The Samsung Galaxy buds are in my hands and I can’t wait to put it to the test!

I’m mostly a fan of using the normal earpiece so to get the Galaxy Buds, it made me curious how well this would work out.

Is it comfortable? Is it easy to use? But mostly, how will the sound be like?

What are the Samsung Galaxy Buds?

The Galaxy Buds are Samsung’s version of earbuds that can connect seamlessly to your phone via Bluetooth.

It weighs at a lightweight 6 grams! That’s the weight of a pencil. Or maybe two. But still, it’s light! It claims to lasts up to about 6 hours on a single charge. There’s also the fact that the case you keep it doubles up as its charger too.

It can be bought online at these stores:

Price-wise; it retails at about SGD$238. However, if you were to have a Challenger membership, you can get it for SGD$230. So that’s something you might want to consider cause SGD$238 isn’t exactly cheap. Then again, the Sony WF-SP700N is SGD$299 so that’s something you might want to think about too.

The looks

First impression when I looked at it? The Samsung Galaxy Buds looks slightly bulky and I was worried that it would not be comfortable when worn. As I have been using the normal earpieces that came with my S9+, the size did make me cringe a little.

However, does it look good? Truthfully, Samsung seems to have stuck with their usual sleek and simple silhouette. Same goes for the carrying case. So, it’s really nothing special.

The smoothness of the carrying case oddly enough makes me feel very relaxed and satisfied. The case itself is smooth with no sharp edges and flips open from the top. When closing it, the case makes a very satisfying click sounds. Somehow, that reassures me that the case is not going to pop open accidentally when being tossed around in my bag.

There’s only one button that you need to know when using it. However, to call it a button seems to be a misnomer as you can see in the picture below:

When you look at the earbuds, the shiny part of the buds is where you would touch to control the buds. Tap once to play or pause, twice to play next track or answer calls, triple to play previous and lastly, touch and hold to decline a call. If you’re confused, that’s fine. This is where having the Samsung Wearable app comes in handy, more on that later.

Wearing them is pretty straight-forward.

It’s just like when you put on your earpiece, minus the wire of course. I had to wiggle it a little to make sure it fits snugly. But, that could also be due to the fact that I was not used to the size of it. Not to worry though, the buds do come in different sizes so you can find your perfect fit. You don’t have to stick to the ones that are default.

I used the buds while cleaning the house (also known as, Hari Raya is coming so hello, spring clean).

From vacuuming the house to hanging the curtains, laundry and dishes; the buds held up pretty well with all the moving about. Especially when I had to hang the curtains. My head was constantly tilting upwards and I was also climbing up and down chairs but the buds stayed in snug and tight.

The buds stayed in their position all the way with nary a budge. I love how easy this was to be perfectly honest. Wired headphones tend to get in the way of the cleaning and constant moving about. Plus, I need the phone to be on me. The buds made it especially easy to leave my phone on the table and still be able to listen to my music or shows.

The sound

I am going to be extremely honest here; the quality of sound seems to be exactly as how their earpiece is. You know, the earpiece you get when you buy their phones?

Does this mean I’m saying it isn’t good? Nope. I’m just saying that the quality is somewhat similar considering that their earpiece is also made by AKG. I love how clear the sound is on their earpiece in all honesty.

The difference is that the music or dialogue, whatever you’re listening to, is going to be much, much clearer on the Samsung Galaxy Buds. The noise cancellation seems to work better too. I apologise to my mother as she needed to call me a few times because I could not hear her over my perfect Lucifer.

This really means that you get to immerse yourself in whatever show or music that you’re listening to as the ambient noise will not slip through. It also means that your lol might really mean you’re laughing out loud in public.

BUT, if you are worried about that, Samsung has the option of switching on ambient noise so that you would be able to hear your background noise. Ironic isn’t it? We usually choose not to hear the background noise but this noise cancellation works really well that Samsung has an option for you to actually bring a little background noise into your immersive experience.

As usual, I use our standard song list to review the sound quality. In case you’ve not read Sal’s reviews. these songs run the gamut from Rock to Instrumental, and are meant to test the range of the product.

• The Touch (Rock, Stan Bush)
• Cherry Pie (Hard Rock, Warrant)
• Die for Metal (Power Metal, Manowar)
• Reise, Reise (Industrial Metal, Rammstein)
• X Gon’ Give It To Ya (Rap, DMX)
• Gangster’s Paradise (Hip Hop, Coolio)
• Moonlight Sonata (Classical, Beethoven)
• One-Winged Angel – Final Fantasy VII (Instrumental, Nobuo Uematsu)
• Prayer – Symphony of the Night (Vocal, Michiru Yamane)
• Change the World – (J-Pop, V6)

I found the music to be pretty clear with decent quality output for all of the songs. While the bass isn’t as heavy as I would prefer, it is still good enough that you can feel the ‘thump’ in your ear.

The buds are not going to be able to compete with the high end audio stuff like the SONY WH-1000XM3 but they do a good enough job (in my opinion) for what they cost.

Galaxy Wearable

Now, back to the controls. With the Galaxy Wearable, it makes using the Samsung Galaxy Buds so much more easier. The moment you’ve paired the buds with your phone the first time, all you have to do is open up the case the next time and this will pop up on your phone:

The app itself is fuss free and there’s no need for you to worry that you might be confused as to how to use the buds. As you can see, the ‘buttons’ on the buds itself is called the touchpad, which makes a lot more sense than saying they’re buttons. Wait, did I mention that the touchpads are on both sides of the buds? I didn’t? Well, now you know. Doesn’t that makes it easier.

Both sides of the touchpad can used to control the same things, which makes it simple enough to use. There’s no need for you to remember which side can do what as both operates the same things.

If you forget how many taps, there’s always the touchpad manual in your app itself that you can check. Adjusting the sounds of the buds is also right in front of you.

Now, this last part is something that I did not realise is extremely important to some people; Find My Earbuds. Whilst talking to my siblings and fiance, both my brother and fiance pointed out that if, if, the earbuds were to fall out at any point in time during their workout, there goes SGD$119.

Well, fear not as Samsung has your back. If you’ve somehow dropped one bud, all you need to do is go to the app, Find My Earbuds and click ‘start’. Mute the side of the bud that is still with you and the missing earbud will start emitting a continuous high-pitch beep that will get progressively louder as you move closer to it. Ta-da! There you have it. Samsung thinks of everything.

The Bottom Line

Samsung Galaxy Buds is probably something that I could see myself getting. This might be due to the fact that I am using a Samsung phone which makes connectivity easy but also because I don’t feel like a complete noob while exploring it.

The price tag of SGD$238 is pretty affordable for the name and the quality. The case itself doesn’t require me to charge often and seeing that I used it for three hours straight while doing housework then on and off while at home, the battery life is at 50% still after the first charge, I’m impressed.

The size just needed some getting used to but it doesn’t hurt my ears or was uncomfortable to use for long periods of time. There’s also the fact that there was no need to continually adjust the buds once you put them in place the first time.

If you’re looking to get a pair of earbuds, I would suggest them. If you have a Samsung phone, then I highly recommend them because there’s really no need for additional downloads and whatnot.

TL;DR

I like it but I don’t love it enough to cough up the amount needed. The noise cancellation is hella great and it is literally the perfect epitome of hands-free device.