- So when I told a few buds
that I was reviewing the beans,
they were really excited for
me because if you know me,
you know that I love the word bean
and I love the word buds and well buds,
these are beans.
- Roll that beautiful bean footage.
(upbeat music)
- Nice pot of pinto
beans in the crock pot.
(upbeat music continues)
- Could everybody please
leave so I can eat my beans?
(upbeat music continues)
- It's rare in tech
to get such a fresh
form factor these days.
Most phones are skinny rectangles,
earbuds are stemmed or they're circles
and laptops are well laptops.
So when I opened up the
poorly named Galaxy Buds Live,
it was a total breath of fresh air.
And with any first gen form factor,
I was excited for the new experience,
but I was definitely
expecting some compromises.
Like maybe the audio quality
was going to be a bit off or
the build quality would be weird
or the mic would be scratchy.
But these beat, buds, these buds,
they managed to be
something completely new
without compromises.
Let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
Buds come in mystic bronze,
mystic white, or mystic black,
but Samsung gave me
the bronze to test out.
And to be honest, I
don't think this bronze
is doing these buds any favors
in that these are not beans,
these are buds department.
This is almost the exact
color of a kidney bean.
Oka, besides my love of this hardware,
there was one feature
I was shocked to hear
these $169 buds had,
and that was active noise
cancellation or ANC.
So I knew one place I was
definitely going to test them out.
So we're on our way to the
Brooklyn Heights Promenade
because it is a beautiful
location to film,
especially at sunset.
Oh, here she is.
But it also has one fatal
flaw that makes it perfect
for testing this active
noise cancellation.
The promenade is located directly above
a double-decker highway.
So although beautiful, it is not quiet.
(highway noise)
The Buds Live have what Samsung is calling
open type active noise cancellation
and open it definitely is.
The Buds Live were able to
cancel the lowest level hum
out of the city but I'm sad to report
that they did very little in canceling
pretty much any other background noise,
especially the saxophone
that was being played
a few benches down.
The Galaxy Buds Plus do
more in canceling out
background noise simply
by their in-ear design.
And then the AirPod Pros
take that a step further
with their in-ear design and
true active noise cancellation.
So if you're looking to really block out
the world around you in a bud, well,
don't look to the Buds Live.
(upbeat music)
The Buds themselves are
glossy on the outside
and matte on the part
that sits inside your ear.
They sit in a clamshell case
and when I saw the renderings of the case,
I thought for sure it would be huge
much like the clamshell
case of the Powerbeats Pro.
But now this is surprisingly small
and it's easily pocket-able.
It's about one and a half times
wider than the AirPods case
and it's a little bit lighter
than the Pixel Buds case.
Now the hinge on the case is stiff
and that's probably a good
thing because the buds,
while they do have a bit of
a cradle, it's not very deep.
And yes, there are
magnets that hold them in,
but they're not the strongest
magnets in the world.
(Becca gasps)
Dropping buds is a very scary experience.
Case charges wirelessly or
via USB-C port round back
and it holds 21 hours of music playback
while each bud can last
for around six hours
with ANC audio turned on.
For context, the AirPod
Pros with ANC turned on
last about 4.5 hours.
A five minute quick charge in the case,
will get you an hour of
listening time back though.
In case you missed the Samsung
Unpacked event last week,
which was so beautiful in its own way,
there was this moment.
(dramatic sound)
- Wow. There it is. The Galaxy Note 20.
- Okay, that has nothing
to do with this video,
but I just love that so much.
But then there was also this moment.
- We compared Buds Live with
the pair of wireless earphones
from another company.
- Can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
- Wait, did Samsung just do a mic test?
You love to see it.
But also you hate to see that
they don't tell you who
the competitors were.
So let's get to the kitchen.
So going head to head today are
the AirPods, the Pixel Buds,
the Galaxy Buds Plus,
and the Galaxy Buds Live.
So the Pixel Buds, I love
having the Google assistant
always listening and
ready because in my home
I use it all the time.
But I must admit the dropouts are real.
And moving on, we have
the Galaxy Buds Plus
and in the second
generation of these buds,
the microphone got so much better.
And here are the AirPods
with that nice long stem
and typically very good mic quality.
Here are the Galaxy Bud Live
and I'm going to run the water,
but I'm going to save the water this time
because I'm actually in
the most Brooklyn way,
watching all of my friends'
plants at the moment.
Water time!
Oh man, I'm going to fill up
so many pitchers of water I just realized.
I'm going to the top of this pitcher.
I only have so many
pitchers in this house.
Okay, I truly underestimated
how much water
I was going to be using.
Wow.
Okay.
Can you hear me? How does this sound?
Oh my god, the Chemex,
we'll fill the Chemex.
There we go.
All right.
So the Galaxy Bud Live.
How does these sound?
Is it all right?
Okay, that was actually super interesting
because although the
Galaxy Buds Live sound
a little bit more mechanic or robotic,
when there wasn't background noise.
When there was background noise,
it like completely canceled it out.
Like that last clip, the water was running
and you couldn't hear it at all.
Whereas in the AirPod sound
maybe a little bit more natural
and they kept a little
bit of the water sound in.
It didn't, it didn't mean
that you couldn't hear me,
but you could hear the water running,
but that might just be our
closest competition yet.
Please sound off down below.
Which one do you think was the best?
So audio quality on these
buds, it's really good dudes.
I most closely compared
them to the AirPods
'cause they have that same open ear design
and it was hard to tell a difference.
The buds themselves have
12 millimeter drivers
and overall it's just a really full sound.
Now the bass isn't bumping,
but in the wearable apps,
I always go in there and
I turn on bass boost,
which actually helps a lot.
Past Bec is going to
tell you about hardware
while I go dance a little bit more.
The shape is weird
and it's definitely the most
exciting part about them.
In my ears it fits really well
with the small wingtip on,
and there's also a large
size tip included in the box.
The lack of an AirPod-like stem
allows me to wear these buds
without them getting caught
on like my bike helmet strap,
or while taking off a sweatshirt.
And you almost can't even
see them sitting in my ears
when you look at me head on.
The Bluetooth connection on these buds
is also really strong.
I almost always leave my S10
up here on a wireless charger
and I could move freely
throughout my house
without losing connection.
And within my week of testing
and using it mostly with
my S10 and my MacBook Pro,
I only lost connection
once while I was on a call.
I also tested it with an
iPhone 11 Pro and a Pixel 4A
and it worked well with those two.
There's no noticeable
lag when playing games
or watching YouTube.
And there's one more feature
that's new to these buds,
which is a hand-free Bixby option.
It works. Yeah, it listens.
It hears me. It responds.
How well it responds, well.
Bixby is Bixby.
So it responds as well
as Bixby can respond.
(upbeat music)
So the Galaxy Buds Live.
They're $169 beans with great
audio quality, a solid mic,
all packed into a surprisingly
functional small form factor.
But I love when tech gets new and fresh
and like exciting again and low key weird.
Like I'll never forget being
in Barcelona for MWC 2019
and filming this shot of Huawei's Mate X.
We were in the basement
of some random hotel
and they brought out the
Mate X and they unfolded it.
And, oh my gosh, the
excitement in that room.
And sadly in tech, we just don't get
that experience much anymore.
So when this crazy bean
looking earbud was released,
it felt like that breath
of fresh air to me.
It felt like I was finally
going to test out something new.
And as new as these may look,
what's actually exciting about them,
is that it didn't lose
sight of the fundamentals,
like audio quality, a solid
mic, Bluetooth connection.
And that, that makes
them a pretty good bean.
You ever just like,
forget to roll audio?
Has that ever happened to you?
For that I would say like
once a year it happens
and every time it does, it's
incredibly disappointing.
Anyway, my name is Becca
Farsace, thank you for watching.
I'm going to go re-record
this whole thing.
(Becca laughs)
