The Galaxy Buds 2 are Samsung's best small earbuds

Speaker 1: The galaxy buds to a Samsung's latest pair of true wireless earbuds. They have active noise cancellation. They have sound tuned by EKG and they have a lightweight design, but are these features everything they're stacked up to be? Well, let's find out and dive into the review. Speaker 1: It feels like Samsung comes out with me. You earbuds pretty much. Every six months first we had the buds live. Then the buds pro. Then finally we have the buds too, which kind of sit right in the middle of those two [00:00:30] earbuds at $50, less than the buds pro the buds. Two definitely do feel like a lighter, more flexible version of those earbuds. And they come in four different colors, a and a black, which is your more standard color options. And then to mix things up a little bit, you get a green or 11 version, which is the version that I've been using in the box. You get the buds themselves, the wireless charging case, a USBC cable, and three sizes of interchangeable tips. Each bud weighs five grams or 0.17 ounces. Each [00:01:00] they support Bluetooth five, two, their IPX two water resistant and the case supports wireless charging Speaker 1: Cosmetic options aside the buds two are actually smaller and lighter than the buds pro. And if you are someone who's previously found that a lot of in-ear buds are a little bit too big in bulky. These ones actually might the bill for me and my slightly smaller than average ears. I find that they're very comfortable to wear. They fit snuggly without feeling too [00:01:30] tight. And I can definitely wear them for extended periods of time without having any sort of ear fatigue. That being said, if you are upgrading from something like the buds plus, well, you might be a little bit disapp pointed because these buds do not come with wingtip. And those are those bits that go around the earbud themselves to kind of Nestle them much more snuggly in your ear. I didn't find it to be too much of a problem, but I didn't do anything super active with these. Speaker 1: And I definitely wouldn't choose these primarily for a higher intensity [00:02:00] workout, but for a light job or maybe some like gym use, I think they should be fine. The galaxy wearable app does come with an ear fit test and this will help you decide which ear tip is the right size for your particular ear shape. Unfortunately, the galaxy wearable app is not available on iOS with the buds to, so if you're an iPhone user, yes, you compare these with iOS, not a problem within the regular Bluetooth settings, but you're not gonna be able to use that galaxy wearable app to [00:02:30] be able to change things like your touch panel controls your equalizer. And so on. That's only available on Android and on galaxy devices. Speaker 1: Let's talk sound quality. If you're a fan of how Samsung and a ag tune their audio, especially from previous earbuds, you'll not be too surprised with what the sound profile is like on these particular buds. Overall, they are nice and bright tracks from a range of different genres, sound nice and dynamic. [00:03:00] And there is a lot of base to these. I'm normally the sort of person that needs to go in and add more bass through an equalizer. But I have to say these have so much bass on the default or the normal profile that it's almost a little bit too much for me with some particular songs that I was listening to, particularly some R and B and hip hop tracks, which are so deep and so booming. I actually had to go in and turn it down a little bit through one of those equalizer settings. Speaker 1: So if you like your base, these little [00:03:30] buds actually have pretty big and booming sound. Overall. The sound stage is a little bit more restricted than the buds pro. So it doesn't feel like a lot of the instrumentation has has much room to breathe, but I was not super surprised about that. Just given that these are less expensive than the buds pro I think they do sound pretty good for their price as the noise cancellation. I feel like the buds too, do a fairly good job across a range of different frequencies in blocking out that ambient white noise, but they're not the best for [00:04:00] the money. I would say that they did a slightly better job at higher frequencies. Say for things like an overhead fan or a heating unit, those were less noticeable to me than lower, more rumbling, constant frequencies say like commuting noise or even traffic noise that did tend to come through a little bit more for my ears, the buds too, or also have an ambient sound mode. So you can let in some sounds from the external world. So you're more aware of your surroundings. They have three different levels you can choose from within the galaxy wearable app, which I really [00:04:30] like, although I would recommend only using the highest setting when you are indoors. It's just really magnified everything when you are outside. And, uh, it left me with a bit of a headache because I left it on my accident. Speaker 2: All right, call and microphone, quality time. I'm recording this in the galaxy note, 20 ultra using provi mode using the Bluetooth microphone, AKA the galaxy buds two as the microphone. And while this isn't fully representative of the quality of a phone call, I think it gives you some idea of what, what these [00:05:00] earbuds can do. So Samsung says that the buds to have machine learning, to block out a range of different background noises. And when I was on phone calls, callers would remark that they pretty much couldn't hear any background noise. Like if I was walking alongside traffic, they had no idea. If I was standing with a noisy sign overhead, they couldn't hear that either. And, uh, that was pretty interesting for me, especially I'm used to taking calls outside all the time and people are like, can't hear you. Can't hear you modulate differently when of background noise. [00:05:30] And you'll that example in this particular clip here now really from the recipients sounded really well. Computer based calls say like on zoom or Google hang and things like that, weren't strong. And people were like gives you an what Speaker 1: Let's touch on all the other features, [00:06:00] as well as the all important battery life, the buds to have touch panels. As I mentioned, and they're fully customizable in the galaxy wearable app. I really like how you can change one of the settings to be a volume up or down something that more buds are starting to come out with. But I really like that it's on the, and you can also obviously change tracks and also change between active noise cancellation, ambient sound, or turning that setting off all together. There's also a lab section within the app for lower latency when playing games [00:06:30] and one accessibility feature that I really like is the ability to use just one earbud with active noise can isolation. So you don't always have to have both in. And they also have automatic switching between galaxy devices signed into the same Samsung ID. Speaker 1: You can activate big speed with your voice. You can also get notifications read aloud in your ear, and you can toggle on the apps that you wanna come through within the galaxy wearable app. And you can also find these buds as location on a [00:07:00] map battery life is fairly standard for earbuds with this kind of feature set. I was able to get around five hours and 20 minutes of listening time with ANC turned on. That was just a little bit extra than the five hours that sounds like stated on the box, but I wasn't listening at 50% volume. It was probably more like 40%. Of course, the latter you listen, probably the faster they're going to drain at seven and a half hours with a C turned off. That's fairly good, except it's nowhere near as strong as the 11 hours that were [00:07:30] on the galaxy bots plus. So if you're looking for the spiritual successor of those in terms of long battery life, you are probably gonna be a little bit disappointed. The buds too, the case itself obviously holds an extra charge. It's 20 hours of total listening time with active noise cancellation and 29 hours with it off. Speaker 1: So I would get the buds too. If I was looking specifically for a set of wireless ear buds that were lightweight with active noise cancellation and good cold quality. And I think if you're [00:08:00] upgrading from something like the original galaxy buds or the buds, plus you will notice a couple of extra features and some design differences here that might make it actually really worthwhile to you. And I think that these are actually a better buy than the galaxy buds pro, especially at their $200 retail price. So unless you need the like IPX seven water resistance or 360 audio or adjustable active noise cancellation settings, I think these are the ones to go for, but you've got lots of different earbuds to choose from [00:08:30] around the $150 mark. And maybe something like say the beat studio buds might be a better choice. If you are someone that's switching between Android and iOS, quite a lot, they have of also fairly effective transparency mode as well. Of course, we've got lots of extra he phone comparisons coming your way here on CNET and on cnet.com right now. So thanks for watching. And of course, if you have any other questions about these earbuds that I did not answer, you can hit me up in the comments, Instagram, Twitter, you know, same old places. You got my number. Thanks for watching. See.