The Galaxy Buds are lightweight and easy to wear pair of earbuds with a surprisingly clean and smooth sound quality.
Samsung wants you to buy more than just its Galaxy phones. Over the past few years, the company has expanded its portfolio to keep up with the competition. It announced the Galaxy Home last year as a response to the Echo and Google Home smart speakers. It also launched the Gear IconX, its popular truly wireless earphones to take on the Apple AirPods. And now we have the Galaxy Buds, which are perhaps more worthy to take on the AirPods than ever before.
The Galaxy Buds truly wireless earbuds were launched alongside the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Fold in February. Samsung has now brought them to India at a price of Rs 9,990, which make the Galaxy Buds more affordable than the Gear IconX, as well as competition like the Apple AirPods and Bose SoundSport Free. The Galaxy Buds are a lightweight and easy to wear pair of earbuds with a surprisingly clean and smooth sound quality. We can say this with some surety after using the Buds for over a week.
The Galaxy Buds sit comfortably inside the case thanks to magnetic pins on the underside of each earbuds. I do wish there was a firm magnetic pull that tells me the buds are placed properly inside the case, but I’m nitpicking here. The earbuds are smaller compared to most other truly wireless earphones. This is good because you won’t feel the earbuds sticking out of the ear uncomfortably. Since the Buds are made up of plastic, they are extremely lightweight and are easy to wear for long sessions.
I used the earbuds while commuting to work, in office and I often forgot that they were in my ears. It’s as lightweight as the AirPods, but the fitting make the Buds feel more comfortable. There is no stem that protrudes outside uncomfortably and the soft silicone eartips sit snugly inside the ear without causing strain. You get both winged and non-wingtips with the box – the latter would come in handy if you’re going for a run, but I had no trouble using either of them for running. The Buds are also IPX2 rated so you won’t have to worry about sweat damaging them.
The triangle-shaped translucent plastic cover on top acts as a touchpad that allows you to perform certain actions with a simple tap. By default, a single tap will pause and play a song while a double tap will play the next song or answer/end a call, and a triple tap will go the previous song. You can touch and hold to activate Google Assistant/Bixby/Siri by default. In the Galaxy Wearables app for Android, you can assign the “touch and hold” function on both the earbuds to voice command, quick ambient sound or to lower volume.
The touchpad is quite intuitive and responsive. I do wish Samsung allowed for a swipe function to increase or decrease the volume, but it’s not something I missed a lot. Enabling Ambient Sound will allow you to listen to sounds in your environment, and you also get a Voice Focus option in the Wearables app that can be enabled in case you want to hear people talking. I personally found enabling Ambient Sound to be quite distracting and annoying, and would much rather remove the Buds if I need to hear something or someone talking.
Even with the ambient sound disabled, you’ll still be able to hear external sounds if there’s no music playing.
