Sleep trackers can be helpful tools for getting a good night’s rest, not because they actively improve your sleep habits but potentially help identify possible factors affecting your sleep. Some smartwatches might not actually help you by tracking your sleep, but devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Ring can. It might not be the best wearable for sleep tracking, but it will soon receive an update that lets it track a common cause of sleep problems many wearables miss.
During a Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked livestream in July 2026 (which revealed several new Samsung devices), Sharanya Desai, Head of Digital Health at Samsung, took to the stage to discuss the capabilities and health benefits of using the Galaxy Watch 9, including how it could monitor your sleep. During this segment, Desai also stated that starting this fall, “Galaxy Ring will be the first and only FDA-cleared over-the-counter ring device for sleep apnea risk detection.”
Desai said that Galaxy Watches have been able to “identify possible signs” of sleep apnea “for years,” specifically by determining if a wearer experiences “breathing disruptions” commonly associated with sleep apnea. According to Desai, the wearable device will receive a “new FDA-cleared capability” that improves apnea detection in the near future. However, with the Galaxy Ring’s upcoming upgrade, you won’t have to spend as much a $500 (depending on smartwatch model) for a wearable device that can help track sleep apnea problems.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
While Sharanya Desai promised that the Samsung Galaxy Ring will soon be able to diagnose sleep apnea, she didn’t go into any details about how this feature will work. Since the Galaxy Watch uses a BioActive Sensor to track blood oxygen levels and leverage that data to estimate a wearer’s Apnea-Hypopnea Index, or AHI (the average number of times you stop breathing or take shallow breaths in an hour), we can assume the Galaxy Ring will detect sleep apnea the same way.
At the end of the day, Samsung Galaxy wearable devices, be they a watch or ring, are just that: devices. They’re tools that are advanced enough to estimate your AHI, but they can’t actually tell you whether you have sleep apnea. If you buy a Samsung Galaxy Ring or Galaxy Watch and they say you have sleep apnea, that’s not your cue to buy a CPAP machine, but rather to see a medical provider and get their second (and more importantly, human) opinion. If they agree with your device’s diagnosis, then follow their instructions.
