Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro review: no more AirPods envy | Digital Trends

Stem-based earbuds like the AirPods Pro tend to be comfy because there’s less mass in your concha — and less skin contact. There’s no doubt about it — the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro are more comfortable for longer periods than most stemless earbuds. However, they’re also less stable for all the same reasons. You may need to adjust them more frequently, particularly when working out or running. For many, the extra comfort will be worth the trade-off. But others may miss the stability of Samsung’s previous designs.

I’m disappointed with the eartips selection: three sizes in total feels miserly, and it may prevent people from getting a good fit — especially those who need an extra-small size.

The AirPods Pro’s squeezable, swipeable stems are one of the most innovative things we’ve seen of late in the wireless earbuds world. A pinch of the stem produces an audible click, and when you swipe a finger up or down on its flat portion, you can easily adjust the volume. I’m not surprised that Samsung thought these were both worth copying.

The controls work really well, which I wasn’t expecting given the angular shape of the stems. I find that anchoring the bud with your index finger while pinching with your thumb and middle finger keeps the buds from moving around, but you may not feel the need to do so.

In addition to all of the usual controls for playback, volume, call management, ANC, and voice assistant access, you can optionally trigger Spotify Tap or Samsung Health’s Mindfulness app.

Supplementing all of this are wear sensors for auto-pausing music when you remove either earbud and hands-free voice commands like “play music,” “volume down,” etc. They worked well, and I liked not having to preface each one with “Alexa,” “Hey Siri,” or “Hey Bixby.”

There’s an argument to be made that any earbuds with stems that drop down from your ears look like AirPods. The key is to find ways to take that basic shape and make it your own. With their trapezoidal stems and the available silver finish, I think the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro look great, and I doubt anyone will mistake them for AirPods (the white finish is a different story).

If you really want to make a statement, you can turn on the “blade lights” — slender white LEDs that run down a portion of the stems. Constant illumination, blinking, or breathing (fade in/out), the choice is yours. Personally, I’d prefer not to draw attention to my ears. But I can see a benefit for those who run, especially at night — there’s no such thing as being too visible.

They also pulse when you use Samsung’s Find My Earbuds feature, though I don’t know how helpful that will be when they’re buried in the couch cushions.

The AirPods-like charging case has wireless and USB-C charging, and I like the transparent lid and the flattened bottom, which lets the case stand upright. However, Samsung should have gone full Apple and included a speaker and a lanyard loop — handy additions to the charging case that Apple introduced on the AirPods Pro Gen 2.

In the box, you get a very generous 3-foot USB-C-to-USB-C charging cable. (Most earbuds ship with tiny, 6-inch cables.)

I’ve reviewed tons of noise-canceling wireless earbuds. The ability to kill off unwanted background sounds will vary from model to model, but we’ve now reached a point where even the cheapest buds can do a halfway decent job. Still, the Buds 3 Pro are among the best. My usual testing environments (busy streets, noisy fans, and my local gym) were all brought under control. Podcasts, which are easily disrupted by noise, were perfectly audible — even as loud dump trucks thundered past.

That was with the standard ANC mode. I also tried Samsung’s AI-driven adaptive ANC mode, but it refused to hush loud sounds as much as I wanted. I returned to regular ANC at its maximum setting and never looked back.

Transparency mode, on the other hand, is a different story. Some earbuds do it well, some don’t, and only three brands do it so well that you can barely tell you’re wearing earbuds at all: Apple, Bose, and Sony. Actually, make that four brands — the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro are amazing at transparency too.

The optional auto-switch to transparency mode (or ambient sound as Samsung calls it) when your voice is detected is very handy. It doesn’t always pick up speech instantly, but most of the time, it kicked in after I spoke a word or two, simultaneously dropping the volume of my music so I could have a normal conversation.

There’s also a “siren detect” option within auto-switch. As the name suggests, it will kick into transparency mode if it hears sirens. Surprisingly for my urban setting, I encountered no sirens while using the Buds 3 Pro — but the feature did produce several false positives, usually triggered by similar higher-frequency beeps you may hear when a large vehicle is reversing. Arguably, that’s exactly the kind of sound the feature wants you to hear. But when a truck is s-l-o-w-l-y backing up, half a block from where I’m standing, I think I’m OK with leaving ANC on.

Well-executed transparency on calls is especially valuable — being able to hear your own voice clearly makes all the difference. If you use the Buds 3 Pro with a Samsung phone, your callers will also hear you with hi-definition clarity, thanks to the company’s proprietary Samsung Seamless Codec (SSC). It’s one of the biggest reasons you should use Samsung’s products in tandem. I’ll talk more about SSC in a moment because it also affects audio quality.

Another Samsung AI feature is real-time translation. The actual translation is performed by a compatible Samsung Galaxy phone, but if you’re using the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, the earbuds keep your end of the translation private.

It’s not about secrecy (though depending on the conversation, maybe that’s a bonus) as much as it is about making things more natural. Why should your companion have to listen to their words translated into a foreign language when you’re the only one who needs to hear it?

Samsung demoed the feature for me at the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro launch. It was a bit sluggish and at times it seemed to get confused as to who was talking. But the part I couldn’t figure out was why you needed the Buds 3 Pro for any of it. Earbuds are earbuds, right?

According to Samsung, “audio interpretation is only available when wearing Buds and connected to a Samsung Galaxy smartphone. Interpreter feature is not directly provided by Buds themselves. If Buds are unavailable, the interpreted content is provided on the screen of your Samsung Galaxy smartphone.” So the buds don’t do the translation, but if you want to hear the translation, you need the buds? Yeah, I’m still confused.

It’s fair to say that the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro are a major upgrade from the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. They’re comfier and they have better ANC, better transparency, better audio quality, and better battery life. And hey, don’t forget about those futuristic blade lights.

If you own a recent Samsung Galaxy phone, these new earbuds (once Samsung fixes that eartip issue) are absolutely worth the price.

But without the benefits of Samsung’s Seamless Codec, or the option of spatial audio, the value drops off somewhat for non-Samsung Android owners. They’re still a great set of wireless earbuds, but you’ll also find plenty of other great options, and probably for less money.