More than five years after the introduction of the first-generation Galaxy Buds, Samsung has finally launched the third iteration of the headphones, the Galaxy Buds 3. These arrived alongside the more advanced Galaxy Buds 3 Pro at the Galaxy Unpacked event, where the company launched and a host of other products.
The Galaxy Buds 3 are direct successors to the Galaxy Buds 2. The new earbuds bring massive improvements over the old ones in terms of design, durability, durability, connectivity, audio quality, call quality, battery life and advanced features. . Let’s examine all these improvements in detail.
New design and better durability
The Galaxy Buds 3 features a very different design for the earbuds as well as the charging case compared to the Galaxy Buds 2.
Starting with the earbuds, the Galaxy Buds 3 have a trunk design, similar to the Apple AirPods. This design offers several benefits.
First, the Galaxy Buds 3 don’t stick out of your ears as much as the Galaxy Buds 2, which makes them look more attractive. Second, they feel more comfortable and secure in the ear. Third, the boom design brings the microphones closer to your lips, providing better call quality, which we’ll discuss in more detail later.
Samsung has also made the Galaxy Buds 3 stronger and more durable compared to the Galaxy Buds 2. While the older earbuds have an IP52 rating for water and dust resistance, the new ones come with an IP57 rating.
With this, the Galaxy Buds 3 are more resistant to water, rain, sweat and dust than the Galaxy Buds 2. This also makes Samsung’s earbuds better in terms of durability than most other earbuds on the market, including Apple AirPods with IP54 rating.
As for the charging case, it has a vertical design compared to the horizontal design of the Galaxy Buds 2. This takes up much less space on your desk. The charging case also has a transparent cover, allowing you to check which earphones are present in the case and which are not, reducing the chances of losing them. The vertical design should also allow case makers to offer better cases for the Galaxy Buds 3.
Pairing button
The charging case of the Galaxy Buds 3 features a pairing button, which is something that is not present on the Galaxy Buds 2. This button allows you to quickly pair the earbuds with a new device. Here’s how it works:
If the Galaxy Buds 3 is already paired with a device, but now you want to pair it with a new device, just press and hold the pairing button on the charging case for a few seconds to put it in pairing mode. Once this happens, the Galaxy Buds 3 can be detected on the device you want to pair these headphones with.
Better audio quality
While the Galaxy Buds 2 has a dual-driver design, the Galaxy Buds 3 features a single-driver audio setup.
This might immediately make you think that the Galaxy Buds 3 might not sound as good as the Galaxy Buds 2. However, that’s not necessarily the case. There are many headphones with a single driver that sound better than those with two or more drivers. We can only say how Galaxy Buds 3 sounds after testing it thoroughly.
For connectivity, the Galaxy Buds 2 had Bluetooth 5.2. The Galaxy Buds 3, on the other hand, has Bluetooth 5.4. The newest version of Bluetooth offers a more stable and secure connection compared to the old one. This means you should experience less dropouts on the Galaxy Buds 3 than on the Galaxy Buds 2.
Along with a newer version of Bluetooth, the Galaxy Buds 3 also features SSC HiFi and SSC UHQ audio codecs. In comparison, the Galaxy Buds 2 only features SSC. SSC stands for Samsung Scalable Codec and UHQ stands for Ultra High Quality. The two new audio codecs offer a 24-bit/96KHz sampling rate, enabling higher quality audio to be streamed from Galaxy devices to the headset, which should result in much better audio quality.
Better call quality
As mentioned earlier, the microphones on the Galaxy Buds 3 are closer to the lips than those on the Galaxy Buds 2, offering better audio recording and therefore better call quality. However, the latest headset comes with two new features to further improve call quality.
The microphones on the Galaxy Buds 3 have Super Wideband (SWB) technology. It allows the microphones to record audio with a much wider bandwidth than the Galaxy Buds 2 microphones. Wider bandwidth equals better audio quality.
It means that with this technology, the Galaxy Buds 3 will be able to pick up your voice much better and transmit the same to the person on the other end of the call, allowing them to hear you with maximum clarity.
Despite these improvements, Galaxy Buds 3 may not be able to record parts of your voice properly if you speak too softly or if there is too much background noise. Well, the Galaxy Buds 3 will use Galaxy AI to reconstruct the missing parts of your voice so that the other person can clearly hear what you say. There’s another Galaxy AI feature on board the Galaxy Buds 3, which we’ll discuss in a moment.
Longer battery life
The Galaxy Buds 3 charging case contains a 515 mAh battery. That’s 9% larger than the battery in the Galaxy Buds 2 charging case.
With this upgrade, total audio playback time has increased by four hours with ANC on and one hour with ANC off, and total talk time has increased by five hours with ANC on and six hours with ANC off.
Those are some amazing numbers. You can check out the battery backup of the new headphones in the image below.
The story continues after the video…
It’s worth noting that the Galaxy Buds 3 has a smaller battery compared to the Galaxy Buds 2 (48mAh vs. 61mAh). Fortunately, this hasn’t affected the headset’s battery backup figures, as you can see in the image above.
Galaxy AI for real-time language translation
With Galaxy AI on the Galaxy Buds 3, you’ll be able to hear what the other person is saying in their own language on your headphones in your own language in real time, a very useful feature not present on the Galaxy Buds 2.
To use this feature, pop the Galaxy Buds 3 to your ear, open Interpreter on your Galaxy Z Fold 6 or Galaxy Z Flip 6, and select listening mode, and you’re good to go. Hopefully Samsung will extend this feature to older Galaxy smartphones and tablets with an update to Interpreter.
With all these features, the Galaxy Buds 3 is much better than the Galaxy Buds 2. If you think these features are worth the upgrade and if you are considering getting one, you can check out the prices and release dates of the best earbuds last in this article or click the link below to pre-order them.