Second Opinion

Second Opinion is a reviews show about anything and everything under the sun. If we can experience it, we can review it.

Samsung Galaxy Buds Review

Episode #63

Ryan reviews the Samsung Galaxy Buds (Galaxy S10+ pre-order gift) - surprisingly they fit and stay in his ears!

Episode Summary

00:00 | Intro

Other headphone reviews:

00:20 | General
  • Galaxy Buds are Samsung’s response to the AirPods from Apple
  • I received my set of Buds from Samsung as a gift for pre-ordering the S10+ prior to launch
01:15 | Purchase & kind
  • Regular price is $129
  • My set are white, but there’s supposed to be a black option, which I can’t find?
01:54 | Case
  • The case is pill shaped, pretty small
  • The case charges with USB Type-C
  • The case also charges with wireless charging; which is good
    • Works great with a wireless charger pad
    • Works ok with the built-in S10+ charging - enough to get the buds up enough to listen during a commute
  • The case has a green/red charging light on the outside; not sure what the thresholds are for battery remaining
  • The case has a green/red connection light on the inside
  • Open the case to pair with a suitable phone; the S10+ picks up instantly, plain bluetooth might be slower
04:48 | Buds
  • It’s some kind of miracle; these stay in my ears
  • Earbuds haven’t ever stayed in my ears, this is amazing
  • There are “actions” you can do on the “touchpads”;
    • Tap to play/pause
    • Double tap play next or answer/end call
    • Triple tap to play previous
    • Long press talk to Bixby or Google
08:18 | Audio quality
  • Just ok; probably better for “talking” than music
  • Kind of quiet in real life situations (on a train, in a crowd)
  • Since they’re in ear, they’re actually more isolating than the bone conduction
  • Definitely not as nice as Sony noise cancelling over-ear headphones
10:26 | Special features
  • With the Galaxy Wearable app (ugh, this name)
    • You can see the charge levels
    • You can tinker with an equalizer which didn’t seem to do much for me
  • You can tinker with the “notifications” settings - basically, a white list of audible notifications from your phone to forward to the buds - I let calendar, slack and telegram through - I will ignore you useless emails
  • By default, it provides some active noise cancelling features
  • You can turn on Ambient sound, and I guess that lets some frequencies in
  • You can turn on “Voice focus” and that lets talking in
  • It sounds weird
  • Finally, “Find my earbuds” lets you remotely find your bud if you drop it
    • It plays a loud tone, so don’t have them in when you do it
13:36 | Conclusion

Would I buy these if I needed earbuds? Surprisingly, now that I find they actually stay in my ears, maybe! I would have saved my $130 possibly towards modern Sony noise cancelling headphones, but these have a place in your audio collection if you need buds for the train, bus or dog walk - these aren’t for “working” environments.

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Second Opinion is released under a Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International license. Feel free to use any or all of it as long as you link back to http://thenexus.tv/so63.