Galaxy Buds Live

After months of speculation that the Galaxy Buds+ will be Samsung’s first entry into the world of truly wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation, it became clear that Samsung is working on a completely different product to fill that spot.

Meet the Galaxy Buds Live – truly wireless earbuds with an innovative design and ANC.

Unboxing, design

They come in a simple retail box with a single USB-A to USB-C charging cable, silicone wingtips and the case with the buds themselves.

 

 

The charging case itself is very small – smaller even than the AirPods 2 case. It still holds 500mAh worth of charge in addition to the 60mAh in the Buds Live, and it can be charged both through USB-C and wirelessly. The two buds fit magnetically inside and won’t fall off accidentally.

 

Samsung completely rethought the earbud concept with the Galaxy Buds Live. Some designs bulge outward, others stretch downward, but the Galaxy Buds Live seem to hang on the ear itself. The radical new design required a total horizontal rearrangement of the components. On the inside, we see the 12mm speaker and bass duct on the bottom, an IR sensor and the twin pins for charging.

On the outside, there are three microphones that Samsung uses alongside what it calls a voice pickup unit to enhance voices during calls. More on call quality a bit later on.

The Galaxy Buds Live come in three colors – Mystic White, Mystic Black, and Mystic Bronze, which is the one we have here. This color emphasizes how much the buds look like beans.

 

 

They are smaller than their respective rivals on the market. Their drivers are also smaller, especially compared to Apple’s AirPods second-gen and Pros.

Samsung chose an open ear design for the Galaxy Buds Live, just like Apple’s non-Pro AirPods. Some people prefer this design mostly because of its more comfortable fit – open ear designed buds don’t go as deep into your ear canals and thus have less of a vacuum feel.

That’s in contrast to the Galaxy Buds/Buds+ and AirPods Pro, which use in-ear design. Generally in-ear buds offer much better noise isolation and deliver bass better. Ultimately it’s a personal preference.

 

We tried the Galaxy Buds Live between a few of the people here at HQ and got mixed experience. Some people found the Galaxy Buds Live tricky to fit properly and feeling loose. Others found them a perfect fit. In all cases however the provided wingtips made a big difference for in-ear security.

 

 

Features

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Live can connect to basically any Bluetooth device – Android, iOS and PCs all work fine. Naturally, Samsung has invested some effort to offer even more polished experience on Galaxy phones.

You can get Samsung’s Galaxy Buds app on both major operating systems, but only Galaxy phones will get the quick connect prompt when you open the Galaxy Buds Live case.

The infrared sensors on the inside of the Galaxy Buds Live let them detect if the buds are in your ears and will pause playback if you take them out. This works on any Android phone but doesn’t work on iOS.

 

 

The Galaxy Wearable app is integral to the buds use. From it, you can set up the sound characteristics with six presets – Soft, Dynamic, Bass boost, Clear, Treble boost and Normal – enable and disable the active noise cancellation, issue software updates and choose what tapping on the Galaxy Buds Live does.

A single tap on each bud will pause or resume playback. A double tap will prompt the next song, triple tap the previous one. You can customize what tap and hold does on each bud – it can bring up Bixby, Spotify, increase and decrease volume or activate or disable the noise cancellation.