SAN FRANCISCO, CA – FEBRUARY 11: Samsung’s new ear buds on display on February 11, 2020 in San … [+]
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Samsung’s next wireless earbuds have received the hands-on treatment thanks to a YouTuber who managed to acquire a pair before their official release.
The Galaxy Buds Pro are scheduled to launch on January 14th, but YouTube channel Digital Slang mysteriously managed to source a pair and broke down the latest features. As expected, Samsung has added active noise cancellation (ANC) to the revamped buds to rival the Apple AirPods Pro. But the new sleeker design is a bit of a surprise.
The Korean company has ditched the bulkier, more spherical shape of the Galaxy Buds Plus in favour of a more elongated and miniaturised design for the new earbuds. They look a bit like Google’s Pixel Buds, which I praised in my review for their shrunken, light, form.
That’s a big improvement because the clunky Galaxy Buds Plus always felt like they were on the precipice of falling out of my ears, the new buds appear to address this with a more compact design.
It looks like there are some cool new features, too. The buds will now lower volume if it detects your voice, which is something Sony’s vastly more expensive WH-1000XM4 also do. There are also levels of active noise cancellation, like the Jabras Elite 85T and levels of transparency mode (where the earbuds pipe-in ambient sound). There’s a low latency mode for gaming, similar to the OnePlus Buds and the equaliser presets from the Galaxy Buds Plus make a return.
A long roll-call of features is fairly common for Samsung hardware. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but the option of in-depth controls is a clear challenge to Apple’s feature-rich AirPods Pro. We’ll have to wait and see if Samsung has its own version of spatial audio or other, deeper, audio enhancements.
What really matters, though, is playback. Digital Slang didn’t go into a lot of detail on sound quality, simply saying that the buds sound “fantastic” and that the “highs and mids are crystal clear”, with “punchy base”. The Galaxy Buds Plus and Galaxy Buds Live both sound great, so I’m expecting an improvement from the Korean company. Especially now that it has added “pro” to the name.
They’re rumoured to be priced similarly to the Jabra Elite 85T earbuds and come in about $50 cheaper than Apple’s AirPods Pro at $199 – so they’re clearly a step up from the cheaper Galaxy Buds Plus. We’ll know more in two weeks when they officially launch.
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