SAMSUNG Galaxy Buds Pro 2 [2022] (SM-R510) – (Gray)

I’ve been using these earbuds for a few months now and I love them SO much. I wear them every morning to exercise and randomly throughout the day. I was worried about them falling out at first, but even with intense exercise they don’t budge.

I love that they can do both noise canceling or noise filtering. I usually use the filtering/ambient setting so that I can keep an ear out for my kids. It’s nice because with ambiance I don’t even need to take them out for a conversation. I also just like how the music sounds with ambiance on (feels like it fills the room around me instead of blasting directly into my ears. That’s just my preference though.) I’ve tried the noise canceling as well and it’s great.

It also pairs seamlessly with my phone and seems to automatically detect when it’s in my ear vs in my hand (not sure how that works, but it does) and will stop the music when the bud comes out of your ear.

You have the option to turn off touch gestures or change them to whatever you want them to be, which is nice because I personally am not a fan of touch gestures, so I’m glad I can just turn them off.

As for sound quality, it’s amazing. I’d suggest playing around with the equalizers and ambiance/noise canceling options to find what works best for you, but straight out of the box I was already impressed. The sound is so rich.

Definitely my favorite pair of earbuds ever.

So, I’ve owned a lot of wireless headsets over the last few years, and so far, in almost every category, this takes the cake. I didn’t expect a headset from Samsung to go this hard, especially with my fondness for Audio Technica and Sennheiser setting my expectations, but here we are. Let’s break it down:

The first thing I want to state is that I’ve replaced my last 3 headsets due to their death, and so longevity of this headset will heavily determine whether this review stays 5 starts. I’ve had it for around two months now, and I expect, generally, to get at least a year out of something like this under pretty heavy use. So far the only headset I’ve had that met this expectation was the Sennheiser CX Plus True Wireless, lasting around a year and a half before one of the buds gave out unexpectedly. After that is was the Audio Technica CKS50TW, out of which I got a grand 3 months, and didn’t honestly care to replace under warranty.

SOUND QUALITY: My standards for sound quality are pretty high. My desktop audio setup is an Audio Technica ATH-M50x, and while that’s not the most impressive headset ever on its own, it’s fed by an EVGA NuAudio sound card, and produces some impressive sound with a little bit of EQ tweaking. This headset gets so close to that sound quality that I probably use it more than the M50X now when at my desk. It’s better than both the CKS50TW and CX Plus by quite some margin in this regard, and I’ve seriously come to enjoy the ‘dynamic’ EQ preset. It is *stunning* quality, in my opinion, for a headset of this price. In case you were wondering, yes it’s better than the AirPods, although I’ve found that *most* headsets from reputable manufacturers in this price range are.

BATTERY LIFE: This is perhaps the one aspect of this headset that *doesn’t* completely take the cake, but it’s still absolutely respectable, and I completely agree with sacrificing battery life for comfort and size, because that is another aspect in which this headset shines. Look- the battery life isn’t the *best*, but I typically get 5-7 hours out of it, more if you have noise control turned off, and truthfully, in my room, I don’t need it most of the time. There are a lot of headsets out there that do better in this category, but the tradeoff they make is protruding out of the ear to house their larger batteries, and in this case, I think the fact that we’re able to get this much battery into an earbud that completely nestles into a fully supported and secure position in the ear is worth it. This is still *plenty* of battery life in my opinion, and the headset charges swiftly, as does the case.

NOISE CANCELLING: The ANC and hear-through are both best-in-class as far as my experience goes. This was something where Sennheiser just about made it and Audio Technica kinda fell on their face, but this is the best ANC of any headset I’ve tried. It does a *fantastic* job of silencing typical office/home background noise like vents, fans, etc. as well as outdoor noise like engines, wind, etc.. One of the other benefits of the completely rounded in-ear design with no protrusion is that they are susceptible to comparatively little wind noise while doing things like cycling, which is my main use case for these. I’m willing to bet that their completely nestled fitment helps with noise cancellation, and may explain why other headsets that protrude further tend to fall flat in this category.

There’s little else for me to talk about beyond the fitment, and that’s something I’ve said enough about. They’re very comfortable, they fit very closely and don’t protrude out to catch things like the wind, or my hair. They stay in place exceptionally well, and my overgrown pixie cut even hides them completely because of their low profile. My only complaint is that if the tip of a hair pokes into the pickup for the ANC, it can cause some static until you brush off the hair, a relatively minor gripe that only applies to people within a very narrow range of hair lengths, since longer hair couldn’t poke its ends into the pickup, and shorter hair wouldn’t reach it.

Overall, I sincerely hope this headset lives a long life; I’ve very much enjoyed it so far, and would like to for as long as possible. The build quality seems decent, and my only concern is dropping the buds on a hard surface or wax ingress, but I think both the headset and tips are well-designed to prevent wax ingress, and dropping things is sort of an end user problem in this case that only particularly butterfingered individuals like myself really struggle with, so we’ll see how this goes.

First off, these are actual Samsung Galaxy Bud2 Pro earbuds. I was worried because of the low price but don’t let that scare you off.

I also purchased apple AirPod pro 2 earbuds to compare. The AirPod pro 2’s are a bit louder and sound a little better. But I hated trying to lower/raise the volume. I can’t control certain things on these galaxy’s because I have an iPhone. The plan is to set them up on my friend’s android and then I’ll have more control options when clicking the earbuds. I’m actually returning the AirPod pro 2’s because the tiny sound difference and ability to control volume is just not worth the extra $85. And this was after getting the AirPod pro 2’s for $200 on sale. These also look better than the AirPod pro 2’s and it’s nice having a color option other than white.

Fit: Make sure you try the different earbud sizes which are almost hidden inside the included charging cable case. These sounded ok at first, but found that the larger rubber tips seal so much better in my ears. They keep them in place better and seal very well. Sound immediately improved and the noise cancelation is incredible.

Sound: Nice deep base. They are a bit quieter than I expected even at full volume but honestly, if you get a good seal in your ear they are plenty loud with noise cancelation on.

Such great headphones at this price point! Great purchase!