Samsung finally announced the successor to the critically acclaimed Buds2 Pro after nearly 2 years – and here we have the new Galaxy Buds3 Pro. It has new and improved features, dual amps, a new sound signature, and of course – a new design.
With all of this newness, is the Galaxy Buds3 Pro good? And most importantly, is it better than the 2-year-old Galaxy Buds2 Pro?
Now, the case itself is pretty typical for wireless earbuds. It’s slightly bigger than the Buds2 Pro’s case, and the top opens up this way. The top piece is transparent, and we can see the blue and orange markings that tell us which is left and right side.
It matches the blue and orange marking on the earbuds themselves, by the way. On a side note, this does remind me of Portal? GLaDOS would’ve been surprised at this color choice.
The case has all of the charging wattages listed down below around the USB-C port, and this is where the pairing button is located. Since the bottom is flat, we can place it on the tablet and it can stand on its own – though it will topple if we leave the lid open as the center of gravity is going to be thrown off.
Personally, I prefer the silver color of this Galaxy Buds3 Pro a lot more as the white color just… doesn’t feel or look nice. It can get hairline scratches easily since it’s a glossy white color, and they’re going to be visible since it’s so reflective.
Then comes the earbuds themselves. Yeah, if you haven’t already know, Samsung opted for the stemmed design this generation. When questioned about this design decision and whether or not it’s a copy – the response was “I don’t care” and I can respect that. Samsung is putting function above form and it shows as the Galaxy Buds3 Pro can do a lot of things much better than the previous generation.
This stem is triangular in shape that Samsung calls it the “blade design”, and that kind of assists and hinders the way I put the buds back into the case. Why I say that is because if it’s aligned, then it slides in nicely. If not, then I’ll need some time to realign it. We’ll talk about the blade lights later.
At the end of the stem is where the aforementioned blue and orange marking is located, alongside the microphone. Since the microphone is now physically separated from the other microphone, ANC performance should be better – we’ll get into that later.
The part that goes into our ears is similar to what we had before. Samsung said that they finetuned the shape to make the curves more comfortable, and I personally don’t feel any difference compared to the Buds2 Pro – but your mileage will vary as everyone’s ears are shaped differently.
Now, the eartips. I have to mention this with a lot of emphasis because – allegedly – this is what caused Samsung to delay its Galaxy Buds3 Pro shipment. Sound Guys published their review said that the eartips need to be handled with care – and from my own personal experience, I can see why.
There is a plastic frame around the base of the eartips and has notches to align to the earbuds themselves. So, if you’re not aware and not careful, the plastic frame around the eartips can easily be broken.
The correct way to remove this is to turn the eartip inside out, then grab most of it and slowly and gently pull it. Do be careful as this section of the eartip is at its weakest, so grab past it. The full guide on how to remove the eartips is shown in the video above.
Samsung does include two more sizes of eartips – just find the accessories box and the eartips are located in this tinier box hidden within the cable coil. Just be careful while opening it or the eartips will go flying everywhere.
The eartips themselves also have this net to mitigate earwax from entering the speakers of the earbuds – which is better than the Buds2 Pro’s mesh.
Now, let’s talk about the features of the Galaxy Buds3 Pro. Once the Samsung Wearables app has been installed, we can see a list of them here. I’m going to only focus on a few that’s important.
First of all, the dashboard is pretty much similar to what we had before. It shows the battery of the earbuds and the case, alongside the sound mode settings. We have the usual ambient and ANC modes, but we can also turn on adaptive mode. It automatically changes between ANC and ambient modes depending on what environment we’re in.
We do have an “auto switch to ambient sound” and within that option, there’s the usual voice detect. So if we speak while ANC is turned in, it’ll change to ambient mode automatically so that we can converse with another person without removing the earbuds from our ears.
There’s a new mode here called siren detect that automatically detects sirens and alarms and then change to ambient sound so that we don’t miss these critical alerts.
While we’re on this, let’s talk about the ANC mode. I honestly do think that the ANC is very good this time – though it’s a bit aggressive and I do personally would say it needs a bit more pressure relief. This is coming from me who wears earplugs every night to sleep. I do think that having a microphone at the end of that stem helps improve the ANC performance – and that is why I’m saying that this pair of earbuds is going for maximum function over form.
The ambient mode is as good as usual. I do find myself turning on the ambient mode while walking around the streets of Taipei. It’s very relaxing.
Under the sound quality and effects menu, we can turn on 360° audio which I don’t like, and here’s the EQ. We have 9 sliders across different frequencies across 10 different levels to change how it sounds – and we also have 6 presets to select from. We’ll come back to this later when we talk about the sound quality.
The boost dialogue option is helpful to enhance the vocals so we can enable that if necessary. Loudness normalization is actually an excellent feature to have. It prevents getting jumpscares by super loud sounds. Adjust sound to fit is also another great option to have as it learns your ear’s shape and makes it sound as best as possible for your ear.
Then comes the advanced quality options. Inside here, we can turn on UHQ audio – and this is how we can get the advertised hi-res audio of 24-bit at 96kHz – if your audio source is at that quality, of course. We’ll talk about this again at a later part because it’s not as straightforward as we think.
Another thing that I want to focus on is the controls. It uses taps and swipes and control the media and volume, and it is accompanied by clicks to confirm our input – and it’s actually amazing.
Though, it’s a bit awkward since I need more precision to actually do the taps and swipes, unlike the Galaxy Buds2 Pro where I can just slap my ear and trigger the gesture. Plus, the stem on the Buds3 Pro means that it can potentially snag on something and drop out from my ear. Honestly, not a fan of that even though it allows better sound quality.
However, we can use sound control. It’s great since I can just say the command and it works. It’s gonna be awkward as I walk on the street and suddenly say a word or two.
I guess this is also where we should talk about the blade lighting. It’s one of the main highlights of the Galaxy Buds3 Pro’s distinctive design. To use it, we’ll have to pinch both earbuds when we’re not wearing it to actually turn it on. We do have three lighting styles – blinking, fade in and out, and also steady. It is only in white color, though.
But… we have to do it every single time since it automatically turns the blade lighting off when we put it back into the case. And whenever we do turn on the blade lighting, the phone will have a notification there telling us that the blade lighting is turned on.
To put it lightly, I personally believe that this blade lighting is unnecessary. It brings no function to the Galaxy Buds3 Pro. The user of the Buds3 Pro can’t even see the lights! It’s like having an RGB headphone. I personally will just leave it turned off because I want the best battery life possible.
Now for the most important question – how does the Galaxy Buds3 Pro sound? In its default mode, it’s actually very bassy. To have a listen to all the music tested with the Galaxy Buds3 Pro, watch our video at the top of this review.
We are testing it using the new Galaxy Z Fold6 as it requires One UI 6.1.1 to make use of all the features.
Does the Galaxy Buds3 Pro actually sound good? Well… I do think that it actually sounds good… for certain people. I personally don’t like to have too much bass – so I had to turn up the treble and lower the bass. Even then, the bass is still too much for my liking. But I do understand why Samsung did this. Many people like bass – and this sound signature caters to what most people like. It’s just not my cup of tea.
Now, let’s talk about audio latency. This is a weird thing and I do think that Samsung needs to address this with a software update. As of now, if we turn UHQ and gaming mode off, we’re getting around 260ms latency, which is typical for a pair of Bluetooth wireless earphones. However, when we do turn on gaming mode, the latency actually goes up a little to around 280ms. I have no idea why this is happening as gaming mode is supposed to cut down on the buffer to improve the latency.
If we do turn on the UHQ mode, then it makes sense to have around 480ms latency since it needs a bigger buffer for that higher audio bitrate and to maintain an uninterrupted music experience.
Honestly, Bluetooth audio is still not good enough for games. It’s the same for all Bluetooth earphones, by the way.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro?
So at the end of the day – should you buy the Galaxy Buds3 Pro? It really depends on you. I personally think that it sounds great even though the extra punchy bass sound signature isn’t my cup of tea. Having a stem is a truly polarizing design choice – and I applaud Samsung for being so ballsy with it as they’re putting function over form.
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