my flight to Paris, the summer heat, and the wine I drank the night before my demo.
The ring itself is quite modern and unpretentious. You won’t look at it and immediately assume it’s a piece of technology. Available in three colors — black, silver, and gold — the Galaxy Ring was comfortable for me during the short time I wore it. Samsung says you should get more than seven days of battery life depending on the size of your ring. The company says the smaller sizes will get five days of battery life.
Galaxy Rings’ built-in sensors provide sleep tracking features, including heart rate and respiratory rate tracking, and monitor movements and skin temperature changes throughout the night for cycle tracking. The ring also offers heart rate alerts when your heart rate gets too high, automatic workout recognition for walking and running, and an inactivity alert that lets you know when you’ve been stationary for too long.
Samsung says it combines all of these metrics using its Galaxy AI platform into what it calls an Energy Score, which is essentially a digital representation from 0 to 100 of your health and fitness. For example, if you’ve been exercising for a long time but haven’t had a good night’s sleep, your energy output will be on the lower side.
Sleep well and take a shorter workout and your score will be higher. Samsung combines this with AI-based wellness tips that provide personalized suggestions to improve your performance, such as going to bed faster.
Samsung isn’t the only company with a health rating system, Oura uses a similar feature it calls its Readiness Score, while Fitbit has its Daily Readiness Score. Both Oura and Fitbit’s suggestions aim to give you an idea of whether you can exercise or need to take a break for the day.
It is not yet clear whether the smart ring market will become as popular as the modern smartwatch market, or whether Samsung will remain the world’s largest company for long. According to Bloomberg, Apple ( AAPL ) has considered building its own smart ring in the past, and some at the organization are pushing to move forward with the concept.
For now, though, it looks like Samsung will soon be the biggest player in the emerging market.
Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
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