Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro Review

These sleek, futurist earbuds combine a pop-friendly sound profile with a surprisingly lightweight and comfortable fit. They improve on the performance of the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro across the board, with the biggest jump in their sound quality score. But, while the noise canceling of the Buds3 Pro is an improvement, it's still not top tier.

Performance Comparison

Sound Quality

These earbuds sound excellent, creating a wide soundstage that lets the music “sprawl around my head,” as one tester put it. The mix is both punchy and polished, with boosted highs and lows that may feel overly sculpted to more discerning ears. Still, they pair perfectly with today's top hits and bring an immersive feel to your favorite songs, no matter the genre.

The treble is smooth and warm, often floating delicately above the rest of the mix. It's rarely radiant, though. More often, the high notes play it safe, never tipping into harsh keening tones. As one tester put it, “they don't take many chances in their delivery.” And sometimes we miss the drama.

Luckily, the bass brings it. The low notes can sound too forward at times, resulting in a V-shaped mix that can drown out details. While those powerful bass lines can push country songs too far, they make hip-hop and R&B sound great.

Though they are less emphasized in the mix, the mid-tones sound wonderful and rarely get lost in the boosted lows. Instruments are vibrant, with crisp detail, and vocals maintain realistic timbre.

Faye Webster's “Kingston” is a great example of their sound signature. A mellow bassline anchors the track, warm and distinct beneath Webster's hushed, dreamy vocals. Rich textures from steel guitar, horns, and keys fill the mids, while a soft flute adds just a hint of shimmer up top. The drums deliver a satisfying punch that balances the floaty highs and hefty lows.

These earbuds offer a solid volume range, with the middle setting working perfectly for our test team in the office, supporting focus without blowing out anyone's eardrums. While the buds maintain detail and clarity at low volumes, the bass frequencies can sound aggressive and boomy at higher volumes. It's not exactly muddy or blown out, just a bit much.

We also took these earbuds to task back at the lab, bringing in SoundCheck software and Darwin, our Brüel & Kjaer Type 5128 ear and head simulator, to crunch the numbers. They charted the frequency response of these buds, then we compared it to our GearLab House Curve benchmark. The two curves track pretty well, with the Buds3 Pro frequencies all turned a little higher than our target curve, which accounts for all that drama.

User Experience

The Galaxy Buds3 Pro are one of the more comfortable earbuds we've tested, but they aren't the most stable. They also offer very limited compatibility with Apple devices. If you have an Android and can deal with a less than intuitive app, we think their comfort and scintillating sound is worth dealing with a less than super-smooth user experience.

While their futuristic, AirPod-like look is a significant departure from the button design of the Galaxy Buds2 Pro, we like their take on the stem design, which makes them easier to grip and control than past versions.

Comfort

Despite their bulky appearance, these earbuds are surprisingly lightweight and wonderfully comfortable. Everyone on the test team can wear them for hours at a time without fatigue. The soft silicone ear tips conform easily to the shape of your ear, creating a gentle, secure seal.

They come equipped with four ear tip sizes, giving you a good chance of finding the right fit. Unfortunately, they are so soft that they tear easily, and it's a pain to change them. Luckily, once you find the right fit, you'll never have to do it again.

Stability

While they stay put most of the time, they are easier to dislodge than other options. Even exaggerated facial expressions can loosen them, and I find myself adjusting them often throughout the day.

App Performance

These earbuds offer the standard features, allowing you to customize EQ settings with presets and check the battery life. There are also some less ubiquitous extras, like an ear fit test to optimize sound quality and a Find My Earbud feature that helps you find a misplaced earbud.

Touch controls let you adjust the ANC, ambient, and adaptive listening modes and control your music and phone calls without accessing the app.

On the downside, most of the in-app features aren't available to iPhone users, making these a much better option for those in the Android ecosystem. That said, several testers used these with their Apple devices with little complaint.

Even with an Android device, the app is less intuitive than competitors, leaving me searching for settings every time I access it. And while the earbuds offer semi-multipoint connectivity to switch easily between multiple devices, it is far from seamless.

Noise Cancellation

These earbuds block some ambient sound simply by sealing your ear, a side effect that's known as passive noise isolation. They also use technology to dissipate background sounds in a process called active noise cancellation (ANC). While testers do notice a difference when we activate this feature, the effect is underwhelming.

I can still hear myself keyboard clicking and the soft thud of my coffee mug settling on the counter. It does very little to block out the distractions of an open-plan office or coffee shop. That said, there is a hushing effect that may help the less distractible among us focus. You can hear the difference for yourself in the video below.

Compared to the top performers in our review, the ANC performance is mediocre. However, I do appreciate that it doesn't cause the uncomfortable pressure that some earbuds do in their effort to dampen sound.

To confirm our findings, we turned to our trusty test duo — Darwin, our head-and-ear simulator, and SoundCheck software. The video above shows the process in action, and the chart below displays how these earbuds performed across the frequency spectrum. It shows that the earbuds manage to block an impressive 20 to 45 decibels across the spectrum with the ANC engaged.

Battery Life

These earbuds offer a respectable 8.1 hours of battery life. Surprisingly, that's well above the manufacturer's 6-hour claim. Unlike most earbuds, though, there's no quick-charge option, where a mere 10 minutes on the charger will get you an hour or two of playtime. On the upside, the case does hold enough power for four additional charges, and wireless charging adds convenience.

Call Quality

To help people hear you on a phone call, earbuds are often designed to isolate your voice from distracting background sounds. To test how well the Galaxy Buds3 Pro does this, we played recordings of male and female voices through the microphone in Darwin's mouth, varying the amount of noise in the background and capturing the resulting call quality. The Galaxy Buds3 Pro achieved only average results.

When we tried the experiment in a quiet room, the recorded voices sounded soft, though the clarity was excellent and distortion-free. Still, the lower-than-average volume may make it harder for callers to hear you on the other end.

In a slightly louder office environment, it's harder to hear the recordings. Background sounds sneak through to recordings, making the already quiet statements even harder to hear.

On a blaring subway platform, the voices can be drowned out at times. The voice isolation does succeed in blocking out some of the most aggressive subway sounds, but does little to quell the majority.

Should You Buy the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro?

For Android users, especially those embedded in the Samsung ecosystem, these stylish earbuds will please those looking for a fun sound and impressively all-day comfort. Their soft silicone tips and featherweight feel go a long way to make up for their less intuitive app and subpar noise cancellation. If you're often in loud, chaotic environments and rely on strong noise cancellation to tune it out, these may not be the right fit for you.

What Other Earbuds Should You Consider?

If you are an Apple user looking for something similar, the Apple AirPods Pro 2 fit the bill, and provide better active noise cancelling and a snazzy spatial audio feature to boot. If you'd like to save some money, the Nothing Ear Wireless buds are a great budget-friendly alternative, with a bold sound and stronger voice isolation. Their noise cancellation scores are even lower, however.