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Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Review

Charles TYK

Introduction

The Samsung Galaxy Buds2 is the company’s latest pair of wireless earbuds that were announced alongside the Galaxy Z series. This time around, Samsung has two things in mind when making these earbuds — comfortable design and ANC (Active Noise Cancellation). Yup, it comes with ANC, something that the previous Buds and Buds+ don’t have. I’ve been using the earbuds for a couple of weeks, it’s time for a full review treatment!

Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Specs

Unboxing

Samsung’s unboxing experience is pretty consistent, you get the earbuds in the charging case, USB-C cable, extra ear tips in different sizes, and a user guide.

Design

The charging case of the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 is pretty similar to the Buds Pro, but Samsung has played around with the colors. The case has a glossy white finishing, not easy to notice the fingerprints and scratches after using a long period.

Opening up the charging case, you’ll see a different color inside. My review unit is the Graphite variant, so inside the case is painted in Graphite with matte finishing. The same goes for the earbuds, all in Graphite! There’s an LED indicator in between the earbuds to show the buds’ battery level.

The earbuds look quite different from previous Buds, but it still shares the same design language and you can recognize it is designed by Samsung right away. Samsung made the earbuds more rounded than before and each earbud has 3 mics + VPU (Voice Pickup Unit).

The earbuds will automatically play/pause when you wear them or take them off. When you take off one of the earbuds, the noise cancellation mode will turn off since there is no point to have noise cancellation with one earbud on.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds2 is designed for a comfortable fit made to be worn all day. One way of achieving that is to reduce the weight, each earbud only weighs 5g, which is pretty light. It really feels like I’m not wearing the earbuds, you will definitely appreciate it if you are that kind of person wearing earbuds all day. However, the earbuds don’t come with an IPX7 rating for water-resistant, not a good choice if you are planning to wear them for workouts.

User Experience

The Samsung Galaxy Buds2 comes with the Galaxy Wearable app for Android, which allows you to check the exact battery level of the buds and case, as well as customizing the settings such as the audio mode and more. If you are a Windows 10 laptop user, there’s also the PC Buds Manager app that you can download from Microsoft Store.

Each earbud still comes with a touchpad, which functions as below:

In the Labs section, there’s also an experimental feature, which lets you double-tap the edge of the left earbud to turn the volume down, or the edge of the right earbud to turn the volume up.

The seamless earbud connection feature is also quite useful if you have paired the earbuds with multiple devices. When it is on, you can switch quickly to nearby devices without disconnecting the earbuds or turning on the pairing mode. This feature works with any nearby device that’s signed in to your Samsung account.

Unlike the Buds Pro, the Buds2 doesn’t have the Voice Detect feature. After all, this is not the top of the product line, so expect a few features from the Buds Pro to be missing.

Audio Quality

The Samsung Galaxy Buds2 comes with the ANC feature, it’s not the Intelligent ANC from the Buds Pro. In fact, there are two different features. The ANC feature on the Buds2 is more like the traditional one, which uses microphones and speakers to reduce background and surrounding noises. Unlike the one on the Buds Pro, you can’t set it to High or Low depending on your surrounding.

When switching to the Ambient Sound mode, I can clearly hear the surroundings while playing music. You can actually change the ambient sound volume between low, medium, and high.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds2 still comes with 2-way speakers (sound by AKG), a tweeter for high frequency + a woofer for low frequency. The overall audio quality is quite flat with good enough bass and excellent highs. Vocals are clear, which definitely suits me since I enjoy listening to pop songs. Of course, you can actually change the sound profile in the Equalizer section. Sadly, there’s no custom mode, but I believe most consumers won’t really customize your sound profile unless you are an expert.

Since it’s not the Pro model, it is expected that the Buds2 doesn’t have the 360 Audio feature, which is something like Apple’s spatial audio or Sony’s 360 Reality Audio. I’m actually quite okay with that since I don’t often use this feature.

Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy Buds2 has the same battery capacity as the Buds Pro. Samsung claims that the Buds2 has 5 hours of battery life when ANC is on with 20 more in the case. When ANC is off, you’ll get 7.5 hours of battery life with 29 more in the case.

Based on my usage, I was able to get around 3 hours 15 minutes of battery life on the earbuds with ANC on most of the time. And when putting the earbuds back to the case for charging, the case will use 26% to charge up the earbuds. If I’m doing the math right, the earbuds will get around 15 hours of battery life in total.

Duly note that my usage might be different from yours. I often use the earbuds for Zoom video conferencing and also listening to pop songs.

To charge the earbuds, you put them in the charging case and charge the case via the USB-C port or wireless charging. It’ll take around 2 hours to charge the case from 0% to full.

Final Words

Retailing at RM499, the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 is available in four colors — Olive, Lavender, White, and Graphite. If you think that the Galaxy Buds Pro is out of your budget, then you can consider this. Samsung has hit the sweet spot with the Galaxy Buds2, the earbuds are light and they come with ANC, two important features for many consumers. If you don’t need those features from Buds Pro like Voice Detect, 360 Audio, and IPX7 water-resistant, then the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 is your go-to earbuds!

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