Smart rings are big business, and the Oura Ring 4 and Galaxy Ring are two of the best you can buy.
Oura has single-handedly turned the smart ring market from a niche for tech enthusiasts to a mainstream, female-focused health wearable. The sheer number of celebrities and sports stars wearing Oura has also given it incredible exposure.
Now, Samsung has jumped on the bandwagon with its Galaxy Ring, which is an impressive offering for a first-generation product.
Make sure you read our in-depth Oura Ring 4 review and Samsung Galaxy Ring 4 review.
But which one is right for you? Let’s dive in. And check out our selection of the best smart rings based on our leading reviews.
How we tested
We have lived with the Samsung Galaxy Ring and Oura Ring 4 extensively to publish our two standalone reviews. We’ve slept, sweated, and lived with them to compare tracking accuracy and the quality of insights, including wearing the two side-by-side for a few weeks. Do you know how annoying it is to wear two smart rings at the same time? Wareable suffers so you don’t have to.
Price and Compatibility
Price and compatibility are crucial factors in deciding between the Oura Ring 4 and the Samsung Galaxy Ring.
First, the Samsung Galaxy Ring is only compatible with Android smartphones. If you have an iPhone, it’s a no-go. Oura, on the other hand, is compatible with both iOS and Android platforms. You can see the latest prices below.
Oura is expensive, with basic silver/black finishes starting at $349 and rising to $499 for gold. You also need a $5.99 monthly subscription to access the app insights, making it a substantial investment.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring isn’t cheap either; Samsung charges an MSRP of $399 upfront, but there’s no ongoing subscription requirement, so it works out cheaper in the long run.
While Samsung is clearly the cheaper option, there are tradeoffs. The Oura subscription doesn’t exactly break the bank and, as we’ll find out, powers far more interesting insights.
Winner: Oura offers better compatibility and more insights. Samsung does work out cheaper.
Design
The Oura Ring 4 failed to make significant size reductions from the Gen 3, which means the Galaxy Ring is thinner and lighter. In terms of design, the Galaxy Ring has a significant edge.
Its design is uniquely concave, which Samsung says helps reduce surface scratches from everyday use—a common problem for smart rings. We certainly wouldn’t recommend any smart ring for lifting weights if you want the surface intact.
The Galaxy Ring measures 7mm wide and 2.6mm thick, and its smallest ring weighs just 2.3g.
The Oura Gen 4 is 7.9mm wide and 2.88mm thick. Thanks to changes to the interior material, which is now all titanium rather than resin, weight has been significantly reduced. It now weighs 3.3g, down from 4g, but still compares unfavorably against Samsung on every metric.
On the finger, Oura is noticeably bulkier than the Samsung — and we prefer the Galaxy Ring.
Winner: Samsung
Health Insights
While Samsung wins the design battle, Oura takes the lead when it comes to health insights.
That said, Samsung’s offering is no slouch. The sleep tracking is solid, with good accuracy when compared to Oura and Whoop in our testing. We were also impressed with the sleep coaching, which considers your circadian chronotype to offer insights on improving bedtimes.
It also focuses on an Energy Score, which uses sleep, activity data, HRV, and other metrics to provide a single score on how rested you are and whether you need to recharge. We found that low scores aligned with how we felt, and the Energy Score was intuitive overall.
So if your primary goal is to focus on sleep and recovery, the Galaxy Ring does the job well.
Of course, Oura does all that and more. Its sleep tracking is among the best you’ll find and proved highly accurate, even with a young baby in the house. It also tracks readiness, using sleep and heart rate variability, just like other top competitors.
But Oura goes further.
Stress tracking is thoughtfully implemented, with subtle prompts for when you may want to be mindful of stress levels.
The new-look Oura app also emphasizes long-term insights, like stress resilience, cardio age, cardiovascular fitness, and chronotype insights.
New features include meal logging, which lets you take photos of your food and get insights into how it aligns with your body clock.
As always, Oura’s women’s health tracking is excellent, with features for cycle tracking, pregnancy insights, and a new fertility planner.
Integrations are another strong point for Oura. There are over 600, allowing it to sync with most other health apps. This is especially useful for women’s health tracking, with connections to Natural Cycle and Clue for powerful FDA-regulated contraception and fertility tracking.
Finally, the Oura Ring 4’s improved health sensor pathways mean a notable accuracy boost from Gen 3. We didn’t experience any gaps in our data, which was a frequent issue in earlier versions. Additionally, the company states this update improves accuracy for dark skin tones—a significant improvement.
The Galaxy Ring, by contrast, was susceptible to signal dropouts, particularly in heart rate and SpO2 tracking. So, Oura wins hands down in this important area.
Winner: Oura
Fitness
Smart rings are not ideal fitness companions, and if you’re serious about working out, a smartwatch is a better choice.
For one, doing anything with weights risks damaging your ring. Also, the lack of a screen means there’s no real-time feedback for running or other activities. The additional movement during workouts also makes rings less accurate for high heart rate tracking.
Both the Galaxy Ring and Oura Ring 4 provide decent heart rate tracking for steady runs, with the Samsung having a slight edge.
Both feature automatic workout detection, which logs activities in the app, aiming to give a holistic view of movement and time spent in high heart rate zones. This is a commendable goal but falls short of the detail and analysis desired by dedicated fitness enthusiasts.
In our testing, we did find that while Oura was usually decent at recognizing that some kind of activity had occurred, the Oura Ring 4’s workout-type recognition can be comically inaccurate.
Winner: Samsung
Battery Life
In our tests, the Galaxy Ring typically lasted 5–6 days, with an average daily drain of around 15%, including full nights of sleep tracking.
We couldn’t get the Oura Ring 4 to last beyond five days over three battery cycles with all health tracking enabled. That’s short of the “up to eight days” promised by Oura.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring also has a snazzy little charging case, so you can juice up your ring, multiple times, on the move. We think that’s really handy, especially if you travel. The Oura Ring 4 has a new redesigned charging puck, but we much preferred the case.
Winner: Samsung
Verdict: Which is right for you?
The fact that Oura didn’t slim down its ring for Gen 4 has handed Samsung an advantage in the smart ring race — and these two rings are more closely matched than we expected.
Ultimately, the Oura Ring has iOS compatibility up its sleeve, and its health insights are a level above the Samsung Galaxy Ring (especially for women), with better accuracy.
That said, the ongoing subscription will tempt Android users to Samsung. And they are rewarded with a thinner, more wearable ring, good sleep tracking and coaching, and an array of quality health metrics.
If only the best is good enough then Oura Ring 4 is the only choice. But the Galaxy Ring offers a lovely experience, that will suit many.
Buy the Oura Ring 4 if…you want the best health metrics presented in the most insightful way. The sheer amount of integration and on-going development to the Oura platform make for a more exciting journey than Samsung. But you pay for the privilege.
Buy the Galaxy Ring 4 if…Android smartphone users can get good sleep tracking and energy score insights here in a package that’s more comfortable and cheaper than Oura. But the platform is unlikely to evolve much until late 2025. And is Samsung committed to this form factor?
