Samsung’s Galaxy Buds line has covered a wide range of experiences in the last little while, from the excellent Galaxy Buds Plus to the… ah, not excellent Galaxy Buds Live. The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro indicates that the company has moved on from its bean-shaped folly. Rubber tips can go a long way in improving noise canceling, but are they enough to make these a worthy follow-up?

Editor’s note: this Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro review was updated on August 21, 2023, to include updated charts.

If you have much experience with previous entries in the Galaxy Buds line, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro will seem pretty familiar. In many ways, these wireless earbuds feel like a mash-up of the Galaxy Buds Plus and Galaxy Buds Live. The glossy metallic paint job of the Galaxy Buds Live is back, this time in silver, black, and violet. The beans’ clamshell-style charging case also makes a return. The case is pretty small, but it feels sturdy, and the buds fit snugly in it, secured by magnets (and it can charge wirelessly, too).

However, where the Galaxy beans diverge from previous models’ in-ear designs, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro harkens back to them. These are very similar in shape and size to the Galaxy Buds and Galaxy Buds Plus, only with smoother edges and a more pronounced split between the matte and glossy sections. The earbuds still have fin-like protrusions for stabilization, but they’re much smaller and less pronounced. Regardless, these earbuds still feel secure.

These wireless earbuds offer many of the same features you’d expect from the more premium side of the market. The Galaxy Buds Pro brings the active noise canceling (ANC) first introduced by the Galaxy Buds Live, and this design seals to the ears this time, it works. Establishing a decent seal is pretty easy—especially with the various included silicone ear tips.

Once you find the right size of rubber tips, these earbuds fit securely, and you shouldn’t struggle with them falling out during a commute. Similarly, the buds feel just as secure while exercising, though long-distance runners may put that to the test with excessive jostling. Speaking of exercise, these are also IPX7 rated for sweat resistance, so they’ll hold up to just about whatever you can throw at it.

Each Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro earbud features a touch-sensitive panel on the side that covers the typical range of playback controls. Tapping either earbud once starts or stops the music you’re playing, double-tapping skips a song, and triple tapping goes back. By default, you can raise and lower the volume by tapping and holding the right and left earbuds respectively, but you can change that feature in the Samsung Wearable app. The also lets you shut off touch controls entirely, if that’s something you want.

It all works pretty smoothly. I have yet to run into any issues with touch detection. The controls are maybe a little too sensitive. Almost every time I adjust the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro—whether taking them out, putting them in, or just wiggling them a bit to get the fit right—the earbuds react by pausing what I’m listening to, or playing music over whatever I’m doing.

Most of the time, it’s not a big deal, but these earbuds react oddly when your device has more than one media source open or suspended at once. Tapping or nudging the earbuds while watching Youtube does nothing, but tapping while watching videos on less popular apps like Dropout will trigger music from Spotify to play over the video. This isn’t something many people will run into, but don’t be surprised if a rogue tap sends music blaring into your ears over whatever else you’re listening to.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro uses Samsung’s Galaxy Wearable app for many of its features. This is where you can access the noise canceling features, turn on ambient sound, set or turn off touch controls, try different EQ profiles, and more. The noise canceling function has a high and low setting, and you can swap between them at will. Included EQ profiles like Bass Boost, Soft, Dynamic, Clear, and Treble Boost are nice, though unfortunately there’s no option to set your own. The app also lets you turn on settings like automatic voice detection and seamless earbud connection, which lets the Galaxy Buds Pro swap between paired audio sources more easily (provided they’re signed in to your Samsung account).

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro uses Bluetooth 5.0, and supports three Bluetooth codecs: SBC, AAC, and the Samsung Scalable Codec. Samsung’s proprietary codec effectively functions like aptX adaptive, and constantly adjusts the transfer rate. This codec makes adjustments to improve audio quality and connection stability, so it should keep things sounding as good as possible. iPhone users can also enjoy consistent high-quality audio over the AAC Bluetooth codec.

Just like the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, and the Samsung Galaxy Bud Plus before them, the Galaxy Buds Pro can be used in mono mode with either earbud. This is a great feature for anyone who lives with a hearing impairment.

On its website, Samsung claims these earbuds will last up to 5 hours on a single charge, with about 13 hours of additional charge in the case, and in our testing, we found that wasn’t far off. After playing music constantly, peaking at 75dB(SPL), the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro can last up to 4 hours, 48 minutes with ANC turned on. The case also definitely has enough juice for a few charge cycles.

While this kind of battery performance isn’t terrible, it’s a far cry from the best around. That’s a little disappointing, given that the best around in this respect is the Samsung Galaxy Buds Plus, which offers more than double the battery life—admittedly, the lack of ANC no doubt helps the older model last quite a bit longer. This performance is only a few minutes shy of the Galaxy Buds Live, so not too far out of our expectations.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro offers pretty much standard isolation for a pair of true wireless earbuds with rubber tips, which is to say: it’s pretty good. Turns out sealing the ear improves isolation—go figure—and good isolation is generally more important for keeping high-end, dynamic sounds out. The buds also sport two active noise canceling settings, which you can toggle between in the Galaxy Wearable app. Both of these settings offer better noise canceling performance than most true wireless earbuds, but the high setting offers a rather large boost to bass range attenuation, admittedly at the expense of mid-range performance.

ANC performance like this means you shouldn’t have any trouble with the typical engine hum of a bus, or any low-end ambient noises you run into outside. Both ANC settings struggle with things like nearby speech compared to over-ear options like the AirPods Max or the Sony WH-1000XM5, but these earbuds should still offer some level of noise canceling there too.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro offers very good audio output. There’s a notable boost in bass range sound, and a spike in the very high range, but otherwise everything should sound pretty much like it’s supposed to. Mostly, a frequency response like this means music should sound great pretty much all the time. Now and then, you may notice particularly bass-heavy tracks make some vocals a little less clear. However, that kind of bass boost is pretty well within the norm for more consumer-friendly headphones, so you’ll probably only notice it when bass comes through with a bit more oomph.

Lows, mids, and highs

The Black Sabbath anti-war classic War Pigs sounds great on the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro. Geezer Butler’s bass noodling over the droning crush of guitar at the beginning of the song comes through clearly, and continues to do so even as Tony Iommi’s guitar playing gets louder and more dominant throughout the rest of the song.

The accurate mids mean the warbling tones that play underneath the affected piano in Modulogeek’s One Day We’ll be Okay (2:45) come through clearly, despite the difference in relative loudness. However, the clapping noise that starts a little over halfway through the song (4:45) comes through very loudly, to the point of being a little unpleasant to hear.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro features a good microphone for a pair of wireless earbuds. The mic is very accurate, offering neutral-leaning output across the vocal range. There’s still a bit of muffling due to it being an embedded microphone, but it’s not nearly as bad as many other options on the market. Additionally, the microphone actually does a pretty good job cutting background noise out if you’re far enough away. Suffice it to say, this is a good pair of earbuds for work.

Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

If you can find the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, it will serve as a great pair of ANC earbuds under $200 USD, but it’s hard to find nowadays. Lucky hunters able to find a pair of Galaxy Buds Pro will appreciate it for its comfortable fit and great sound quality. You’re bound to find the Galaxy Buds Pro on promotion these days, making it far cheaper than competing products like the Apple AirPods Pro (1st generation) and Sony WF-1000XM4. The lack of a codec like aptX is a bummer, but the Samsung Scalable Codec covers for it nicely.

As the Galaxy Buds Pro’s successor, the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro is better in just about every way. The Buds 2 Pro has significantly better active noise canceling, a rubberized coating on the case and buds, and the new Samsung Seamless Codec. The latest codec builds upon the Samsung Scalable Codec and offers 24-bit steaming from One UI 4.0 and later devices. This time around, Samsung nails the sensitivity on the touch controls and our team doesn’t run into command misfires like we do with older Galaxy Buds from Samsung.

With the discontinuation, Samsung is pushing listeners toward newer options like the Galaxy Buds 2 and Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. While the price hike ($229 USD for the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro) is a tough pill to swallow, it remains cheaper than the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II and Apple AirPods Pro (2nd generation) which cost $299 USD and $249 USD, respectively. It also has much better ANC compared to the cheaper Galaxy Buds 2, which we also like.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 isn’t just a watered-down version of the Buds Pro. In our Galaxy Buds 2 vs Galaxy Buds Pro article, we see that the cheaper Buds 2 has better ANC, though with a less secure fit. To make up for the slippery design, Samsung provides the ear tip fit test, which you don’t get with the Buds Pro.

The Buds 2 features a less promising IPX2 rating and lacks 360 Audio support, but, again, what it does have over the Galaxy Buds Pro is a more reasonable price. Samsung originally retailed the Buds 2 for $149 USD. Each Buds 2 earpiece has a touch panel for you to control playback, take calls, and more—and yes, the touch controls are hypersensitive here too.

Like the Galaxy Buds Pro, the Galaxy Buds 2 isn’t supported on the iOS Galaxy Buds app, so this is really a pair of earbuds for Android phone owners, more specifically Samsung phone owners. For less than $200 USD, it’s a competent pair of wireless earbuds.

What should you get instead of the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro?

There are many viable alternatives to Samsung’s lead noise canceling earbuds, and one of the most obvious competitors is the Apple AirPods Pro (2nd generation), and you can find it for $199 at Amazon. Apple’s second gen pro model has superior noise canceling Galaxy Buds Pro (the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro is a closer competitor)—it’s a much better fit for iPhone owners, and certainly a better fit than the AirPods (3rd generation), which will run you $195 at Amazon. In the same way that Samsung limits some of its software to Samsung Galaxy hardware, Apple does the same with its AirPods software features.

There’s also the Sony WF-1000XM4 which compares well to the Galaxy Buds Pro. With Sony’s earbuds ($278 at Amazon), you get access to its 360 Reality Audio, similar to Samsung 360 Audio; it’s targeted more towards music lovers, rather than movie fans. You can take advantage of this standard through premium streaming services like Tidal, Deezer, and Nugs.net. The earbuds feature a more mature design and secure fit, but they’re a bit pricier than the Galaxy Buds Pro.

On the other hand, the Jabra Elite 85t takes a business-friendly approach to earbuds. You can connect the Elite 85t to two source devices at once, making it a great productivity tool. If you’re an audio tinkerer, you’ll enjoy Jabra’s five-band EQ module in its mobile app, available on both Android and iOS. You can find it for $167 at Amazon.