Samsung Galaxy Buds3 reviewed: an angular fumble

Offering a distinct design with angles to spare, Samsung’s Galaxy Buds3 aims to offer a pair of AirPods for Android owners. Does it succeed?

Design and features

Appearing like an angular take on the AirPods, there’s clearly no mistaking the Galaxy Buds 3 for anything else.

The angles are definitely… different… with Samsung going the opposite way from the typically organic slick and smooth plastic to something more sharp and segmented.

The Buds3 clearly have a style all their own, though you might join the dots a different way, recalling the Tesla Cybertruck and its overly awkward edges, a design this reviewer isn’t a fan of. Some might love the modern interpretation of The Homer car, and that’s fine — each to their own — but we’re not sure they belong on something made to go inside the ear.

Inside that angular plastic body, there’s a speaker, touch panel for the controls, several mics, and a clear marking for what is left and what is right: a blue line with the letter “L” on the left, and a red line with the letter “R” on the right. No way to get these confused.

Technically, there are three mics per ear, support for noise cancellation, spatial sound, water resistance, as well as a few other sensors, including an accelerometer, gyroscope, pressure sensor, and proximity sensor, the combination of which likely extends to the spatial head tracking and auto-pause features the earbuds support.

And make no mistake: these are definitely earbuds because they lack the silicone tips you’ve seen with every other pair of earphones prior.

They’re technically more like Apple’s AirPods, only made by Samsung.

In-use

We probably need to state something up front before we get into this review: tip-less earbuds have never been a favourite of this reviewer. They had a time, but now that manufacturers can get a proper seal with tips, they match a specific style of listening, and it’s one not everyone likes.

Standard tip-less earbuds have a very “love it or hate it” kind of connection with people. Some people love them, but not everyone. Officially called an open or semi-open earbud, they let more air in than the closed type with tips, largely because of a looser fit without a tip.

As such, they’re not always shaped to fit every ear, and tend to fall out of many, and even finding that delicate balance between staying in all the time and staying in when you have to touch the controls is a vibe too difficult to look past. And that’s before you discount how much sound they let in and out. It’s a thing.

That’s not to say that good tip-less open earbuds can’t be found.

Apple makes a great pair in the AirPods 3, and Nothing’s take on the category was surprisingly solid. Apple also has a new pair just around the corner designed to fit better in the AirPods 4.

Samsung’s take on this area is less comfortable than we expected, especially for a pair that was, as the company puts it on its site, “crafted based on 3D ear data collected from a computational design tool to check for wearability”.

Hmm. We’re not so sure, largely because while they’re fit, they’re never comfortable. The Buds3 sort of hang there rather uncomfortably, unsure if they’re going to fall out when you touch the stem or simply walk.

To Samsung’s credit, they don’t fall out when you walk or twist your head every which way. They are stable. But they’re by no means comfortable, and the question of whether they’re going to stay is a lingering thought largely because they never feel stable, and every time you touch that angular stem to control the buds, it only adds to the problem.

With the Galaxy Buds 3, usability and comfort isn’t something we feel has been addressed. All the 3D ear data in the world, and one ear definitely felt better than the other, but neither felt comfortable or stable the entire time using the earbuds.

We may not be fans of earbuds compared to earphones, but using the Galaxy Buds3 wasn’t the best experience we’ve had with earbuds prior. They just don’t feel great.

You do get the occasional extra feature, such as neck stretch reminders, as well as some features that need a Samsung phone, including language translation, but we’re not sure these are worth the discomfort.

They’re just not a pair we want to wear.

Performance

Regardless of whether they feel good or not, the performance is something worth talking about, so let’s do that.

As usual, we’re testing this pair with the Pickr Sound Test, which you can always listen to for yourself with your own pair. That starts with electronic, and a greeting of acceptable sound albeit with slightly reduced bass unless you jam these earbuds all the way in.

Our listening experience largely left us in the looser style, because that was comfortable, and the sound was fine, too.

Ariana Grande’s “Into You” was bright and bubbly, but lacked the punch in the bottom end. You could hear some of the bass, but the presence was lost in translation, and that was much the same in Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk”.

Heavier bass was totally missing, such as the guttural sound in FKA Twigs’ “Two Weeks”, which is typically a solid test of a speaker’s ability to nail the lows. Samsung didn’t quite get close.

While the hefty bass isn’t there, the Buds3 earbuds sound fine if you can manage to jam them into your ears without causing you discomfort. If you instead just keep them there hanging slightly loosely — which is far more comfortable — the quality sees the bass clearly reduced, with the focus on the mids and highs.

There’s also the matter of how they sound inside and outside, particularly when there’s noise around you.

When you’re inside, the sound is definitely better, thanks to there being a lack of other sounds around you. Outside, however, and your ears are competing for volume and quality with the outside world due to that whole openness vibe.

Overall, if you forgo comfort, the Galaxy Buds3 are a decent listen, and if you prefer comfort, they’re much brighter than that decent listen. They also sound better when you switch the extra features off, which colour the sound differently.

Noise cancellation

One of those features that changes the audio is noise cancellation, because strangely the Galaxy Buds 3 do support noise cancellation.

You might regard our comment as odd because most premium earbuds include active noise cancellation as a standard, except open audio options do not. In fact, much like how water and electricity typically don’t mix, neither does an open sound.

With an open sound, the air moves freely in your ears and you can hear the outside world. That is largely the point. Understandably, this prevents the isolation aspect of noise cancellation from doing its job, and you’ll find much the same with these earbuds, too.

Instead, we found noise cancellation cuts the soundstage slightly, removing even more bass from what you end up listening to.

In fact, somewhere between the awkward fit and the fact that the Buds3 are entirely open, the ability to cancel out the world ends up being a half-baked effort best left off.

Spatial audio

The Galaxy Buds 3 also technically support spatial audio, but it’s not the kind that handles a native Dolby Atmos track from what we can tell.

Rather, our testing with Spotify and YouTube Music on Android showed that Samsung’s treatment was more like how Bose handles it in the QuietComfort Ultra Buds: tracking your head inside the stereo track you normally hear.

Samsung’s experience with the Buds3 wasn’t quite as fast as what Bose has managed, but it was relatively snappy, picking up on our head movements, even if it didn’t offer much in the way of tweaking or customisation.

Battery

At least you’ll find a decent amount of battery life, with up to 6 hours per charge with the noise cancellation off and up to 5 with it on. We’ve largely established the ANC is rather pointless on, so just leave it off and get your six hours, and be done with it.

The case supports almost another five charges, resulting in 30 hours all up with noise cancellation switched off, which is decent, but also largely normal these days, too.

At least you get a case with wireless charging, which is something, meaning you have both USB-C and Qi wireless to recharge the case.

Value

Priced at $299, the Galaxy Buds3 can feel a little overpriced for what you get: a design that’s hardly inspired, even if the sound is totally fine for the style being offered.

In fairness to Samsung, the Buds 3 do technically match the price of Apple’s latest AirPods 4, which also feature noise cancellation, but also come from a tried and tested (as well as fairly trusted) established base of consistent hardware design.

The Galaxy Buds 3 goes in a new direction for Samsung, and it’s one we’re not confident the company has nailed.

What needs work?

So what needs work? We’ve already spoken about the price, the comfort, and even the fact that they feel they’re always going to fall out.

Now let’s talk about the case: because Samsung went with a design that has so many angles, fitting the Buds3 back into the case can be an awkward fumble where they slip and don’t go in, resulting in wasting time.

We’ve reviewed a lot of earphones and earbuds, and in that time, the process was fairly simple: drop the buds in, move on with your day. Fine, all good.

The Galaxy Buds 3 seem more awkward than they should be, like a square peg in a triangular hole, which is a surprisingly more apt analogy than it should be. You have a specific shape to match the magnetic earbuds into, and try as you might, it doesn’t always work. It always feels like a fumble, and sometimes they might even fall to ground.

All of this just rounds out a design that is almost intentionally square, as if Samsung is trying something different for the sake of being different without regards to whether it works or not. It doesn’t. It feels like a back pedal, to be honest, and doesn’t help make the case for why you would pick these earbuds over something else.

Galaxy Buds3 vs the competition

There are clearly plenty of earphones out there for the Galaxy Buds 3 to compete against, and just so much to choose from if you’re willing to use a tipped earphone instead of a tip-less open earbud.

If you stick with the open variety of earbuds, you have a choice between a pair of Shokz OpenFit models, the unusual ring-driver of the Sony L900 LinkBuds, the excellent but very distinct Bose Ultra Open, and of course Apple’s AirPods, which may not work as well on an Android device.

That’s not a lot of choice, clearly.

But if you don’t mind opting for a tip, the choice gets significantly better. Almost any pair around the same price point is going to be better than what we experience in the Galaxy Buds 3, thanks in part to the active noise cancellation actually getting the chance to work as noise cancellation. Your ears will be sealed, so the technology can work.

Consider great options in the $299 Beats Fit Pro or the equally-priced Google Pixel Buds Pro, or even saving money in the $249 Bose-tuned Motorola Moto Buds+ or the $199 Sony LinkBuds S. It’s not as if there aren’t option out there, many of which are better.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

The problem with the Galaxy Buds 3 is that there aren’t many great reasons to pick these earbuds over something else. Anything else.

There are heaps of great earphone choices for folks out there, particularly those owning an equally great phone in the Android ecosystem. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is a great phone, as is the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel 9 Pro Fold. And there are plenty more.

And while the Galaxy Buds 3 essentially match those phones as being high-end and capable earbuds for equally high-end Android phones, they’re just not up to scratch.

The version with tips could be better. Honestly, we hope they are (they even have lights!). But for the little going for these earbuds, there are just too many things against them.

They’re a bit of an angular fumble for Samsung. We wouldn’t wear these Buds on the day to day if we had to. There are just so many better options.