- Galaxy Buds Plus.
Galaxy Buds Live.
Which one's better?
I don't know.
How about the one that says Pro at the end?
Galaxy Buds Pro.
Obviously the best Pro is good
Unless you're Apple and then you have max.
I mean, if there's anything better than max
then you're in trouble.
Samsung's calling these the--
They're the best.
They're supposed to be the best.
They're $200.
Which right now the Plus are like 110 now
and the Live are like 140 to 160.
So, these are gonna be the most expensive right now
and they are supposed to sound the best
and they're all premium.
Let's get into it. (upbeat music)
Ah, they give you instructions on how to put it in.
We can all use that. (mumbles)
Got the case itself.
This is a nice small case.
I think this is stupid
but two out of three people think
this is a worthy test.
Yeah. Now these aren't Costco jeans
so it might be a little smaller
and tighter than (mumbles).
(groans) If you're wearing Nudies
you can get it in but barely
and I wouldn't recommend it.
It feels like crap.
No wall wart
as a tradition.
USB A to C.
Oh, and here we have the silicon ear tips.
There are four in this box,
two more on the earbuds
for small, medium, large.
They come in three colors.
This is phantom black.
I assume there's also phantom silver
and phantom violet.
So Samsung said that these had the shape of the Live
which is bean-ular
but the inner ear penetration factor of the Plus.
Whereas the Live were really kinda superficial.
They didn't really go in.
And so it's supposed to be a hybrid of those two.
And to me though, honestly,
they really just look like a Plus.
Like, how is this the styling of the Live?
This is not bean-y at all.
(upbeat music)
If I'm putting those in and they're in my ear
compared to--
it's just like a rounded version of this.
Okay. They're not like the Live at all.
There's a few microphones on the outside of this.
There's also, I believe
one of the microphones is behind this perforated part.
Can you see that?
There's a little perforated kinda window
and that is supposed to help as like a wind screen
so that you can be in a windy environment
and have a clear voice during calls.
It's just less exposed to the elements.
And, they should be less exposed,
protrude less from your ear than the Plus did.
So that also would aid
in having a better wind performance.
(upbeat music)
Before even looking at anything
I just wanna comment on how they feel right now.
Everyone's ears are different.
And I know for me, like my left one's different
from my right.
And if a headphone bothers me
it's always in the left.
Right now these don't feel that comfortable.
(upbeat music)
This ear is kinda getting strained.
It's like my ear hole's getting deformed
or something like that.
I like after 45 minutes or an hour
it might hurt.
Wow, your voice sure sounds different
when I pull these out.
These are really (pop) in there.
I'm gonna put on the other ones.
(man shouting)
These are so weird.
Where do they go? (man laughs)
Do they go in like a smiley face
or like a rainbow?
No, go away. (laughs)
No.
Okay, these are very clear and conventional.
Yeah, these slipped right in.
I consider these to be pretty comfortable
and pretty basic.
Are they more comfortable than these ones for me?
(upbeat music)
Yeah. I think the Plus are more comfortable.
The Live are just incomprehensible
and these are somewhere in the middle.
For me.
Your mileage may vary.
Let's do sound after this message from our sponsor,
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I'm enjoying the base.
(upbeat music)
It's not like over present
but it's like kinda nice and low.
There's a high hat in this song.
(man mumbles)
And it's not too grading
or fatiguing right now.
That's nice.
I'm not noticing it.
All right. Let's switch to some songs
that have lyrics and stuff.
Oh, everybody wants to rule the world
by tears for fears.
Classic.
I'm satisfied.
This isn't a review.
This is just like a first look unboxing.
And what I'm gonna say about the sound is
that they are in line with what I would expect
from like, these kind of consumer $200 headphone.
Considering all the other features they have
like active noise canceling and everything,
these like, don't immediately suck.
So. I'm good there.
I wanna to mess around
with the transparency and stuff though
'cause these are active noise canceling headphones.
And unlike the Lives
or which were active noise canceling,
they're more similar to the pluses that are in your ear.
So the problem with these ones was that
because they don't really seal in your air canal
the active noise canceling didn't really do a whole lot.
It just took a little off
but it wasn't the kind of thing
that was gonna help you on a plane ride.
Whereas these, I think probably will.
So let's do some more tests with that.
How do I get into, I guess,
assuming the settings menu,
HD audio.
AAC is the codec we're using there.
Although there is a proprietary codec
from Samsung called Scalable, which these support.
Let's go into the wear app.
The galaxy wear app which I already have,
because I have a phone.
I don't see this
earphone on here.
(man groans) Dang it Bobby.
They're too fresh.
I won't be able to interact with the app
but I can tell you that
I know that in the app you can toggle.
Do you want your active noise canceling high or low?
Do you want the transparency to be at various levels?
I can't fiddle with that now
but what I can fiddle with is the actual touch interface
of the headphones themselves.
So let's see how sensitive it is and how they programmed it.
I'm not even listening to anything right now.
And I'm expecting a single tap
to start playing some 80s music.
(upbeat music)
There we are.
(upbeat music)
Okay.
The second one of those worked.
Then that is just like a really cursory, rapid tap.
So, I getting a 50% success rate on that
I would suggest doing something more deliberate like that.
(upbeat music)
There's about a second of delay.
Press.
Stop.
So you hear a ding
and then it stops.
So it takes a second.
Let's try this end.
Same function.
Pause.
And double-tap.
(upbeat music)
Next track.
Shout by tears for fears.
Let's do a triple tap.
Okay. That went back.
Hold.
Hello?
Oh, okay.
It went 'wow'
and then it turned on transparency.
So I can hear myself more.
Or maybe it--
Hello?
(snaps fingers)
I can't figure if it's transparency or just ANC off.
- [Man] Can you hear anything? - I think that's ANC on.
It made like a positive (mumbles),
like major chord.
I can hear you now.
- [Man] Yeah.
How is it?
I don't think it's transparency mode
because the music is still like the loudest thing.
I think it's just ANC off.
Okay.
Again, this is something that we can't look at
but you can program some of these buttons.
So the touch and hold, you can activate a preset feature.
But by default it launches the noise control feature.
So I was right.
Unfortunately, I'm not able to check out the level
of granularity they give you
for turning features on and off
because we've saw on some headphones,
was it the Razor Hammerheads that were just awesome?
You could just toggle every single thing
to any one of the buttons
that was like completely decoupled.
That would be ideal
but sometimes you don't see that.
Sometimes you see like
with double-tap, you're allowed this or this.
And I don't know why they put you in a cage like that
but I can't evaluate whether or not this one does that.
Because we're too fast.
Oh, another thing that was new with these is
unlike their previous models
and like, I would say,
what the standard is for truly wireless earphones,
these do not have an IPX4 rating.
These have an IPX7 rating.
So, is that these can go underwater
up to a depth of one meter for 30 minutes.
That does not mean that
they recommend you swimming with them
but that's what they're rated for.
The case. No.
Just the earbuds, okay?
Another thing that these things have is
if you have the Samsung smart things app
there's a new thing called smart things find.
I don't think that it's just for these earbuds only.
It implies to many Samsung devices.
But smart things find will help you locate your ear buds
potentially even if they're not on.
Battery life.
Between 18, I believe 28 hours total
depending on whether or not you have ANC on or Bixby on
because these do support Bixby as a virtual assistant.
And as you noticed, I didn't hail any virtual assistant
while I was touching it.
It's via voice.
You say the hot word for Bixby
and you can use Bixby.
If you're not using all that stuff,
you're gonna get more time.
So that's 28 hours total,
eight and 20.
If you are using that stuff,
more like five and 13.
So that is 61 Milliamp Hours on the earbud
and 472 Milliamp Hours in the case.
And of course, as we are used to now
charging for five minutes gets you like, what?
An hour of playtime.
By the way, the reason that these would sound different
or that Samsung thinks they sound quite a bit better
than the Live or even, or these other ones is that
they have a different speaker design.
There's not just one driver in here.
There are actually two drivers.
There is a five millimeter driver for the high end
and an 11 millimeter driver for the woofer. (laughs)
And,
that's 1.5 times bigger than what you found
in the Galaxy Buds Pluses.
So there's just more speaker in there in a earphone
that sticks out from your head less.
They also have a couple Apple-ly features
like multi-device support within the Samsung ecosystem.
Everyone's trying to do this user lock-in thing.
So if you're on your Samsung tablet
you can be watching the tablet and then your phone rings.
It'll switch right onto the headphone
without you having to do anything.
Seamless switching.
They also have a competitor to spatial audio.
That's the thing that we saw on AirPods Pro and Pro Max
where it's supposed to be more like you're watching
in a home theater where let's say you're the TV
and I'm the audience.
My speakers are here.
If someone talks to me over here, the sound stays there.
And I know that my speakers are kind of fixed in space.
Whereas when you're using headphones,
if I look over there
the sound just comes with me, right?
So they have something like this too.
They use a Dolby digital head tracking for that.
And they call the feature a 360 audio.
I'm guessing here,
I think this works on more devices than just Samsung
but they're not ready to say it works
on all Android devices.
So your mileage may vary there.
Okay. So would I recommend these puppies?
I don't have official pricing
but the rumor is that they're $200.
That puts them in the same price tier
as the Razor Hammerheads which I quite liked.
They're Still cheaper than they AirPods Pros.
This isn't a full on review, of course,
but from my like, cursory glance at them
feature wise they have some extras for Samsung people.
Interaction wise they seem like bog standard,
no, like grievances from me.
And sometimes I have them, which is just like
it's such an easy thing to get right.
And they get it right.
It would be cool to have more like, Google assistant stuff.
This is really for Samsung people, I think.
They perform kind of just like standard as a headphone,
but for $200, you might need to be a Samsung person
to push you over the edge.
But yeah, this is a good entry into the marketplace.
So thanks for watching short circuit today, guys.
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