I used to I love Samsung’s wireless earbuds. They come in all sorts of magical shapes and sizes, with designs that really seemed to embrace the new frontier of fully portable listening devices. Why on earth the brand changed course and started mimicking Apple (badly) for its third generation of wireless earbuds, I honestly can’t say.
The new Galaxy Buds3 look (and largely act) like a Cybertruck version of the standard AirPods, rather than an updated version of the Buds2 that I gave a 9/10 WIRED Recommends a few years ago. They cost more than the AirPods, are even less comfortable, and sound worse.
What’s particularly disconcerting isn’t that Samsung is taking design cues from Apple, it’s that the earbuds they offered were absolutely excellent. The Galaxy Buds 3 sound worse than their predecessors, perform worse than their predecessors, and cost more than their predecessors. They’re not very good at all, even compared to the AirPods (which aren’t very good either).
Back in the box
It gets awkward the moment you start unboxing them: The case is a carbon copy of the rounded rectangular shape you get with the AirPods Pro (8/10, WIRED Recommends), but with a clear plastic top that makes it look and feel cheaper. The case works well, with wireless charging and USB-C so you can set them on a mat by your door so you don’t forget them when you head out the door.
The earbuds themselves look like AirPods that flew to Austin, Texas, with nearly identical rounded plastic top tips that turn into silver triangles as you move toward the tip of the elephant’s trunk. (They also come in white, where they look so much like Apple’s product that you’d probably mistake them if you saw someone wearing them.) There’s a bright red accent on the right earbud (and inside the case) to tell you which earbud is which, which is admittedly a nice addition compared to Apple’s drab white nothingness, but otherwise they look like Cybertrucked AirPods in every sense of the word.
Rounded silver case with clear top next to 2 silver in-ear headphones, all sitting on a wooden surface
Photography: Parker Hall
They’re larger and more difficult to insert than standard AirPods, partly because of their triangular design: gripping a triangle to fit an ear tip is significantly more difficult than gripping a rounded cylinder, making getting them in and out of your ears a test of dexterity.
The same goes for the controls, which use the same tap and swipe controls as the AirPods, except the shape of the earbuds meant I was always messing up how they sat in my ears every time I wanted to adjust the volume or change tracks. Whatever happened to the Buds2’s simple touch controls and surprisingly comfortable design?
Ready to go
The main feature Samsung is pushing for these new earbuds is that they have built-in AI, which lets you use voice commands to change songs, adjust the volume, answer calls, and even do real-time translation. The voice commands work well, but Samsung’s AI-powered translation isn’t great. I asked my wife, who is fluent in Spanish (the language most likely to be used for this here in the US), to speak a few sentences, and the app missed all the context and translated incorrectly. Stick with Google Translate.
The app is also full of all sorts of other useless features. The headphones will, for some reason, remind you if your neck has been bent over for too long. If you’re bent over for so long that you’re experiencing neck pain, I’m not sure a pair of headphones that chirp happily at you is going to solve the problem.
Then there’s active noise cancellation: Since the earbuds have such a poor seal, it’s like putting an air conditioner next to an open window. Sure, ANC does what it can to block out outside noise, but without a physical barrier (like eartips) to block out the world (or placing it through some sort of vent like Apple does with the AirPods Pro and Samsung does with the older Galaxy Buds), its capabilities are limited. All of which is to say: You won’t get silence wearing these earbuds, even with ANC turned up and your music blasting.
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