Sunday Runday
In this weekly column, Android Central Wearables Editor Michael Hicks talks about the world of wearables, apps, and fitness tech related to running and health, in his quest to get faster and more fit.
Smart rings have the potential to beat smartwatches when it comes to step-counting accuracy. We tested the most popular smart rings today, and three of them outperformed our favorite smartwatches for exact step counts. Unfortunately, smart rings have a problem with phantom steps that must be fixed before we can fully recommend them.
Smart rings aren’t built for fitness tracking the way smartwatches are. They can’t sample your heart rate as often because of smaller battery capacity, they become less accurate when your fingers swell from faster blood flow, and you have no screen to check your progress. In particular, the new Samsung Galaxy Ring has underwhelmed us with its paltry fitness features.
So, imagine my surprise when I asked our reviewer to do a Galaxy Ring step test, and it measured only 11 extra steps after taking 5,000 steps—significantly better than his Pixel Watch 2 (192 extra). I’ve done several smartwatch step tests in the last year, and only Garmin watches have come close to that accuracy level.
When comparing smart rings vs. smartwatches, we generally trust the former for sleep tracking and health data and the latter for workouts. But getting 10,000 steps a day is more of a mainstream health issue than a true “workout,” and it’d be great if smart rings excelled at this casual metric.
Since I only own one smart ring, I enlisted our phones editor, Nick Sutrich, and our managing editor, Derrek Lee, to perform step tests to see whether smart rings can beat smartwatches for step counting across brands. Here’s how each device did:
| Smartwatch / smart ring | Total steps | Difference from actual step count |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy Ring | 5,011 | +11 |
| Oura Ring Gen 3 | 4,988 | -12 |
| Amazfit Helio Ring | 4,992 | -8 |
| RingConn Smart Ring Gen 2 (2 tests) | 4,296 / 4,913 | -704 / -87 |
| Ultrahuman Ring Air | 4,497 | -503 |
| Garmin Forerunner 965 | 5,017 | +17 |
| Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra | 4,986 | -14 |
| OnePlus Watch 2R | 5,025 | +25 |
| Pixel Watch 2 (2 tests) | 5,192 / 5,111 | +192 / +111 |
| Garmin Venu 3 (2 tests) | 5,088 / 5,031 | +88 / +31 |
| CMF Watch Pro 2 | 4,769 | -231 |
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