Gadgetory

Hey, it’s Nick Statt with The Verge. We just wrapped up here at the Galaxy S10 event in San Francisco, and on our way out, we got our hands on a pair of the Galaxy Buds. Now, these are Samsung's wireless earphones. They're designed to be kind of an answer to the AirPods, so they're cheaper than the AirPods by about $30, and they also come with wireless charging capabilities, something that Apple's headphones do not have yet. They kind of look like the Jabra Elites. They have the earphone here on the end instead of the earphone here. It’s pretty bulky with the battery and all of that other stuff inside. They are pretty comfortable. They don't fit my ears too well, but I can see that being a personal preference. That said, I've gotten to test the sound a little bit, and they sound pretty decent. I mean, we're out here, and it's windy, and there's lots of traffic, but they sound pretty good in terms of earphones. Even better, though, is that it has USB-C. Now, the case is going to give you seven hours of additional battery life. As for the Galaxy Buds themselves, they get six hours of battery life when you're streaming music or around five when you're talking on the phone. Now, the Galaxy Buds don't have noise canceling or anything that you might find in a fancier pair of headphones, but they do have a dual-mic system. Essentially, when you're trying to talk on the phone, it'll move to a different mic so they can pick you up — only your voice and not pick up all the ambient noise around you. That's super critical for wireless earbuds, in particular. A lot of wireless earbuds, AirPods excluded, because those are pretty good, are terrible at picking up all of this ambient noise around you. They make talking on the phone really difficult because they're picking up sounds of cars, they're picking up traffic, little children in playgrounds across the street, things like that. These technically, according to Samsung, don't have that issue because of the dual-mic system. We haven't necessarily been able to try that right now because we haven't done a phone call with them yet, but Samsung claims it will be better than your average wireless earbuds when it comes to picking up sound and picking up your voice when you're talking on the phone. In terms of color options, you do get three different options. You have white, you have black, and then you have like a canary yellow color. They'll certainly make the Galaxy Buds harder to lose. It's a little bit loud, so if you like softer, standard tech product colors, you'll probably want to go with the white or the black. We have the white one here. It looks pretty nice. So the Galaxy Buds launch in the US on March 6th for $129.99. They launch in Europe later this month, on March 29th, for €149. But if you preorder the S10 or the S10 Plus, they'll come bundled with it. So in terms of pairing, Samsung has a neat little AirPods-like animation for when you're using a Galaxy device. I have an iPhone XS here. These can still pair with that, but you just have to open them up right in front while you're looking at the Bluetooth menu here, and they should pop up under the other devices right there. Took just a second. Tap it, and bam, we're connected. So it's super seamless if you're an iOS user. You should have no problem using these. If, for some reason, you don't want the AirPods or you get these as a gift or something like that. That said, it should work a lot faster and a lot more seamlessly on a Galaxy device where I would just pop up a little overlay that you tap once, and they should connect automatically. For all the Samsung news announced here at Unpacked, make sure to read theverge.com and also check out our hands-on video of the full Galaxy S10 lineup over at YouTube at youtube.com/the verge. Thanks for watching.