The Rise of Smart Rings: Subscription Models and Samsung's Galaxy Ring

Is it better to buy a smart ring with or without a subscription?

Smart rings are the latest trend in wearable tech, and it's not hard to see why. They're stylish, slim, and you get a surprising amount of data out of a tiny form factor; the Oura Ring, Samsung Galaxy Ring, or Ultrahuman Ring Air are excellent for situations where a smartwatch doesn't exactly fit. For example, they're great for sleep, and many find them more comfortable than smartwatches or other trackers. However, there are various pricing models offered by each smart ring. Some, like the Galaxy Ring or the Ultrahuman Ring Air, are available for a one-time fee. Others, like the Oura Ring Gen 3, have an up-front cost and a subscription. There are pros and cons to each pricing model, but which is best? Let's unpack the pricing situation and find out whether you should buy one with a subscription or with a high upfront cost. Read our review Samsung's Galaxy Ring is the best smart ring, for whatever that's worth For health nuts, but not fitness freaks The case for buying a subscription-based ring It sounds like a great idea, but it's not so great in practice It feels like everything is moving toward a subscription model these days, and as such, it's easy to be apprehensive about a wearable subscription. However, there are a few reasons why it might make sense to subscribe to a smart ring. The Oura Ring Generation 3 is the highest-profile smart ring that uses a subscription service, called an Oura Membership. You can use an Oura Ring Gen 3 without a subscription, but you'll only get basic information, such as daily Oura scores and battery life. Everything else requires a paid Oura Membership, which costs $6 per month in the US. It could be appealing to pay for your smart ring one month at a time, because there's a lower upfront cost, but the problem is that it's fairly expensive upfront, too, with a $300 retail price. So, you'd pay $372 for an Oura Ring Gen 3 in the first year and over $400 after a year and a half. Related Oura Ring Generation 3 review: Luxury health tracking on your finger The third-gen Oura Ring is good at what it does, but it starts at $300 Oura says its subscription allows it to deliver "an ever-growing suite of innovative features." While that sounds like marketing speak (and to some degree, it is), there is some truth to it. Companies that offer smart rings with a subscription can offer software features to users on a regular basis. Oura, in particular, provides daily health information and personalized data as well. Only you can decide whether the benefits that come with a subscription like the Oura Membership are worth the perpetual costs. Those benefits include constant software support and the ability to cancel or renew at any time. I would say that the subscription model is better for people who like to upgrade early and often, but smart rings aren't made on a yearly basis. The Oura Ring Gen 3 was released in November 2021, and we're still waiting for the Oura Ring Gen 4. If you bought an Oura Ring Gen 3 on day one and subscribed for all 19 months since then, you'd have paid nearly $500 on the smart ring, and that's before factoring in taxes. Related New leak showcases how the Oura Ring 4 will take on the Galaxy Ring Galaxy Ring could face an uphill battle soon The case for buying a subscription-free ring With a Galaxy Ring, you pay once and move on Close The Samsung Galaxy Ring is subscription-free and costs $400, while the Ultrahuman Ring Air is a cheaper alternative at $350. You can purchase either of those options, or another smart ring without a subscription, and use it basically forever without paying another dime. That's the pitch of a subscription-free smart ring, and I think it is extremely compelling. Smart rings are basic fitness and health trackers that can't provide the same level of detail that smartwatches or other wearables can. With a smart ring, you're usually getting heart rate readings, basic fitness tracking, and sleep tracking. If you don't need the flashy personalized insights, there's no reason to pay each month for a perpetual subscription. Plus, the Galaxy Ring does manage to offer personalized insights through the Samsung Health app on Galaxy devices without asking for money every month. In other words, by paying a bit more for a smart ring without a subscription, you'll save long-term without missing out. Related Ultrahuman Ring Air review: A subscription-free Oura alternative Unobtrusive health tracking without a fee in sight Companies can always change their mind A smart ring could require a subscription in the future For most people, buying a smart ring without a subscription is the most economical decision. Yes, you have to pay more for something like the Galaxy Ring (if you can get one) or the Ultrahuman Ring Air, but not that much more. The Oura Ring Gen 3 is $50 cheaper than the Ultrahuman Ring Air, and $100 cheaper than the Galaxy Ring -- you can easily end up spending more on an Oura Ring if you want to use it for a few years. One thing to be wary of, however, is that companies can change their minds. They can always choose to add new features that require a subscription, or take other steps to push users towards paying a monthly fee. While Samsung says it won't require a Galaxy Ring subscription, it has routinely hinted that subscriptions could come to Galaxy AI or Samsung Health. One day, that could encompass the Galaxy Ring, too. Subscriptions are breaking into every category and industry, and smart rings are no exception. It's not a horrible idea to buy a smart ring with a subscription, though you'll certainly end up paying more over time. I also wouldn't rule out some of these smart rings adopting a subscription model in the future. Regardless, I think you should grab a subscription-free ring while you can. The choice is quite simple: pay slightly more today, or keep paying forever. Related Best smart rings in 2024 Unlock your finger's full potential

Samsung Galaxy Ring beats an Apple Watch in one big way - and it's not sleep tracking

At $399, the Galaxy Ring is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it does not require a $5.99-per-month subscription like its biggest rival, Oura; and while Oura Rings start at $299, some of the nicer finishes cost more than comparable Galaxy Ring versions. Wearable technologies have seized 2024 as their moment to shine, with the surprising popularity of the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, the long-awaited arrival of the Apple Vision Pro, and now an emerging runaway hit in the Samsung Galaxy Ring. Also: We've entered the era of the smart ring. Here's how it will shake up the wearables market The smart ring market has been dominated by startups like Oura and former pioneer Motiv for the past decade, but Samsung is the first big tech company to launch a ring of its own, taking the smart ring to new heights. I've used a matte black size 10 Galaxy Ring ($399) on my index finger for the past two weeks -- after testing the matte black Oura Horizon Stealth ($449) for the past month and the Motiv ring for about six months back in 2018. I've also been a perennial Apple Watch user since it launched in 2015 and a Fitbit user for several years before that. Also: ZDNET's picks for the best smart rings you can buy I've been very surprised at how polished and useful the Galaxy Ring is. It doesn't feel at all like a 1.0 product. Samsung has clearly taken the lessons from other smart rings and smartwatches and delivered a device that is beautifully designed, easy to use, and communicates health information in ways that are as useful as any fitness tracker on the market. In fact, I thought the Galaxy AI stamp on the Galaxy Ring was mostly Samsung marketing, but when it comes to the overall "Energy" score that the ring gives you -- as well as the sleep and stress reporting in the Samsung Health app -- it delivers much more actionable insights than I've ever gotten from the Apple Watch. 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 six minutes and recommended that I increase that to 33 to 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 that 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. In that "Breathe" section of the app, you can also 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. 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. 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 of 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. 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 step count of the Apple Watch and the Oura Ring. 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 the 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. 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. 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 smartwatch -- 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 smartwatches), 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 cycle tracking assessment of the Galaxy Ring compared to the other smart ring options.