Sunday running day
In this weekly column, Michael Hicks, Wearables Editor at Android Central, talks about the world of wearables, apps and fitness technology as it relates to running and health in light of his quest to get faster and fitter.
Smart rings have the potential to outperform smart watches in terms of step counting accuracy. We tested the most popular smart rings today and three of them outperformed our favorite smart watches in accurate step counting. Unfortunately, smart rings have a problem with phantom Steps that need to be addressed before we can fully recommend it.
Smart rings aren’t designed for fitness tracking like smartwatches. They can’t measure your pulse as often due to lower battery capacity, they become less accurate as your fingers swell from faster blood flow, and you don’t have a screen to check your progress. The new Samsung Galaxy Ring in particular disappointed us with its poor fitness features.
So imagine my surprise when I asked our tester to run a Galaxy Ring step test and it measured only 11 extra steps after 5,000 steps – significantly better than his Pixel Watch 2 (192 extra steps). I’ve run several smartwatch step tests over the past year and only Garmin watches came close to that level of accuracy.
When we compare smart rings to smart watches, we generally trust the former when it comes to monitoring sleep and collecting health data, and the latter when it comes to workouts. But 10,000 steps a day is more of a general health concern than a true “workout,” and it would be great if smart rings excelled at this everyday metric.
Since I only own one smart ring, I asked our phone editor Nick Sutrich and our senior editor Derrek Lee to conduct step tests to see if smart rings across brands can outperform smartwatches at step counting. Here’s how each device performed:
| Smartwatch / Smart Ring | Total steps | Difference to the actual number of steps |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy Ring | 5,011 | +11 |
| Oura Ring Gen 3 | 4,988 | -12 |
| Amazfit GTS 2e | 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 Active2 | 4,986 | -14 |
| OnePlus Watch 2R | 5,025 | +25 |
| Pixel Watch 2 (2 reviews) | 5,192 / 5,111 | +192 / +111 |
| Garmin Venu 3 (2 reviews) | 5,088 / 5,031 | +88 / +31 |
| CMF Watch Pro 2 | 4,769 | -231 |
I’ve never found smart rings to be particularly reliable at counting steps, as my Ultrahuman Ring Air undercounts them. This evens out as it counts false steps while I’m at home, but I’ve found most smartwatches to be better and have seen plenty of complaints on the r/Ultrahuman subreddit that back up my opinion.
Competing smart ring brands have fine-tuned their step counting algorithms a bit more! The Samsung Galaxy Ring, Oura Ring Gen 3, and Amazfit Helio Ring all came within 12 steps of the actual walking count. The RingConn Smart Ring Gen 2 was ridiculously off on Lee’s first test, but performed more respectably on the second test, outperforming some popular smartwatches.
For comparison, most smartwatches are more in the “good but not great” range. In my March accuracy test for budget fitness watches, the Forerunner 165 (+11 steps after 5,000) performed excellently, while the Coros Pace 3 (+84) and the Fitbit Charge 6 (-199) were not quite as reliable.
In my first step counting test last year, Amazfit (+46), Apple (-60) and Samsung (+74) were in the same reasonable range, with my Fitbit (-286) doing pretty awfully and Garmin (+14) winning.
That’s why my Galaxy Watch Ultra and OnePlus Watch 2R surprised me by doing so well on this walking test, coming in on par with my Garmin Forerunner 965. So far, no smartwatch other than Garmin has achieved ±30 steps accuracy in half a dozen step tests. Maybe some fitness watch developers have started tweaking their step algorithms too!
But back to the main point: I am impressed with how well smart rings do at counting steps under normal walking conditions. Apart from a few outstanding watches, the most of them miscount by at least 100 steps after a few miles.
It’s much harder to count steps while running — try counting them when you’re running twice as fast and out of breath — but Sutrich said his Galaxy Ring step count seemed much more realistic than his Pixel Watch 2’s count after a 5K Spartan race (though the PW2 much better at heart rate).
So what is the “big mistake” that I pointed out in the headline? Quite simply: Smart rings from different brands track hundreds or Thousands of steps when you are at home or in the office.
You write an email? Then you take a few steps. You gesticulate excitedly during a conversation? Then you take a few more steps! You cook dinner? Your smartwatch might add 50 steps to your total as you move around the kitchen; your smart ring might add 2 to 10 times that. You take a few extra steps, and you take a few extra steps, and You Take a few extra steps!
Sutrich’s Galaxy Ring worked almost perfectly when walking, but he managed 3,675 steps before the test, and he confirmed that he had done nothing active that day. That’s the equivalent of walking almost two miles around the house and it’s unlikely he got anywhere near that far.
Several members of the Android Central team own Oura rings and were the first to warn me about the problem of missteps: thousands of phantom steps taken every day while working on articles at home or playing with their pets.
Smartwatches don’t have this problem to the same extent. Some brands occasionally give false steps or give unseemly stand alerts, but you won’t see thousands of steps unless you’re actually walking or exercising.
If smart ring makers can tweak their acceleration data to tell the difference between random movements and real steps, that’s the final step (pun intended) to making rings more useful for casual fitness tracking. That’s a big if: Oura has had years to improve in this area.
But the fact that several smart ring manufacturers have already cracked the code on step tracking under normal conditions, outpacing smartwatch manufacturers that are decades old, gives me hope that they will get better at detecting non-step movements in the near future as well.
