Not as good as AirPods, but very close

Headphone companies have now had nearly two-and-a-half years to try to match the near-perfect simplicity of Apple’s AirPods. 

No one has managed to pull it off yet. But, with its new Galaxy Buds, Samsung has come very, very close. 

On paper, it’s easy to see why: Battery life for the Galaxy Buds tops out at six hours — one hour more than AirPods. And the case, though a bit bulkier than the tooth floss-sized AirPods case, is still slim enough to fit in pretty much any pocket (and is mercifully smaller than the Gear IconX buds).

Better still, the case charges wirelessly (are you listening Apple?!) And, if you have Samsung’s new Galaxy S10, you can use your phone to wirelessly charge the case if you need some extra juice in a hurry, which is almost enough to overlook the fact that the case itself only buys you an extra seven hours of battery life, compared with the up to 19 hours you get with AirPods.

But, at $130, Galaxy Buds are 30 bucks cheaper than AirPods, which have now gone more than two years without an update. And they come in three different colors: white, black, and a bright, bright yellow.

Not as bulky as they look

One of my biggest concerns with Galaxy Buds was how they’d fit in my ears, as the buds are much thicker than AirPods. I’m cursed with the tiny ears of a small child, and I almost always have issues with in-ear buds. Even with smallest ear tips attached, most buds either don’t stay in my ears, are extremely uncomfortable, or both. 

Part of the reason why I always carry a set of wired EarPods in addition to my AirPods is because Apple’s angled design is one of the few that consistently fit well and feel good in my ears for long periods of times. I know this isn’t the case for everyone — plenty of people despise the hard plastic of AirPods — but it’s what works for me. 

So the first thing I did was change out the medium-sized ear tips that come straight out of the box for the smallest tips, which immediately made the Galaxy Buds much more comfortable.

In fact, I was actually surprised at how comfortable they were. Popping them in and out still wasn’t quite as effortless as AirPods — I often pressed the touchpad by accident when putting them in. But the Galaxy Buds stayed snug in my ears for hours at a time. And, because there’s no tip dangling out of my ear, I didn’t have to worry about knocking them out every time I put on a sweatshirt or brushed my hair. 

They did become slightly uncomfortable after a couple hours of solid use — as is the case with most earbuds I try out — but I suspect this won’t be a major issue for people with normal-sized ears.

About that “seamless connection”…

Samsung has also tried to make Galaxy Buds as easy to set up and pair as AirPods. I say tried because unlike Apple, which uses a dedicated chip for instantaneous pairing, Galaxy Buds require you to use an app in order to achieve its promised “seamless connection.” 

Bizarrely, it’s not the Galaxy Wearables app, which lets personalize your settings, but the SmartThings app that enables the iOS-style “connection pop-ups” when you open the charge case. 

It’s not a dealbreaker, but requiring two separate apps and a Samsung account (required to use SmartThings) in order to achieve what’s meant to be a “seamless connection” is a hassle at best. On the plus side, you’re only forced to open the SmartThings app once. You can also opt to just pair them the old-fashioned way in your bluetooth settings.

You will, however, want to the Galaxy Wearables app, which lets you personalize your settings. The app lets you customize the touchpad controls, enable ambient mode, adjust notifications, and fine tune the sound with an equalizer. There’s also a “find my earbuds” feature to help you locate misplaced earbuds.

With the touchpad controls, I appreciated that there’s more flexibility than what you can do with AirPods. A single tap acts a splay/pause control, a double tap skips to the next track or answers a phone call, and a triple tap skips back to the previous track. 

These default gestures can’t be customized, but you can personalize what a long press does for each bud. I opted for “quick ambient sound” on the right, and a Google Assistant voice command (no offense, Bixby) on the left. 

You can also use the app to monitor battery life though, frustratingly, it won’t show you how much charge is left in the case. 

In fact, the only way to judge how much battery is left in the case is via the indicator lights on the the case. A green light means somewhere between 60 and 100 percent, a yellow light 30 and 60 percent, and red 30 percent or less. I guess the red/yellow/green system is supposed to be intuitive, but I really wish Samsung would just put a percentage somewhere in the app.

Maybe this won’t bother other people as much as it annoyed me, but it makes the question of battery life so impossibly confusing I have to wonder if Samsung came up with this strange color-coded system in order to obscure the case’s battery life to begin with (if they did, incidentally, it’d be a very Apple-like move). 

How do they sound?

Another big difference between Galaxy Buds and AirPods: because the Galaxy Buds sit deeper in your ears, you get much more of a noise cancellation effect. This may be a good thing if you’re, say, on a plane, but it can be a bit jarring if you’re used to being able to hear ambient noise around you.

There is an “ambient sound” setting, which is meant to make it easier to hear your surroundings, but I couldn’t discern any noticeable difference between when it was on and when it was off.  Weirdly, enabling ambient sound shortcut from the touchpad does make a noticeable difference — significantly lowering the volume so you can hear what’s around you, regardless of whether ambient mode is enabled.

If that seems more than a little confusing that’s because it is. Put another way: the most effective way to use “ambient sound” is to enable it from the touchpad directly.

Ambient noise weirdness aside, I’ve now spent several hours listening to music and podcasts with the Galaxy Buds and the sound is. .. fine. Compared with my AirPods, the bass is a little thin, even when I tried to boost it with the in-app equalizer, but the mids and highs sounded a bit better to my ear. (Though, as my colleague Raymond Wong pointed out in his review of Samsung’s Gear IconX buds, this is more likely because the in-ear tips create a better seal with your ear than innate hardware superiority.) 

Overall, I’d say the sound quality is about the same as AirPods — pretty good for wireless buds, but these are bluetooth earbuds: don’t expect any miracles.