The bean-shaped Samsung Galaxy Buds Live are a serious departure from the norm in every single category. Their design is like nothing we’ve ever seen before; they’re the first true wireless earbuds from Samsung to include noise cancellation and they’re tuned to offer a heaping helping of bass.
The difference there is that the Buds Live have active noise cancellation while the Buds Plus use ambient noise reduction, and the Buds Plus have a longer built-in battery life but an overall lower one when you factor in the charging case.
Long story short, you should probably buy the Galaxy Buds Live over the Plus unless you plan on wearing your earbuds for 11 hours straight.
The Samsung Galaxy Buds Live come in three colors – black, white and bronze – and come with a matching charging case that’ll slip into your pocket. There’s a USB Type-C port on the back of the case for charging, or alternatively, you can also charge it wirelessly. An LED is present both inside and outside the case to let you know about the charging status of the case, as well as of the earbuds.
As for the buds themselves, Samsung has created something truly fun and unique here. Where other wireless earbuds manufacturers are still copying the design of Apple’s AirPods, Samsung’s design team is clearly at work to create something original.
Fitting them inside your ear requires you to push the speaker grille all the way inside the ear while the charging contacts sit in the upper part of the outer ear. When properly aligned, the Buds should be a near perfect fit – sealing the ear with a snug grip.
Of course, as we pointed out in our preview with the Buds Live, it’s not always a perfect fit. If you have large or especially small ears – or you plan on buying these for your kids – there’s a good chance the distance between the ear canal and the outer ear won’t be the right size to hold the Buds in place, meaning that they can easily pop out.
But even if they fit properly, there’s another problem: these buds come with an IPX2 water resistant rating which means they’re only good for slightly sweaty workouts or a light drizzle. Take them outside when it’s pouring, snowing or with you to the beach and, well, that could be the end of them.
Each of the buds also have touch sensors that can register a single, double, or triple tap that serves the expected actions of playing/pausing, as well as skipping tracks backwards/forwards. A tap and hold action is also available and is customizable for each bud separately – you can set it to increase/decrease the volume, launch Bixby or Spotify. Bixby obviously only works on Samsung phones and Spotify can only be launched on Android phones.
Noise cancellation
It’s impressive how much tech Samsung has packed into the Galaxy Buds Live. On each of the earbuds there are three microphones along with an additional voice pickup unit, the speaker with a bass duct and a bunch of sensors such as an accelerometer, IR, and a touch-capacitive sensor. All of this tech allows for a rich set of features on the Galaxy Buds Live- some of which work better than others.
Let’s start with Active Noise Cancellation – something that can be tricky to achieve in such small earbuds. What makes it even more challenging to get ANC on the Buds is that they don’t plug into your ear canal with silicone ear tips like some of the other buds that support this tech. Samsung has thus developed ANC for open type earbuds, which, according to Samsung, reduces low-band background noise under 700Hz – such as trains and buses – up to 97% while still allowing you to hear voices and announcements.
This sounds great on paper but didn’t really make much of a difference with our testing – at least not with voices. At lower volume levels, we could hear people around us with ANC enabled or disabled and cranking volumes close to 90% or more made the voices disappear with or without ANC. In short, like most other wireless earbuds, ANC depends on the fit of the buds and volume of what you’re listening to.
Call quality
What does work well is call quality, which uses the three microphones (one inner mic plus two outer beam-forming mics on each side) along with the Voice Pickup Unit that uses the accelerometer to sense the movement of your jaw to convert that kinetic energy into voice signals via bone conduction.
This enables you to be heard better on the other end of the call, even in noisy environments. We tested this and were told that our voice was very clear on the other end, even when we had music playing in the background. Buy The Samsung Galaxy Buds Live Best Price Online from CELLULAR KENYA,Nairobi
