My First Day With the Galaxy Ring: It's So Light, I Keep Forgetting I Have It On

After wearing the $400 Galaxy Ring for 24 hours, I've already left it behind on the bathroom sink twice. Samsung's new smart ring is so light that most of the time, I don't even notice it's on my finger.

This is a good and bad thing. I like that it doesn't get in my way. But it also means I forget to put it back on when I take it off to shower or wash my hands. I've already had to use Samsung's Find app to make the Galaxy Ring LEDs flash so I could see when it dropped into my makeup bag.

Read more: Samsung Galaxy Ring Review: My Favorite Smart Ring, Hands Down

The Galaxy Ring has a lot of neat features that make it stand out from other smart rings, like the find feature. But are they enough to tempt people who aren't into smartwatches to track their health and sleep? Well if my initial impressions after wearing the Galaxy Ring for a day are any indication, yes and no.

Watch this: Samsung Galaxy Ring: Everything You Need to Know

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Galaxy Ring sizing and unboxing

The Galaxy Ring runs a little smaller compared to standard ring sizes and other smart rings. I've worn the Amazfit Helio Ring on my index finger in a size 10 for a few weeks and assumed I'd also be a 10 in the Galaxy Ring. After getting fitted by a friendly Samsung employee at the Galaxy Experience Space in New York City using the sizing kit, I'm actually most comfortable with an 11 on my index finger. He suggested that it should be snug but still able to slide over your knuckle without too much pressure.

Unboxing the Galaxy Ring is pretty fun. I've opened my fair share of tech boxes over the years and there's a lot of thought that's been put into this casing. Like a series of Matryoshka dolls, the Galaxy Ring's transparent case sits neatly inside a bigger black ring box. Very cute. 

I've got the matte black Galaxy Ring in for review, and it's not my favorite of the three colors available. I was not-so-secretly hoping to get the gold finish that I tried on during a briefing, which goes better with my other jewelry and rings.

Galaxy Ring setup is ridiculously easy

Setting up the Galaxy Ring is just like pairing any other Samsung wearable to your phone. As long as you already have the Wear app installed, you just open the Galaxy Ring box and wait for a pop-up to appear on the phone. I already had my health details pre-filled in Samsung Health from reviewing devices like the Galaxy Watch 6, but if you're new to the world of Samsung wearables, you'll want to enter in things like your birthdate, height and weight.

It's going to take a few days of wearing the Ring to get any sort of real, actionable insights and tap into the promised Galaxy AI features, like wellness tips. But the energy score after my first night of sleep was 78 out of 100, not too bad considering I'd been running around New York City in sweltering heat and only managed six hours of sleep.

Just like the Oura Ring, the Galaxy Ring has separate scores for sleep and energy. (Oura calls the latter the Readiness score). But even though my energy score was 78, my sleep score was a whopping 92. I've written before about the discrepancies between how you feel compared to a device's sleep score and was pretty surprised that my rating was so high given the Ring also identified I moved around a lot during the night.

Galaxy Ring gestures: fun, but limited

I like that the Galaxy Ring is opening the door to a world where I can just tap my fingers together to control other connected devices. But right now, the only things you can do with the double pinch gesture is take a photo on your phone and stop an alarm. I wish Samsung had a few more features baked in at launch, maybe like being able to skip tracks like you can with the S Pen on the S24 Ultra.

Stay tuned for the full Galaxy Ring review once I've gathered more data. I'm looking forward to taking it to the weight room and to the gym to find out how it holds up to a workout.