I’ve given the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro some time, living with it as my daily driver. From music and entertainment to answering calls and having conversations, these earbuds will serve the layman in his day-to-day life, more so if their primary device happens to be a Samsung smartphone.
If you’re an audiophile or wireless earbuds sommelier, however, there are some caveats or rather, steep prices that come with owning these particular pair of TWS earbuds.
What Am I Looking At?
Out of the box, you get the Buds3 Pro, earbuds and charging case. Along with it, you get a USB-C cable for charging the earbuds, plus two more pair of eartips in different sizes: Small and Large.
The casing itself has a transparent cover, providing a view of the earbuds. It’s an aesthetically pleasing sight, seeing the LED strips that are integrated into the spines briefly light up whenever you open or close the lid.
Design-wise and I’ve stated in the past, the engineers and design team that designed the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro clearly drew inspiration from the Apple AirPods Pro 2, albeit with some very sharp angular differences. To be fair, the stem design isn’t a look exclusive to Apple and in this case, it adds that futuristic air to the overall theme. Moving on, the USB-C charging port is located at the base of cradle but honestly, I don’t really see why Samsung couldn’t just have it built into the back.
What’s Good About It?
The Buds3 Pro have quite possibly one of the best applications of ANC and Ambient/Passthrough Mode I have ever used. When ANC is active, the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) isn’t too strong and feels just nice. The Passthrough mode feels very natural to the point that you can forget that you’re wearing the earbuds.
By default, the controls scheme on the earbuds are simple and fuss-free. Haptic feedback from squeezing the back of the stems indicates whether you’re turning on ANC or Passthrough mode, repeating or skipping forward to the next track, and playing or pausing your the content you’re listening to. I also like that you can control the volume levels simply by stroking either stem up and down.
As my daily driver, the Buds3 Pro last an average of six hours with ANC turned on, and closer to eight hours if the function is turned off. The casing itself carries an additional 26 hours, giving you a total average of 32 hours if you’ve turned on ANC. You’ll also be pleased to know that Samsung has fixed the brittle eartip issue that initially plagued the Buds3 Pro. It’s still held together by a clip design and you still need to exert a little bit of force to pull it off, but at least the silicon still stays glued to the end.
In terms of its performance, I’ll start by saying that sound staging on the Buds3 Pro are impressive. In tracks like See The Light by Stephen Sanchez, the singer’s voice stands out, each pluck of the banjo’s strings is really clear, as is the underlying beat from the bass drum. With Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On by Edwin Starr.
Overall, these earbuds sound…bright, and there, my dear readers, is where my problems with them lie.
What’s The Catch?
When I said that the Buds3 Pro are bright, I mean they sound unnaturally bright. The highs, mids, and crashes sound like they are purposely and artificially being pumped up, to a point where listening to anything on these earbuds at volumes beyond 60% hurts my ears. At 70% and beyond, the pitches and crashes feel as if they’re using my eardrums as punching bags. I say artificially because, despite these flaws, there is no sign of these things breaking and, oddly enough, other elements and pitches such as vocals and acoustics sound flat.
A perfect example of this issue can be heard when you play The Eagles’ 1994 MTV recording of Hotel California. I swear, I have neither felt nor heard guitar plucks that sharp, Don Henley’s voice sounds shrill, and even the lows of the percussions being brought centre stage as if it was part of the highs and mids. Another example can be heard in Stacey Kent’s La Venus De Milo; the strums of the bass are completely drowned out and Stacey’s vocal is simply just brought out to the very front of the stage. That last part can also be said with the track Who Needs Friends by Royal Blood, which is simply a track full of rhythmic drums and bass beats.
A final example would be the entire Witcher 3 Wild Hunt soundtrack, especially those with vocalists of Percival Schuttenbach shouting at the top of their lungs. When they start belting, the earbuds’ clear sound signature somehow manages to raise the octaves to what I can only deem as unsafe levels. Oh, and that’s with the volume set between 50% and 65%.
Mind you, this sound signature is the Buds3 Pro’s default, out-of-the-box setting. There are EQ presets available in the Wear app but be warned: the Balanced presets sounds and feel the same as the default, and Gods forbid that you try the High Treble mode – that’s a mode that nearly blew out my eardrums. And just so we’re clear, there is an equaliser that you can tweak and mess around with but even with the adjustments I made, these earbuds still persist with that artificial sound signature. And that includes bringing down the mids and highs and pumping up the lows on the EQ.
Outside of the performance, I also have a little bit of beef with the design of the charging case. I honestly wish Samsung’s design team had shifted the anchor point of the stems outward, instead of inward – I consistently fumble with resitting the earbuds whenever I am putting them away, and more often than not, I’m stabbing it instead of housing the earbuds.
Should I Buy It?
There’s a common saying that everybody’s experience with audio accessories is different from one person to the next. My overall experience with the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro can be summed up simply with the one word I’ve used throughout this entire review: Bright.
There is a level of clarity and brightness that, for me, borders on uncomfortable and the only solution that I’ve found to alleviate the issue, thus far, is to lower the volume. But that shouldn’t be a solution – some folks like to pump up the volume at times in order to get in the groove, and I am one of those folks. To be denied that pleasure feels a little sad.
At RM999 and as a premium-tier product, the Buds3 Pro is also aggressively priced up against some serious contenders, chief among them being Google’s own Pixel Buds Pro 2, which retail at around the same price range of RM1,099.
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