The Galaxy Buds Pro: A Mixed Bag of Features and Sound Quality

As I took a closer look at the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, I couldn't help but feel a sense of disappointment. While they offer some impressive features, such as active noise cancellation (ANC), their limitations in terms of compatibility with non-Samsung devices are a major letdown.

One of the standout features of the Galaxy Buds Pro is their ANC technology, which is pretty good but not quite on par with Apple's AirPods Pro. The ANC feature helps to block out background noise and improve sound quality, making it easier to focus on your music or podcast. However, when I compared it to my AirPods Pro, I was surprised to find that the Galaxy Buds Pro's ANC didn't quite measure up. It's still a solid effort, but Apple's technology is just slightly more effective.

Another feature that caught my attention is the Galaxy Buds Pro's ambient mode. This mode helps amplify the sounds around you, similar to Apple's Transparency Mode on AirPods Pro. While it's not as seamless as I'd like, it's still a useful feature for those who need to stay aware of their surroundings.

The Galaxy Buds Pro also have a unique feature called Voice Detect, which automatically turns down the volume and enables ambient mode when it recognizes you speaking. This feature works surprisingly well, and I was impressed by how seamlessly it integrates with the rest of the features.

One thing that's worth noting is that the Galaxy Buds Pro use a proprietary connection method, which means they won't connect to iOS devices without an adapter. While this might not be a major issue for Samsung fans, it can be a problem for those who want to use their earbuds with an iPhone.

The Galaxy Buds Pro also have a Spatial Audio feature called 360 Audio with Dolby Tracking, but I couldn't test it out since the software update is not currently available on my Samsung devices. It's likely that this feature will become available in the future, but for now, I'll have to wait and see how it compares to Apple's Spatial Audio.

In terms of sound quality, the Galaxy Buds Pro have a warmer profile with more bass than I'd like. While some people might enjoy this, others might find it too boomy or overpowering. That being said, once you get a proper fit, the sound quality is top-notch, and I was impressed by how immersive it feels.

One of the things that really disappointed me about the Galaxy Buds Pro is their compatibility with non-Samsung devices. While they offer some features that are available on Android, such as auto-device switching and EQ adjustments, these features are only accessible through the Samsung app, which is not compatible with iOS devices. This means that if you want to use your Galaxy Buds Pro with an iPhone, you'll be out of luck.

In terms of pricing, the Galaxy Buds Pro seem to be priced similarly to Apple's AirPods Pro, but without the added convenience of seamless integration with non-Samsung devices.

Overall, I'm left feeling a bit underwhelmed by the Galaxy Buds Pro. While they offer some impressive features and sound quality, their limitations in terms of compatibility make them less appealing than Apple's offerings.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enjust last week samsung released its new flagship galaxy s21 smartphone lineup alongside the new phones there's a new set of galaxy buds called the galaxy buds pro which will retail for around 199 the main competition for samsung is obviously going to be apple and more specifically apple's airpods pro because they have sort of the same similar features and they're also around the same price point so that's the two set of wireless earbuds that we're going to compare in this video now i won't make you wait i like doing comparisons these days by just coming right out and saying which one i prefer and this isn't going to shock you it's the airpods pro now please allow me to explain myself because samsung really does have a good pair of headphones here they just aren't for me for starters the fit is far more uncomfortable for me compared to the airpods pro last year samsung released the bean shaped galaxy buds live and although those were the butt of a lot of jokes because of their shape it's actually the perfect shape for my ears the galaxy buds live fit me perfectly they were mega comfortable more comfortable than probably the airpods pro i liked them a lot it's just they didn't really sound super great and then the active noise cancellation was kind of meh but that's besides the point now the galaxy buds pro have a more traditional shape and design but it also requires me to really jam them inside of my ears to get a proper fit and seal which is very very important for headphones like these for many reasons mostly because they will either fall out pretty easily active noise cancellation will pretty much be non-existent or they will sound awful if a proper fit and seal is not achieved luckily there are a few different set of ear tips inside of the box that's going to help you find the right seal and speaking of the box there's a usbc to type a charging cable inside of the box for the case the case is incredibly small as you can see here it's kind of the same height actually it's a little bit taller when you compare it to the airpods pro but it's just not nearly as wide as the airpods pro case there's really nothing crazy going on here except for maybe it's smaller size and it does fit really well inside of your pockets the case also offers around 18 to 20 hours of additional battery depending on whether you have active noise cancellation turned on or if you have it off the galaxy buds alone will give you about five hours of battery life with anc on and then if you turn anc off you'll get an additional three hours giving you eight hours of battery life similar to most galaxy buds there are touch controls on each side of the earbuds uh one tap will play pause double tap to skip triple tap to go back and if you hold down when you press and you'll be able to switch between ambient sound on or off there is a quick charge feature that will give you one hour of listening time with just five minutes of charging uh when you put the earbuds in the case which is right in line with what apple offers with the airpods pro now the airpods pro offer similar functionality through the stem instead of tapping the earbud itself i like that the stem is able to do that a little bit better than the gestures because the gestures are so sensitive that when you actually try to adjust the earbuds in your ear there's a very very good chance that you'll have accidental taps you'll either skip the song or you'll pause it or something will happen and that's not something that you'll do with the airpods pro at least not super easily the galaxy buds pro also offer a lot of the same features that apple can offer with the airpods pro but there are a few catches to all of them if not most of them so let's go down the list first off there's active noise cancellation or anc it's pretty good but honestly it's not anywhere near as close to being good compared to the airpods pro last year the galaxy buzz live offered anc and to me it was a joke now the buds pro have improved on this but it's still just not in the same league as airpods pro the galaxy buds pro have an ambient mode which helps amplify the sounds around you similar to apple's transparency mode so that you can hear your environment better and that's pretty good airpods pro is just a little bit better but it's there and it's a feature that is good if you need it there's also one unique feature that's pretty cool and it's called voice detect it actually turns down the volume and enables ambient mode when it recognizes you speaking it works pretty well it's not going to go off if you just say like a word or two you have to be kind of talking for at least a couple seconds and it works really well and i kind of hope apple can adopt something like this in the future so if somebody starts talking to you or if you start talking to somebody else you don't actually have to take your airpods pro out of your ears it'll just turn it down and put on transparency for you there's also a one tap pairing feature for connecting the galaxy buds pro to a smartphone for this first time which is pretty much the same setup as you would get with air pods and an iphone but it only works with galaxy devices so if you try to do this with an iphone obviously it's not going to work now the galaxy buds have their own spatial audio feature called 360 audio with dolby tracking and i can't tell you if it's any good or not because the software update for it is not currently available for any of the samsung devices that i do own maybe when our samsung galaxy s21 unit comes in we can test that out but right now that feature is just not available the galaxy buds pro can also auto detect and switch sources or devices just like airpods and apple devices but again this feature is only limited to galaxy devices so if you're planning to pick these up and use them with an iphone or another android phone uh well that's not going to work you could also adjust the eq of the galaxy buzz pro inside of the app alongside a bunch of other settings and tweaks that are really cool to have but again that's only available for android there's an ios app for previous versions of galaxy buds but i haven't seen an app available for ios and apparently samsung as of right now has no plans to make an ios app so to really sum it all up these headphones are not for me because of the fit preference and the fact that all of the cool features are really only available for android devices and more specifically samsung devices which is totally fine and it makes a lot of sense apple does that with their devices so why can't samsung do it with their own devices so if you don't care about any of that and you have an android phone you'll get most of the good features via the app and if you plan to use these on an ios device well they connect and that's really it if you're wondering why i haven't said anything about sound quality it's honestly because it's really good i think it's just going to come down to a matter of preference i really don't think there's a huge drastic difference between the two which is very important but you know when it comes to integration with the device that you're going to use that's also almost equally as important so i think the buds pro have a bit of a warmer profile a bit more bass heavy but some people will like that i think they sound fantastic once you get that proper fit if they don't fit your ears you're not going to have good experience whatsoever so yes these sound great but again everything everything else that makes it worth it is reserved for samsung ecosystem people and it makes sense in the past samsung used to undercut apple and price and make some pretty decent headphones and try to make those compete with uh you know air pods and iphone users who just want decent headphones and don't need any of the extra fluff but those earbuds were again we're nowhere near as good as the airpods now that samsung has actually made earbuds worthy of choosing over airpods if you want the company stripped all compatibility with ios which leaves ios heavy users like me to say don't buy them if you're in the apple ecosystem obviously just get yourself air pods or airpods pro you're going to be happy with the way they work with your devices of course i would love to know your thoughts in the comments down below this has been dan with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next videojust last week samsung released its new flagship galaxy s21 smartphone lineup alongside the new phones there's a new set of galaxy buds called the galaxy buds pro which will retail for around 199 the main competition for samsung is obviously going to be apple and more specifically apple's airpods pro because they have sort of the same similar features and they're also around the same price point so that's the two set of wireless earbuds that we're going to compare in this video now i won't make you wait i like doing comparisons these days by just coming right out and saying which one i prefer and this isn't going to shock you it's the airpods pro now please allow me to explain myself because samsung really does have a good pair of headphones here they just aren't for me for starters the fit is far more uncomfortable for me compared to the airpods pro last year samsung released the bean shaped galaxy buds live and although those were the butt of a lot of jokes because of their shape it's actually the perfect shape for my ears the galaxy buds live fit me perfectly they were mega comfortable more comfortable than probably the airpods pro i liked them a lot it's just they didn't really sound super great and then the active noise cancellation was kind of meh but that's besides the point now the galaxy buds pro have a more traditional shape and design but it also requires me to really jam them inside of my ears to get a proper fit and seal which is very very important for headphones like these for many reasons mostly because they will either fall out pretty easily active noise cancellation will pretty much be non-existent or they will sound awful if a proper fit and seal is not achieved luckily there are a few different set of ear tips inside of the box that's going to help you find the right seal and speaking of the box there's a usbc to type a charging cable inside of the box for the case the case is incredibly small as you can see here it's kind of the same height actually it's a little bit taller when you compare it to the airpods pro but it's just not nearly as wide as the airpods pro case there's really nothing crazy going on here except for maybe it's smaller size and it does fit really well inside of your pockets the case also offers around 18 to 20 hours of additional battery depending on whether you have active noise cancellation turned on or if you have it off the galaxy buds alone will give you about five hours of battery life with anc on and then if you turn anc off you'll get an additional three hours giving you eight hours of battery life similar to most galaxy buds there are touch controls on each side of the earbuds uh one tap will play pause double tap to skip triple tap to go back and if you hold down when you press and you'll be able to switch between ambient sound on or off there is a quick charge feature that will give you one hour of listening time with just five minutes of charging uh when you put the earbuds in the case which is right in line with what apple offers with the airpods pro now the airpods pro offer similar functionality through the stem instead of tapping the earbud itself i like that the stem is able to do that a little bit better than the gestures because the gestures are so sensitive that when you actually try to adjust the earbuds in your ear there's a very very good chance that you'll have accidental taps you'll either skip the song or you'll pause it or something will happen and that's not something that you'll do with the airpods pro at least not super easily the galaxy buds pro also offer a lot of the same features that apple can offer with the airpods pro but there are a few catches to all of them if not most of them so let's go down the list first off there's active noise cancellation or anc it's pretty good but honestly it's not anywhere near as close to being good compared to the airpods pro last year the galaxy buzz live offered anc and to me it was a joke now the buds pro have improved on this but it's still just not in the same league as airpods pro the galaxy buds pro have an ambient mode which helps amplify the sounds around you similar to apple's transparency mode so that you can hear your environment better and that's pretty good airpods pro is just a little bit better but it's there and it's a feature that is good if you need it there's also one unique feature that's pretty cool and it's called voice detect it actually turns down the volume and enables ambient mode when it recognizes you speaking it works pretty well it's not going to go off if you just say like a word or two you have to be kind of talking for at least a couple seconds and it works really well and i kind of hope apple can adopt something like this in the future so if somebody starts talking to you or if you start talking to somebody else you don't actually have to take your airpods pro out of your ears it'll just turn it down and put on transparency for you there's also a one tap pairing feature for connecting the galaxy buds pro to a smartphone for this first time which is pretty much the same setup as you would get with air pods and an iphone but it only works with galaxy devices so if you try to do this with an iphone obviously it's not going to work now the galaxy buds have their own spatial audio feature called 360 audio with dolby tracking and i can't tell you if it's any good or not because the software update for it is not currently available for any of the samsung devices that i do own maybe when our samsung galaxy s21 unit comes in we can test that out but right now that feature is just not available the galaxy buds pro can also auto detect and switch sources or devices just like airpods and apple devices but again this feature is only limited to galaxy devices so if you're planning to pick these up and use them with an iphone or another android phone uh well that's not going to work you could also adjust the eq of the galaxy buzz pro inside of the app alongside a bunch of other settings and tweaks that are really cool to have but again that's only available for android there's an ios app for previous versions of galaxy buds but i haven't seen an app available for ios and apparently samsung as of right now has no plans to make an ios app so to really sum it all up these headphones are not for me because of the fit preference and the fact that all of the cool features are really only available for android devices and more specifically samsung devices which is totally fine and it makes a lot of sense apple does that with their devices so why can't samsung do it with their own devices so if you don't care about any of that and you have an android phone you'll get most of the good features via the app and if you plan to use these on an ios device well they connect and that's really it if you're wondering why i haven't said anything about sound quality it's honestly because it's really good i think it's just going to come down to a matter of preference i really don't think there's a huge drastic difference between the two which is very important but you know when it comes to integration with the device that you're going to use that's also almost equally as important so i think the buds pro have a bit of a warmer profile a bit more bass heavy but some people will like that i think they sound fantastic once you get that proper fit if they don't fit your ears you're not going to have good experience whatsoever so yes these sound great but again everything everything else that makes it worth it is reserved for samsung ecosystem people and it makes sense in the past samsung used to undercut apple and price and make some pretty decent headphones and try to make those compete with uh you know air pods and iphone users who just want decent headphones and don't need any of the extra fluff but those earbuds were again we're nowhere near as good as the airpods now that samsung has actually made earbuds worthy of choosing over airpods if you want the company stripped all compatibility with ios which leaves ios heavy users like me to say don't buy them if you're in the apple ecosystem obviously just get yourself air pods or airpods pro you're going to be happy with the way they work with your devices of course i would love to know your thoughts in the comments down below this has been dan with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next videojust last week samsung released its new flagship galaxy s21 smartphone lineup alongside the new phones there's a new set of galaxy buds called the galaxy buds pro which will retail for around 199 the main competition for samsung is obviously going to be apple and more specifically apple's airpods pro because they have sort of the same similar features and they're also around the same price point so that's the two set of wireless earbuds that we're going to compare in this video now i won't make you wait i like doing comparisons these days by just coming right out and saying which one i prefer and this isn't going to shock you it's the airpods pro now please allow me to explain myself because samsung really does have a good pair of headphones here they just aren't for me for starters the fit is far more uncomfortable for me compared to the airpods pro last year samsung released the bean shaped galaxy buds live and although those were the butt of a lot of jokes because of their shape it's actually the perfect shape for my ears the galaxy buds live fit me perfectly they were mega comfortable more comfortable than probably the airpods pro i liked them a lot it's just they didn't really sound super great and then the active noise cancellation was kind of meh but that's besides the point now the galaxy buds pro have a more traditional shape and design but it also requires me to really jam them inside of my ears to get a proper fit and seal which is very very important for headphones like these for many reasons mostly because they will either fall out pretty easily active noise cancellation will pretty much be non-existent or they will sound awful if a proper fit and seal is not achieved luckily there are a few different set of ear tips inside of the box that's going to help you find the right seal and speaking of the box there's a usbc to type a charging cable inside of the box for the case the case is incredibly small as you can see here it's kind of the same height actually it's a little bit taller when you compare it to the airpods pro but it's just not nearly as wide as the airpods pro case there's really nothing crazy going on here except for maybe it's smaller size and it does fit really well inside of your pockets the case also offers around 18 to 20 hours of additional battery depending on whether you have active noise cancellation turned on or if you have it off the galaxy buds alone will give you about five hours of battery life with anc on and then if you turn anc off you'll get an additional three hours giving you eight hours of battery life similar to most galaxy buds there are touch controls on each side of the earbuds uh one tap will play pause double tap to skip triple tap to go back and if you hold down when you press and you'll be able to switch between ambient sound on or off there is a quick charge feature that will give you one hour of listening time with just five minutes of charging uh when you put the earbuds in the case which is right in line with what apple offers with the airpods pro now the airpods pro offer similar functionality through the stem instead of tapping the earbud itself i like that the stem is able to do that a little bit better than the gestures because the gestures are so sensitive that when you actually try to adjust the earbuds in your ear there's a very very good chance that you'll have accidental taps you'll either skip the song or you'll pause it or something will happen and that's not something that you'll do with the airpods pro at least not super easily the galaxy buds pro also offer a lot of the same features that apple can offer with the airpods pro but there are a few catches to all of them if not most of them so let's go down the list first off there's active noise cancellation or anc it's pretty good but honestly it's not anywhere near as close to being good compared to the airpods pro last year the galaxy buzz live offered anc and to me it was a joke now the buds pro have improved on this but it's still just not in the same league as airpods pro the galaxy buds pro have an ambient mode which helps amplify the sounds around you similar to apple's transparency mode so that you can hear your environment better and that's pretty good airpods pro is just a little bit better but it's there and it's a feature that is good if you need it there's also one unique feature that's pretty cool and it's called voice detect it actually turns down the volume and enables ambient mode when it recognizes you speaking it works pretty well it's not going to go off if you just say like a word or two you have to be kind of talking for at least a couple seconds and it works really well and i kind of hope apple can adopt something like this in the future so if somebody starts talking to you or if you start talking to somebody else you don't actually have to take your airpods pro out of your ears it'll just turn it down and put on transparency for you there's also a one tap pairing feature for connecting the galaxy buds pro to a smartphone for this first time which is pretty much the same setup as you would get with air pods and an iphone but it only works with galaxy devices so if you try to do this with an iphone obviously it's not going to work now the galaxy buds have their own spatial audio feature called 360 audio with dolby tracking and i can't tell you if it's any good or not because the software update for it is not currently available for any of the samsung devices that i do own maybe when our samsung galaxy s21 unit comes in we can test that out but right now that feature is just not available the galaxy buds pro can also auto detect and switch sources or devices just like airpods and apple devices but again this feature is only limited to galaxy devices so if you're planning to pick these up and use them with an iphone or another android phone uh well that's not going to work you could also adjust the eq of the galaxy buzz pro inside of the app alongside a bunch of other settings and tweaks that are really cool to have but again that's only available for android there's an ios app for previous versions of galaxy buds but i haven't seen an app available for ios and apparently samsung as of right now has no plans to make an ios app so to really sum it all up these headphones are not for me because of the fit preference and the fact that all of the cool features are really only available for android devices and more specifically samsung devices which is totally fine and it makes a lot of sense apple does that with their devices so why can't samsung do it with their own devices so if you don't care about any of that and you have an android phone you'll get most of the good features via the app and if you plan to use these on an ios device well they connect and that's really it if you're wondering why i haven't said anything about sound quality it's honestly because it's really good i think it's just going to come down to a matter of preference i really don't think there's a huge drastic difference between the two which is very important but you know when it comes to integration with the device that you're going to use that's also almost equally as important so i think the buds pro have a bit of a warmer profile a bit more bass heavy but some people will like that i think they sound fantastic once you get that proper fit if they don't fit your ears you're not going to have good experience whatsoever so yes these sound great but again everything everything else that makes it worth it is reserved for samsung ecosystem people and it makes sense in the past samsung used to undercut apple and price and make some pretty decent headphones and try to make those compete with uh you know air pods and iphone users who just want decent headphones and don't need any of the extra fluff but those earbuds were again we're nowhere near as good as the airpods now that samsung has actually made earbuds worthy of choosing over airpods if you want the company stripped all compatibility with ios which leaves ios heavy users like me to say don't buy them if you're in the apple ecosystem obviously just get yourself air pods or airpods pro you're going to be happy with the way they work with your devices of course i would love to know your thoughts in the comments down below this has been dan with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next video\n"