Two things can be true at the same time. Yes, Samsung's Galaxy Buds 3 Pro have the most original design of all the company's headphones so far. Aside from the eye-catching LED strips, there's nothing particularly original or eye-catching about its stem look. But the $249.99 Buds 3 Pro are also the best-sounding and most polished earbuds Samsung has ever produced. Their audio quality is on par with some of my favorite wireless headphones, like the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 and the Technics AZ80. And the Buds 3 Pro include really useful voice commands that don't require saying a wake-up phrase beforehand.
It's a great start, but its potential is held back by clunky design decisions, a lack of multipoint connectivity, and active noise cancellation that's merely adequate at this $250 price point. Over the summer, Samsung also had to suspend shipments of these headphones to address quality control issues after early buyers managed to easily break the silicone eartips. I never experienced that issue with my review pair and the Buds 3 Pro are now widely available again.
Samsung's latest earbuds don't come in fun colors like the bora purple Buds 2 Pro. Your options are white, where the AirPods resemblance gets a little strange, or gunmetal grey. Samsung has tried to create some visual distance between these earbuds and the AirPods by opting for a more angular stem and placing a transparent lid on the charging case. And then there are those white LEDs, which you can turn on by squeezing both stems when the buds are out of your ears.
Of course, you'll never see this flair when wearing them, but other people will. The lights can be set to glow steadily or have a pulsing effect, but what do LEDs do? not able What it should do is display useful things like the remaining battery level of each earbud. That seems like the most obvious purpose for these, and yet… no! The lights come on when you try to locate the Buds 3 Pro with Samsung's Find My feature, at least.
The move to a stemmed design may seem like Samsung lazily joining the pack, but what matters most is that it results in a more secure and stable in-ear fit. I found the Buds 3 Pro to be very comfortable and didn't strain my ears even when I left them on for most of the day at the office. Voice calling performance is also quite impressive; You can test the microphone quality of the Buds 3 Pro (and other recent earbuds) on a Vergecast episode from earlier this month.
Speaking of voice, the most convenient feature of the Buds 3 Pro is its voice controls. At any time, you can say simple commands like “volume up” or “next song” and the headphones will execute those requests through your phone, without needing some annoying wake-up phrase first. It just works and you don't have to speak very loudly for the buttons to detect voice commands. They only cover the basics, but now I use them daily. If you prefer physical controls, Samsung has basically removed the control scheme from the AirPods Pro, with pinch gestures to play/pause, skip tracks, or toggle between ANC and transparency modes. You can also slide your finger along the stem to adjust the volume. The angular shape means that the gestures are not quite As foolproof as the AirPods, but I've mastered them pretty well.
The Buds 3 Pro offer excellent sound quality, with tuning that closely follows Harman's target curve, which most people like. That means you'll hear emphasis on the lows and highs, but the mids will still come through without sounding deep. Samsung's flagship headphones sound full and detailed, bringing out the best of the latest albums by Waxahatchee, Post Malone and Billy Strings. Spatial/360-degree audio with head tracking is present for those of you who A) own a Galaxy phone and B) enjoy that sort of thing. I continue to ignore it (for the most part).
I'm usually not one to obsess over Bluetooth codecs, but I swear can Notice the difference when listening to the Buds 3 Pro with a Galaxy S24 Ultra, which can take advantage of Samsung's Seamless Codec Ultra High Quality (SSD UHQ) for richer audio, especially if you're playing lossless tracks. There's just an extra layer of detail and fidelity that's less pronounced when using these headphones with a non-Samsung device. But even with my Pixel 9 Pro XL, they sound great. The Buds 3 Pro offer powerful, clear listening that suits all genres.
The active noise cancellation, however, has disappointed me at times. It's just not as robust or powerful as the AirPods Pro, Pixel Buds Pro 2, or Bose headphones. Can it reduce some of the clamor of everyday life? Sure, but I expected Samsung to do better in this category. The Buds 3 Pro have an incredibly clear transparency mode, so I have no complaints about that. You can also enable an “adaptive” mode that, like with Apple's headphones, will dynamically combine ANC and transparency based on your environment so that important sounds (like sirens) can grab your attention quickly.
The Buds 3 Pro don't support true multipoint, so you can't connect them to two devices at once. Like Apple, Samsung is pushing its own ecosystem with an “auto-switch” feature between its various laptops, tablets, and Galaxy phones. But I've noticed that even if your other devices are outside of Samsung's walled garden, enabling auto-switching makes it much faster to jump between them without having to disconnect from the current source every time. Some headphones are very stubborn about maintaining a connection with the last paired device until you manually disconnect them, but with these, you can select them in the Bluetooth settings of the device you want to use and they will switch without any problem. scandal.
I've had no complaints about battery life over several weeks of use, and you can extend it even further by disabling some features like the aforementioned voice controls. The earbuds have an IP57 dust- and water-resistant rating, although the charging case lacks such protection. This is unfortunate when competitors increasingly make their cases more durable.
Samsung's Galaxy Buds 3 Pro may no longer have a unique design identity, but with improved comfort and voice calling performance, they are an example of function dictating form. I can take or leave the clever lights, and the angular shape looks like Samsung is going out of its way to avoid being labeled as AirPod clones. They are, but you could argue that they sound better than Apple's headphones. And they perform reliably in almost every metric except noise cancellation. That's where the inevitable Buds 4 Pro have room to improve, hopefully while also regaining some character (or color). For anyone with a Samsung phone, this is the de facto option and it's great. But other Android owners should also give the Buds 3 Pro a close look for their sound fidelity and microphone clarity. Unless multipoint is essential, there is not much to criticize.
Photography by Chris Welch/The Verge
