Samsung Galaxy Buds Live review

I decided, of my own accord, to share my opinion and thoughts on the Galaxy Buds Live — earbuds now more than six months old. I’ve been using them for almost four months. When choosing earbuds I spent a lot of time reading and watching reviews from other tech experts. In this review I’ll try to cover the main points, the pros and cons, why I bought these specifically, and compare them with the Mi True Wireless Earbuds that so many Lithuanians use. Let’s begin!

What’s in the box

As with most Samsung and competitor earbuds, the box holds the mystic black earbuds, a charging case, a cable, instructions you no longer need (the Samsung Community will help you solve problems anyway) and what Samsung calls wingtips (the small ones are already fitted).

I chose mystic black because these earbuds look silver to me and go very well with what I wear. The case is glossy black, while the earbuds really do look silver.

First impressions

Taking the earbuds out of the box, I doubted whether they’d suit me at all, given their unusual shape. I can’t imagine how Samsung’s designers managed to create earbuds so comfortable that you don’t even want to take them out.

If you have a Galaxy device, opening the case pops up a window on your phone offering to connect the earbuds. The Galaxy Wearable app quickly installs the earbuds’ plugin and you’re ready to go. With a non-Galaxy device you’ll need to download that app from the Google Play or App Store.

Using the Galaxy Wearable app

The Galaxy Wearable app is genuinely easy to use. Opening it shows the main features straight away — active noise cancellation (ANC) and the equaliser — but I’ll come to those later. In the app you can set what the earbuds do on a long press. The Read notifications aloud feature unfortunately doesn’t work in Lithuanian. Among the advanced options you’ll find Bixby voice wake-up, Seamless earbud connection so you don’t have to dig into settings every time, and Hearing enhancements. The experimental features include Gaming mode and Relieve pressure with ambient sound. And of course there’s Find my earbuds, which comes in very handy when hunting for them around the house.

Features

Now to the features. I’ll discuss them plainly, as a user. Starting with Samsung’s headline feature, active noise cancellation. Well — Samsung disappointed me here. The effect really isn’t as strong as advertised. Unless you push the earbud deeper into the ear canal, where you do feel a sense of blocked ears — but wearing them that way makes your ears ache badly. Noise is partly suppressed, but I honestly expected more than this. I hope ANC works better on the Galaxy Buds Pro.

I found the equaliser is best set to Dynamic. Music then plays at its clearest and loudest.

The earbuds charge over USB-C, which is genuinely good, because Xiaomi uses the dated MicroUSB. They also support wireless charging, so you can charge them on a wireless pad or on the back of a newer Galaxy device.

Sound quality is genuinely very good, perhaps even excellent. Compared with the Xiaomi earbuds, the sound quality is far better.

The earbuds play for more than six hours, and with the case I’d say more than 24. There really were no problems with battery life.

What genuinely surprised me was the microphone quality. Your voice is clear and audible even in ambient noise.

Verdict: pros and cons

I genuinely recommend these earbuds to anyone looking for value for money. I think they’ll meet your expectations. Are they a worthy competitor to the Apple AirPods? Absolutely — the Buds Live are even better. Good luck choosing your earbuds!