The “no shortage of truly wireless earphone choices” we’re always talking about expands in September, as Samsung readies a new flavour of its ANC options.
We’ve all seen cords cut and earphones go wireless, but the feature set doesn’t always expand that much. Without cords, our heads can move unencumbered, while battery life is improving in leaps and bounds in the latest generation of truly wireless earphones.
There are other features popping up in the world of truly wireless earphones, covering water resistance and app support, but the newest earphones can go beyond that, as high resolution sound arrives alongside more widely supported spatial audio.
That’s some of what Samsung is saying is coming in the latest generation of its Galaxy Buds Pro range, a style of noise cancelling truly wireless earphones we’ve seen in the first generation last year, but now has a sequel on the way, the Galaxy Buds2 Pro.
The latest pair aims to make the design a little more compact, while updating the tech inside, making it more than just an iterative update, but something with some real meat and guts. Given the strength of competition from Sony’s WF-1000XM4 and Sennheiser’s Momentum TW3, it’s pretty easy to see why, and that’s before mentioning Apple’s AirPods Pro.
To compete with those three, Samsung will be supporting 24-bit high-res audio, something that isn’t entirely new, but will be handled for Samsung’s earphones, likely in a similar way to how the recent NuraTrue Pro is getting wireless 24-bit sound, as well.
Samsung hasn’t quite said much about what the tech is doing, but we’d hazard a guess it may have to do with Samsung’s new phones foldable Galaxy, which is also launching alongside.
And that’s not all. While Apple and Beats currently offer head-tracked spatial audio for folks in the Apple Music world, they now have some competition, with Samsung adding head-tracked 360 degree sound, even if the company has stopped short in saying if services will be able to send a 360 sound or if the Samsung software will deliver a representation.
The latter is likely, much like how Apple Music can upscale any music into 360 degree spatial surround, especially given only a handful of services support 360 degree spatial audio, with Spotify — arguably the world’s most popular music service — not being one of them.
However, with Apple Music on Android, it could just bring the coolness of head-tracked spatial to Android, something Android owners can’t experience yet, even if Apple Music exists on the platform.
Samsung is also including an updated approach to active noise cancellation in the Buds2 Pro, but what it means, we’re not entirely sure. We’d expect improvements to the active noise cancellation analysis, while the battery life has jumped to 30 hours maximum with the case, as well.
Locally, the Galaxy Buds2 Pro look to be fairly competitive, hitting a local price point of $349 when they launch in September. Given the competition, it’ll be interesting to see how these stack up.
