Galaxy Buds 2 review: Little buds, big sound By CNET

The Galaxy Buds, 2 are Samsung's latest pair of true wireless earbuds. They have active noise cancellation, they have sound tuned by AKG, and they have a lightweight design, but are these features everything they're stacked up to be well, let's find out and dive into the review. It feels like Samsung comes out with new earbuds, pretty much every six months. First, we had the buds live, then the buds pro then. Finally, we have the buds 2, which kind of sit right in the middle of those two earbuds at fifty dollars less than the buds pro. The buds too definitely do feel like a lighter, more flexible version of those earbuds, and they come in four different colors, a white and a black which is your standard, color options and then to mix things up a little.

You get a green or a lavender version, which is the version that I've been using in the box. You get the buds themselves, the wireless charging case, an USB, cable and three sizes of interchangeable tips. Each bud weighs 5 grams or 0.17 ounces. Each they support Bluetooth, 5.2, they're, ipx2, water resistant and the case supports wireless charging cosmetic options aside. The buds too, are actually smaller and lighter than the buds pro, and if you're someone who's previously found that a lot of in-ear buds are a little too big and bulky, these actually might fit the bill for me and my slightly smaller than average ears.

I find that they're very comfortable to wear they fit snugly without feeling too tight, and I can definitely wear them for extended periods of time without having any sort of ear fatigue. That being said, if you are upgrading from something like the buds plus well, you might be a little disappointed because these buds do not come with wing tips and those are those bits that go around the earbud themselves to kind of nestle them much more snugly in your ear. I didn't find it to be too much of a problem, but I didn't do anything super active with these, and I definitely wouldn't choose these primarily for a higher intensity workout, but for a light, jog or maybe some light gym use. I think they should be fine. The galaxy wearable app does come with an ear fit test, and this will help you decide which ear tip is the right size for your particular ear shape.

Unfortunately, the galaxy wearable app is not available on iOS, with the buds too. So, if you're an iPhone user. Yes, you can pair these buds with iOS, not a problem within the regular Bluetooth settings, but you're not going to be able to use that galaxy wearable app to be able to change things like your touch panel controls, your equalizer and so on. That's only available on android and on galaxy devices. Let's talk sound quality if you're a fan of how Samsung and AKG tune their audio, especially from previous earbuds.

You will not be too surprised with what the sound profile is like on these particular buds. Overall, they are nice and bright tracks from a range of different genres, sound, nice and dynamic, and there is a lot of bass to these, I'm normally the sort of person that needs to go in and add more bass through an equalizer. But I have to say these have so much bass on the default or the normal profile that it's almost a little too much for me with some particular songs that I was listening to particularly some r b and hip-hop tracks, which are so deep and so booming. I actually had to go in and turn it down a little through one of those equalizer settings. So if you like your bass, these little buds actually have pretty big and booming sound.

Overall, the sound stage is a little more restricted than the buds pro, so it doesn't feel like a lot of the instrumentation has as much room to breathe, but I was not super surprised about that. Just given that these are less expensive than the buds pro. I think they do sound, pretty good for their price. As for noise cancellation, I feel like the buds too, do a fairly good job across a range of different frequencies in blocking out that ambient white noise, but they're not the best for the money, I would say that they did a slightly better job at higher frequencies, say for things like an overhead fan or a heating unit. Those were less noticeable to me than lower more rumbling, constant frequencies say like commuting noise or even traffic noise.

That did tend to come through a little more for my ears. The buds too also have an ambient sound mode. So you can let in some sounds from the external world. So you're more aware of your surroundings. They have three different levels.

You can choose from within the galaxy wearable app, which I really like, although I would recommend only using the highest setting when you are indoors. It's just really magnifies everything when you are outside, and it left me with a bit of a headache because I left it on my accident- all right call and microphone quality time. I'm recording this in the Galaxy Note 20 ultra using pro video mode using the Bluetooth microphone aka, the galaxy but 2 as the microphone, and while this isn't fully representative of the quality of a phone call, I think it gives you some idea of what these earbuds can do. So Samsung says that the buds to have machine learning to block out a range of different background noises, and when I was on phone calls callers would remark. They pretty much couldn't hear any background noise like if I was walking alongside traffic.

They had no idea if I was standing with a noisy fan overhead. Furthermore, they couldn't hear that either, and that was pretty interesting for me, especially because I'm used to taking calls outside all the time and people are like here. You can't hear you, but they did say that my voice was modulated slightly differently when there was a lot of background noise, and maybe you'll be able to hear that example in this particular clip here now. Overall, I found that they were really, really strong for phone calls, especially from the recipients and then also in my end. They sounded perfect as well on computer-based calls say like on the zoom or Google Hangouts, and things like that.

They weren't as strong and people were like. Well, they don't sound as good, but overall it gives you an idea of what these can do, and hopefully this has provided you the sound of silence and my voice. Let's touch on all the other features, as well as the all-important battery life. The buds too have touch panels, as I mentioned, and they're fully customizable in the galaxy wearable app. I really like how you can change one of the settings to be a volume up or down something that more buds are starting to come out with, but I really like that it's on these, and you can also obviously change tracks and also change between active noise cancellation, ambient sound or turning that setting off altogether there's also a lab section within the app for lower latency when playing games, and one accessibility feature that I really like is the ability to use just one earbud with active noise cancellation, so you don't always have to have both in, and they also have automatic.

Switching between galaxy devices signed in to the same Samsung ID you can activate Bixby with your voice. You can also get notifications read aloud in your ear, and you can toggle on the apps that you want to come through within the galaxy wearable app, and you can also find these buzzers' location on a map. Battery life is fairly standard for earbuds. With this kind of feature set, I was able to get around 5 hours and 20 minutes of listening time with ANC turned on. That was just a little extra than the five hours that Samsung stated on the box, but I wasn't listening at 50 volume.

It was probably more like 40. So, of course, the louder you listen, probably the faster they're going to drain at seven and a half hours with ANC turned off that's fairly good, except it's nowhere near as strong as the 11 hours that were on the Galaxy Buds plus. So, if you're looking for the spiritual successor of those in terms of long battery life, you are probably going to be a little disappointed in the buds too. The case itself obviously holds some extra charge. It's 20 hours of total listening time with active noise, cancellation and 29 hours with it off.

So I would get the butts too if I was looking specifically for a set of wireless earbuds that were lightweight with active noise cancellation and good call quality, and I think, if you're upgrading from something like the original Galaxy Buds or the buds plus, you will notice a couple of extra features and some design differences here. That might make it actually really worthwhile to you, and I think that these are actually a better buy than the Galaxy Buds pro, especially at their 200 retail price. So unless you need things like ipx7, water, resistance or 360, audio or adjustable active noise cancellation settings, I think these are the ones to go for, but you've got lots of different earbuds to choose from around the 150 mark, and maybe something like say, the beats studio buds might be a better choice. If you are someone, that's switching between android and iOS quite a lot, they have also fairly effective transparency mode as well. Of course, we've got lots of extra headphone comparisons coming your way here on CNET and on cnet.

com right now. So thanks for watching and of course, if you have any other questions about these earbuds that I did not answer, you can hit me up in the comments. Instagram Twitter, you know same old places. You got my number thanks for watching, see ya.

Source : CNET