Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro Review: The Right Balance

Let’s just get there: Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Pro is the best wireless earbuds the company has ever made. For their $ 200 asking price, you get a comfortable fit, effective sound suppression and a good, beautiful sound quality. These earbuds enhance Samsung’s previous efforts with smart features, such as a voice detection mode that automatically drops your music and lets you hear the outside world as soon as you start talking.

But they also keep Samsung closer to a secluded world, not unlike Apple, where the best experience is reserved for people who stick with Samsung brands. Some features like 3D audio and automatic device switching – sounds familiar? – only works if you use these earbuds with a Samsung phone or tablet. Most people are not going to do cross-shopping with the Galaxy Buds Pro and AirPods Pro because they are designed for different mobile operating systems, but Samsung has never leaned so much in its own ecosystem. Fortunately, there are enough goodies for everyone else that the Galaxy Buds Pro will continue to be a success.

The Buds Pro is a combination of the Galaxy Buds Plus – they have an in-ear design with silicone tips and the open-air Galaxy Buds Live, from which they borrow some style instructions. The tire is a tasteful blend of glossy and matte finishes and has been redesigned to stick out less at your ear. Samsung says this refurbished shell also reduces the contact area between your ear and the lump, improves comfort and reduces the clogged feeling.

The wingtips of the Galaxy Buds Plus are gone; Samsung got the message that some customers have experienced discomfort over time. Instead, you get the usual three-size silicone earplugs, which are a little shorter than before to help with the low-profile design. Samsung tells me that it has considered including foam tips, but has kept it so far. You also see a section of mesh on the outside. It covers one of the three built-in microphones and is there to act as a windshield for voice calls. (More on this later.)

I really like how these earplugs fit. They feel stable and turn in their place for a good seal in my ear canal, without making my ears feel too stuffy. The air opening and the reduced contact area really look there, and I appreciate that the Buds Pro does not noticeably stick out of my ears like some competitors. If I have one critique, it’s an old critique: more than a few times I accidentally activated the touch-sensitive buttons while trying to adjust the fit of an earplug. So is life with tap gestures, I suppose. The controls can be turned off if this is a problem for you.

According to Samsung, the Galaxy Buds Plus IPX7 is rated for water and sweat resistance, which means they can survive a half-hour swim in fresh water – so your sweaty runs and workouts should be no problem. It is the highest rating among any of Samsung’s earbuds and beats the AirPods Pro, Jabra Elite 85t and Bose Sport Earbuds, all of which are IPX4. Each earplug can be used independently with mono sound if you prefer the option for voice calls or cycling.

The wonderfully pocket-sized Buds Pro charging case is so close in size and shape to the Buds Live case that accessories for the latter fit the former, and it is still charged over both USB-C and Qi wireless charging. However, endurance is one area where these earplugs are very average. Samsung promises up to five hours of playback with ANC enabled (or eight with it off). Top-offs of the case keep you at 18 hours total battery life or 28 without noise suppression. It basically matches the rest of the field, but it does not keep up with the 11 hours of continuous sound that the Galaxy Buds Plus are capable of. Unfortunately, it appears that the Buds Pro has a smaller battery capacity (61 mAh for each knob versus 85 mAh) in addition to their more power-hungry ANC function.

The Galaxy Buds Pro has two-way speakers in each earpiece: there is an 11 millimeter woofer and 6.5 mm tweeter. It is larger than what was in the Buds Plus, although it was smaller than the single 12mm driver of the Buds Live; in that case, Samsung was most focused on getting satisfactory bass out of an open earplug. Here it aims for ‘the most comprehensive sound in the Galaxy Buds series yet’. I can not speak with what “comprehensive” is supposed to mean, but the Buds Pro is pleasant to listen to, with good bass attenuation, clear treble and a pleasant sound image / imaging.

Many earplugs can make it feel like everything is happening in the middle of your head, but it’s a great job that distinguishes instrumentation and singing. Sturgill Simpson’s “Oh Sarah” and Troye Sivan’s “Easy” (with Kacey Musgraves and Mark Ronson) provide beautiful showcases – in many different genres – of how low the Buds Pro can become.

Bass heads may want to go for the ‘bass boost’ EQ setting, and the tweeters can sometimes give a little too much clarity and possibility for some tracks like Jason Isbell’s “Be Afraid”, but for the most part I was very happy with the audio signature. I do not think Samsung has the same fidelity as something like Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless 2, but it’s almost $ 100 more expensive. I am completely satisfied with the Buds Pro as my daily earbuds.

The active noise cancellation on the Galaxy Buds Pro is much better than the Galaxy Buds Live, where it hardly looks anything like there is so much outside noise to compete with. Samsung claims that the Buds Pro can reduce ‘up to 99 percent’ of noise ‘to 118.43Hz’, which is very specific and will not mean much to most people. In my experience, Bose’s QuietComfort earbuds, Sony’s WF-1000XM3 earbuds and the AirPods Pro all outperform Samsung as they silence the world around you, but Samsung does a perfectly adequate job of dampening street noise and household distractions. You can choose between high and low levels of noise suppression if you are sensitive to the effect.

Samsung’s latest transparency / environmental mode still does not sound as natural as Apple and Bose have achieved, but it is a definite improvement over the highly digitized version of the Galaxy Buds Plus. And the fantastic “voice detection” feature, which automatically lowers the volume and switches from ANC to environment mode when you start talking, is one of the best things about the Galaxy Buds Pro. Sony has done something similar on its 1000XM4 headphones, but I have not seen this easy trick in many earbuds yet, and now I wish everyone had at least the option.

Samsung uses a ‘voice recording unit’ – basically an accelerometer that senses jaw movement – to know that it’s you talking and not someone nearby. After a few seconds of talking without further ado, the ANC returns and your music is switched on again. Voice detection works as expected, but if you tend to talk to yourself or sing to your music, you may want to keep it awkward and assign the ambient sound to a long press on one of the earbuds. Controls work the same way as other Samsung buttons, with a single tap to pause / play, double to skip to the next song, triple to go back and an adjustable long press that can be used for volume, voice assistants or environmental mode.

For voice calls, Samsung has a three-microphone system and uses beamforming to isolate your voice from your surroundings. The lower profile of the Buds Pro helps combat wind noise, and the mesh-covered room does a great job of filtering out any gusts when talking to someone outside. Clarity is also good, as you should hear in Becca’s video review above. Speaking of voice, the Galaxy Buds Pro still has hands-free “Hey Bixby” features.

Pro as in … AirPods Pro?

There is no denying that some features of the Galaxy Buds Pro are strongly influenced by Apple’s AirPods Pro. The first of these is 3D audio, which Samsung uses from the immersive spatial audio features of the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. Upload a movie with Dolby surround, and the Buds Pro will try to plug a listening experience into a pair of earbuds.

Samsung says that 360-degree audio uses Dolby head-tracking technology, which ‘enables you to stay in the center of the scene while watching a movie or TV show.’ In concept, it sounds similar to Apple’s approach, which uses sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes in the earbuds and on your iPhone or iPad to keep the sound source anchored to your device – even if you turn your head towards each other.

Unfortunately, I can not tell you how convincing Samsung’s 3D sound is or that it can compare favorably with spatial sound, because it requires OneUI 3.1, which is currently only available in the new Galaxy S21 series. The $ 1,300 Galaxy Note 20 Ultra that Samsung sent for this review has not yet received the update.

The second AirPods feature that Samsung is directly trying to counteract is automatic switching. Apple’s earbuds can jump between an iPhone, iPad or Mac, depending on which one you’re currently using, without having to manually make the change. Samsung says it’s done the same trick now, so the Buds Pro should automatically switch between your Galaxy smartphone and tablet. Unfortunately, the laptop is left completely out of Samsung’s comparison, which makes the feature somewhat less useful. I wish more earbuds would give us just the right Bluetooth pairing with more than two devices simultaneously; Jabra is still the standout there. Automatic switching feels like a temporary solution until Samsung can get multipoint.

Both of these capabilities require you to be fairly entrenched in Samsung’s ecosystem. 3D audio only works on Samsung hardware, so if your Android phone comes from another brand, you will lose it completely. The same goes for automatic switching. If neither of these features is important to you, it may not matter, but it’s something to keep in mind.

It’s also worth mentioning that Samsung does not increase the same level of iOS support as it does for the Buds Plus and Buds Live: the existing iOS app does not work with the Buds Pro, so you can not use features such as speech detection. on iPhone. I’m not sure what the reasoning is there, but maybe Samsung’s internal data shows that not many people connect the earbuds to Apple devices. You can still pair it and use noise-canceling and environmental modes – just like the way AirPods Pro works on Android.

The Galaxy Buds Pro is faced with stiff competition everywhere, and elsewhere there is superior ANC and sound quality. But with these latest earbuds, Samsung has put together some of the best stuff to the Buds Plus and Buds Live. The battery life is just average, but that’s the only real problem I have. They do not necessarily win in one category, but the Galaxy Buds Pro finds an excellent balance. And you can clearly see how Samsung is trying to recreate a “magical” ecosystem that AirPods owners are now used to.

The Buds Pro feels good in your ears, sounds better than any Samsung earbuds to date and has handy tricks to complement their decent noise suppression. There’s still a place for the Galaxy Buds Plus if you just want wireless earbuds with a battery that just goes and goes, and the Buds Live remains the best choice if you need environmental awareness at all times. But if you use the Buds Pro as a pre-order bonus for a new Galaxy S21, you should be more than satisfied.