The low cost fiber ring laser can be tuned by controlling polarization states within the loop. In this paper, we investigate its operating principle and verify the performance through an experiment. This ring laser consists of a polarization controller and an intracavity polarizer for the wavelength tuner and semiconductor optical amplifier for the gain medium. It is seen that the lasing wavelength may be tuned through the range of 1540~1560 nm as a polarization controller and a polarizer are adjusted.