Samsung - Galaxy Buds+ True Wireless Earbud Headphones - Black

Short version: These are worth getting, but they need some EQ to get them to sound their best. They are comfortable, lightweight, and the case has a small footprint. The features are great for this price point. Long Version I'm an android, Galaxy Note 9 User. With some tweaking these can sound amazing. As far as features go, these ticked all the boxes for me. Those boxes are wireless charging, independent earbud use, touch controls, pass through hearing, and fins/wings to hold them in ear. You'd be surprised at how many true wireless earbuds that list eliminates, even ones that are supposed to have better sound. Aura Blue looks amazing in person. The case is sort of metallic in color and it is hard to photograph. The pictures on the website and even on the box don't do it justice. They are very deep blue in person. As soon as I saw these I wanted them. The buds themselves have a mix of gloss for the touchpad, and matte for the buds. They're not as slippery as the black version which I really like. The fins and eartips could use some extra sizes such as extra large and extra small. There are a wide variety of ear cartilage shapes and the more options the better. Speaking of sound, these sound very flat and neutral with stock settings. These have a dual driver setup with one dedicated toward the low end/bass. However, your first impression will be, "where's the bass?" Instead of being tuned bass heavy, they are tuned relatively flat. Still, due to the dedicated bass driver, they can handle heavier bass settings in post EQ processing. I'm glad these are not tuned bass heavy but this leads to my first gripe. The EQ in the wearables app is straight up garbage. It is lacking in any real control. The presets do not highlight the capabilities of the drivers. The "Dynamic" setting sounded the best on the original Galaxy Buds, but in the Buds+ it created a very annoying harsh sound in the upper frequencies. It made "S" sounds in vocals too sibilant (think of a snake hiss sound), same thing with high hats. I found leaving it on normal or soft sounds best, then I EQ in two, that's right, two other locations. If you are on android and you have your music on your device as opposed to streaming it, you NEED to get the app Poweramp. It has a very robust EQ that supersedes the phone's global EQ. On Samsung phones, the default system wide EQ will lower your volume if you boost a frequency higher than one "tick", PowerAmp mitigates this. I add bass and boost upper mids with powerAmp. This thickens the low end and makes vocals and guitars extra clear. The second app I use for EQ is powerEQ. This allows me to access another level of bass that triggers a sub bass subwoofer type of low end that is very pleasant. I add a few points of bass there, a little bit of surround, and here's the most important part: I add gain to the signal. This gain give you back the volume you use from boosting the bass signal in either powerEQ or the android global EQ (if you're not using power amp) With this combination of EQ tricks the galaxy buds + feel like a clean platform for you to shape to your liking. This could ALL be avoided if Samsung gave us a 10 band graphic EQ or even better a parametric EQ. One can only hope. If you don't want to bother with those apps, make sure you at least turn on Dolby Atmos if you are on galaxy phones, use the advanced sound tuning (the one that gives you the hearing test) and it will boost a bunch of frequencies for you. Bottom line, post processing is your friend. My 2nd gripe was the battery life of the case. I went through 3 pairs of galaxy buds (two of them through amazon) because the case would drain very quickly. What was happening is the buds would reach 100% charge. Then for no good reason one would drop to 99% and the case would do its thing to charge it to 100% again. This loop would happen several times until the bud settled. For example. Using the buds for an hour would leave them at around 90% battery. The case would be at 100% and drain to about 89 to get the buds back to 100%. I would check the battery and every 20 minutes I would lose a few percent until the case battery would settle at around 67-70%. All to bring back about an hour's worth of charge. Ridiculous! It has to be a bug where the case thinks one of the buds is not fully charged. Anyway, I returned two pairs to amazon and decided to go for these because of the color and I figured Best Buy would have a different batch that might not be affected by what i'm calling a bug/defect. So far I'm right. The Aura Blue color have not drained and it looks like i'l be getting closer to the 11 hours than the 5 I was getting before. If it starts happening to these I'll update the review. Due to this flaw I made sure I got the extended warranty. If this is how it starts, I can't imagine where battery life will be in a year or so. Battery life of the earbuds themselves is stellar. I left the volume at 50 and let music play until they both died. They lasted for 12 hours. Ambient mode was off, and I wasn't using the touch pads. I literally left the buds on my desk playing music. I'd pick them up every so often to make sure sound was still coming out of them. In real world usage it will be less than 12 hours because of volume, ambient mode , and touch pad use. Ergonomics are good. I Like the touch pads and I like that you can lock them. I lock them when I work out so that when I wipe my sweat I don't accidentally trigger a pause/volume/ whatever. I wish you could use gestures instead of taps. It would be cool to swipe up and down for volume, and left and right to change songs or activate voice assistant etc. Call quality is almost excellent. It is not as good as speaking directly into your phone. It is a slightly softer presentation than that. However it is worlds better than the old Galaxy Buds and even some over ear headphones I've used. These do not sound muffled and they do a pretty good job of isolating your voice from background noise. No one I've been on a call with has asked if i'm using headphones or asked me to repeat things. Lack of noise cancelling is not an issue for me. I think these do a great job of isolating external sounds and once the music starts I can't really hear anything. I had these and the Sony wf sp800n at the same time. The noise cancelling on those was only ok. It dulled low frequency noise but introduced a bit of hiss and you could still hear high frequency constant noises. For example the hum of the air conditioners compressor was muted, but the chirp of its fan was not. These isolate enough noise that it feels like wearing earplugs. So if you're going to be crossing the street you should probably use ambient mode. Personally noise cancelling is not a must for me, if it is for you then its omission will be a deal breaker for you. Final Thoughts: My perfect Galaxy Buds would have swipe gestures for the touch pads, a 10 band parametric eq, and a bigger battery for the case. Other than that I think these are a solid buy. I've attached screen shots of my power amp, powerEQ and wearables settings.

When I first unpackaged the EarBuds so surprised by how easy it was to connect the buds to my phone. All I had to do was connect once and every time I opened the case it would automatically connect. I was messing with the Wear app and I passed by the ambient mode section so I tested each one individually, and really liked that I could still hear what I wanted t hear to I went with the medium setting of course that is what I prefer. The part of the Buds that had me in aww was the touch controllers they are very sensitive to touch and I love I can customize the touch with the Wear app. In all I am very satisfied with the purchase that I made. : )

I’m a runner, and I have a hard time finding earbuds that stay in my ear without having to constantly adjust them. These are hands down the best pair of earbuds that I’ve ever used when it comes to running. They fit in my ear snuggly and block out enough noise when I need them to so I’m not distracted. I use them with my iPhone 11 Pro Max and have no issues with connectivity.

I only bought these originally because my Jaybird Vista earbuds broke and needed to wait for them to send me a replacement. During the wait I needed earbuds for work so I bought these. Let me add that I bought these galaxy earbuds almost 2 years ago and the jaybird vistas that came in the mail are still brand new in packaging nearly 2 years later. Only thing I miss about jaybird is the added bass. Besides that these galaxy buds work flawlessly with my iPhone. Battery lasts 5-6 hours in each earbud. That’s nearly 80% of my shift covered by one ear bud lol. If my phone rings and I don’t have earbud in I yank earbud out of case and within a second or two it’s connected to call. I have zero tolerance for crappy electronics so I personally give these earbuds 5 stars. No regrets. I posted pics. They’re worn out because they’re 2 years old.

When I first tried the original Galaxy Buds, they were a revelation to me because they were the first true wireless earbuds I ever had. I have since owned and used different over the ear noise cancelling headphones, and true wireless earbuds with noise cancelling. However, I still found myself very excited to try out the new Galaxy Buds+ and so far here are my thoughts: WHAT THESE DO WELL: - The portability and ease of use remain the greatest quality of the Galaxy Buds line. The Buds+ case is so small that they can easily go in your pocket or throw them in your bag without being too bulky. After the initial set up (which is quick), all I had to do is flip open the case and they popped up on my Galaxy S10+ which was nice. - The design of the Buds+ themselves are once again discrete and out of the way. Everything is self-contained with nothing that sticks out away from the Bud and I think that is the way these true earbuds should be designed to look! - Another thing these maintain are the Wireless charging and USB-C charging interface. Both are very forward thinking and make it easy to charge them with the rest of your USB-C products. - The sound is really a great step up for the Buds+ headphones! You can tell there is better clarity and deeper bass than the original Buds. Overall I am very impressed with the audio immersion these supply while being in a such a small package. - Lastly, the Buds+ are excellent workout headphones! Seriously they never pop out no matter if I’m running, walking, at the gym, or playing sports. Really they work well in any environment. WHAT THESE ARE MISSING: - The biggest feature the Buds+ are missing are Active Noise Cancelling (ANC). I thought for sure Samsung would add this feature to the Buds+ given that other companies have done with same with their true wireless earbuds but I understand that Samsung wanted to maintain the small design and improve battery life in exchange for no ANC. - That being said, I compared the Buds+ to more expensive true wireless earbuds with ANC and you can definitely tell the difference in the two. However, in my opinion as of early 2020, ANC in true wireless earbuds are nothing compared to that of ANC in over the ear style headphones. Sure it creates a vacuum affect but when you are not playing music it does not drown out sound that much. - Other than that, these headphones really have everything you would want in a pair of true wireless earbuds. GALAXY BUDS VS GALAXY BUDS+ - The main question I suspect people will have are: why would I buy these over the original Galaxy Buds? Yes, the two devices largely look the same besides some minor cosmetic changes. Still, there are four main reasons why you should choose these over the original Buds: Better Sound Quality, insane battery life, improved calls, and Apple Compatibility. - As stated above, the sound is a much needed improvement to the original Buds. I used the Buds for their portability and ease of use, knowing the sound was just fine. Now I will use the Buds+ knowing that they can perform so much better and will be that much more enjoyable to use. - The battery life is not even a competition. The Buds+ have 11 hours of listening on one charge plus the case provides an additional full charge meaning its 22 hours total. The Original Buds had 6 hours per charge and 13 hours with the case. - The Buds+ also have 3 total microphones compared to the Buds 2 microphones. I have definitely noticed better call quality while using these which are a huge plus for me because I love using the Buds+ for calls. - Lastly, Samsung released an Apple iOS app for the Buds+ which make them much more useful when connecting them to an Apple device. That might not be super useful to some of you, but I think it's always better to have more compatibility than less. BOTTOM LINE: - After a week or month of using the Galaxy Buds+ I believe they will quickly become your go to earbuds. Sure you may get better sound out of more expensive headphones or noise cancelling earbuds, but you will not get the do it all utility of the Buds+ at this price point anywhere else. They sound great, have nice call quality, are simple to use, will last forever, and can be used anywhere you need to use headphones. The Buds+ will once again be the only headphones I use everyday and I think it will be for you too.

These earbuds are for sure 5 star buds ! They sound excellent, they fit beyond great, they just cling to your ears, I've never had 1 fall out ! I've never used them for making/receiving calls so idk on that part. But I love the bright red, the slim case and the killer sound and fitment seals the deal for me. Hands down bestbuds I've ever had. I see a lot of people asking .. Yes the are compatible with pretty much everything. (iPhones, laptops, tablets etc brand don't matter) The MSRP on them is a little high, but I got them on a good sale so can't complain a bit. Definitely recommend them !

I LOVE THESE THINGS, don’t tell me waterproof because I will test it out, I’ve put these in the pool and showered with them. I love the cycle or jog in the rain, and my music never stops, I’m not really big on sound quality but it works great to my ears. Phone calls have gotten better then earlier models. I have everything Apple- phone, watch, tv, pad, MacBook, HomePod, but when it comes to headphones Apple can’t beat the control I have with these. Play, pause, skip, rewind, volume up, down, Siri- full control.

Pairs easily 1st pair then I had a problem had to exchange it for.a new pair. 2nd pair didn't pop.up on my Bluetooth I asked politely if 1 of the Geek Squad guys could help after they finish with other customer. They was very polite, patient & professional. Helped me to.pair.my headphones in under 10mins. Love you can choose different sound.methods in wearable system. Another great feature you can block out the world around you. While in supermarket put.on ambient sound listen to headphones & your surroundings If someone says excuse me cause they're physically disabled. Stays In place in my ears unless I put them in incorrectly. Beeping sound lets you know when battery is low on headphones. Another great feature headphone locator beeps until you find rhem