Given these downsides, is there anything to salvage the Galaxy Buds for a person not already in the Samsung ecosystem? Well, there remain advantages to these earbuds that anyone can enjoy. That lag is less apparent on the Google Pixel and entirely absent when watching anything on a Samsung device. Apple’s AAC is supported, but that doesn’t help the Galaxy Buds keep up with video on an iPhone: there’s an ugly and pervasive lag. Running on a Broadcom chip, the Galaxy Buds lack support for Qualcomm’s AptX or AptX HD, and there’s no LDAC to be found here, either. This is disappointing in light of how much work Samsung has put into the matter, having developed its own scalable codec for audio transmission. Irrespective of the device connected to the Galaxy Buds, they exhibit unimpressive connection range and stability. These are easily Samsung’s best true wireless earphones, but they suffer from a few too many engineering missteps to be considered a serious contender. Well, it turns out that, in fact, the beautiful first impression that these earbuds make isn’t enough. Anyone preordering a Galaxy S10 or Galaxy Fold device gets a pair for free. That physical minimalism extends to the Galaxy Buds case, which is the smallest I’ve come across outside of the floss container that Apple houses the AirPods in.Īs if all of that good stuff wasn’t enough, Samsung also endows the Galaxy Buds with wireless charging and prices them at $129.99, undercutting the AirPods.
Should you like them to be shouty, Samsung also offers them in a canary yellow that matches the Galaxy S10E. Samsung’s Buds are as slimmed down and discreet as any earphones of this kind. That can also be said of the AirPods, except any nearby reflective surface will remind me of their presence on my head. I put them in, and they’re so light that I can forget I’m wearing them. The Galaxy Buds are the most forgettable true wireless earbuds I’ve yet tried. The wait kept going all the way until last month when Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Buds alongside the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Fold reveal. It took a decade and a half, but in 2016, candidates like the Bragi Dash and Apple’s AirPods started surfacing, each of them embodying some sort of physical compromise to accommodate a battery, speaker, and wireless radio into the same tiny enclosure. It wasn’t a complicated fantasy, just my ultra basic Sony buds sans fil, as the French would put it. When I was in high school, shopping for new earphones with a single £20 note as my budget, I used to dream of earbuds without the wire.