Ladies and gentlemen, we are back with the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pros. And this
is a good timing because I'm kind of in the market. My Sony XM4s have been kind
of failing me on the plane. But one little spoiler for the audio testing
that we did on these puppies is that I took a little sneak peek at the graphs
and I had to raise an eyebrow or two because they measure it a little
differently than last year. But we'll get to that later. Right now, let's look
at what's in the box or maybe we should say what's not in the
box. Like look at this. You get the buds, you get some paper,
you get some ear tips. That's it. They're boiling the frog all the time
with not only is there not a charging brick, there's not even a USB-C cable
anymore. And there used to be. Now, these do have wireless charging. So I
guess technically, you do have everything you need to at least make
them function. But if they didn't have that, this would be an absolute travesty. And even still, it's pretty
egregious cuz I don't charge with wireless charging. And I don't have a
wireless charging dock. This is getting crazy. It's not cheaper than last year, either. They didn't shave $3 off. Looks
like it comes with three sizes of ear tips. You got your small, you got your large, and then I'm assuming that
there's mediums on buds themselves here. Woo! The case is a little different than
last time. Now it's opening hamburger style instead of like AirPods style.
Last time it was all AirPods kind of industrial design rip-off. This time,
they flattened it out so it's no longer this like pyramid-shaped blade. Should make it
more usable cuz that was kind of hard to grab, that triangular thing. I'm really
liking the look of this, but let's just slow down for a second here. Back to the
tips. They're silicone, they're not foam. They again seem kind of
proprietary. Like they have this rigid form here that is going to click onto
the driver. Then there's a little kind of perforated speaker grill looking
thing there. That's about it. They're white. I assume they match the colorway
that we got, which is white, whereas black is available. And there's even an
online exclusive pink gold color. Checking out this case, it does look
pretty nice and sharp right now, but I I anticipate this getting scuffed up and
scratched up pretty quick. If you care about that, don't put these in your pocket with your keys.
Oh, wow. I like the sound of that. And it has a really satisfying, like, snap
open. You can actually see it. It catches at a certain point and opens
itself. Boom. Attention. That's cool. So, USB
charging port on the back as well as a physical pairing button, which I always
love to see cuz I just I hate when there's ambiguity about, like, you put
them in the case and then it automatically isn't pairing mode. Just give me
some positive feedback. Now, let's look at the buds. I think the look of the
buds is really nice and premium. It's got some really nice lines. They
advertise this like craftsman-grade milled aluminum or metal body, but it is
just the blade, I believe, that is metal. I don't It's It can be hard to
tell, but I don't think that this is metal. I think this is just plastic.
It's really great plastic. But, the fact that they say metal blade on the website
makes me think it's just this band they're talking about. Now, you used to
be able to like swipe down the stem and then squeeze and click the bottom of it.
Without turning these on, I don't discern any clickiness here. It may be a
thing you can squeeze, but it does What I'm saying is it doesn't deform or click
at all that I can tell. Now, these have six microphones, but they are all behind
little grills like this one. Sometimes earbuds have little holes where you can
count the mics, but not here. So, there's a grill there. There's a wider
grill here. And then there's ones on the outside here. And there could be some
more microphones in here.
But, I can't confirm that. Then you've got the pogo pins and legend kind of
indicator that this is the right one and this is
Yeah, that's the left one and that looks like that's just kind of printed on
there. I don't feel any texture to it. And it's nice that they label left and
right cuz sometimes they only label one of them and then when you're looking at the other and just it says nothing, you
never really know until you pull out the other one. Cool. And the IP rating is
IP57. Now, normally IP54 is what you get
on just about every earbud, and that's enough for splashes or sweat. But, 5/7,
man, like you could you could work at a car wash and your buddy is spraying you all day. You can be a lifeguard and and
fall in the water to go and save somebody and you're you're going to be fine. You could drop these in the toilet
when you're drunk. You will be all right. Let's get them in the old head
holes here. Oh, yeah, that was so easy. It's nice having the stem, too. You kind
of just put her in and twist, point the stem forward, and I feel like I have a
good seal. The ANC kicked on right away. My voice totally sounds different to me.
So, they are sealed pretty nicely with the mediums for me. Cool, they're they
seem pretty comfy. Oh, I would like to headbang, but you
know, this old jujitsu neck is less and less mobile all the time. Oh my god, if
you guys could hear the sounds this is making. Anyway,
they're really they're really in there.
I'm just having fun now. Yeah. All right. Yeah, good fit.
Lightweight, too. How much do these weigh? Let me see here.
11 g single bud. Probably 5 and 1/2,
right? And case,
55. Well, I want to listen to these, see how they sound, and check out the
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from one of Jawa's verified sellers at the link below. We're back, and we have
here a Samsung phone, which is noteworthy because there are a couple
Samsung only features and the magic
pairing is probably going to be one of them. So, let's see how it looks if I
just open the case. I got a red dot on the front. What if I press this button?
What if I hold this button? I probably could read this start quick start guide.
Oh, now we're flashing red, green, blue. All right. Uh this is just the normal
Bluetooth menu, but it's available here. Okay, I was expecting like, you know,
the card to come up from the bottom and look all sexy. And I'm pretty sure I saw
a picture of that on their website, but it didn't happen here. Whatever. You're
looking at the experience uh you non-Samsung people will get. I'm a
non-Samsung person. Bring me to life by Evanescence. That's
going to be our first test track. Why not? 2.6 billion plays can't be wrong.
Such an iconic like piano intro.
Uh this is awesome. Where are you now, Amy? What is Amy doing now?
Oh, wow. I didn't even know there was like a boo
kind of thing at the beginning of this. I never noticed that before. It might be overcooked in the on these Oh my god,
yeah, there's this low rumble coming through.
I should have a rule where I only listen to like 2000s new metal on ShortCircuit
for now. This is so fun. Wake me up.
I can't wake up. Save me. How loud do these go?
That's too loud. Oh. See, the rule with headphones is the
good ones, the louder you turn them up, the better they sound.
If you're cringing or flinching,
they're distorted. That high hat shh shh shh shh shh
That feels a little little sharp. Okay, okay, gets That's
enough. I want something smooth and warm now. I'm going Dreams, Fleetwood Mac,
you know, go longboarding with hair down to your ass. Oh,
the do this bass is just so so fat. And
you might like that, but it's sounding weird to me cuz I've listened to this song a million times on a million
setups. I've never noticed this big fat bass guitar. And again, the high hat is
just like right in my ear. Yeah. Okay, yeah. And Stevie Nicks is sounding, you
know, she always kind of sounds like a goat, but she's like even more nasally
than normal here. So, let's go to the graph and see if there's any explanations for what I'm experiencing.
Yes, so here we have the measurements. You can see this gray clouded kind of
area is the range that most people like
to be in. That's our target kind of range. And the bass in particular, look
how cooked that is. It's way out there, and I can hear that. Then you go into
the mids and there's this dip followed by a peak. Now, those are generally in
bounds. Then you get another dip followed these big big peaks, and that's
what I'm hearing in the treble there when it's getting then the when the symbols and the brass are just too kind
of crispy. The interesting thing here that DMS called out is that when you
have these kind of peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys, they kind of
emphasize each other. So, let's say you have this dip that's only 5 dB or
something like that. That will sound more accentuated if it is preceded by a
peak cuz you're really hearing the difference the contrasting difference
between those peaks and valleys impacts how you perceive it. So, that's kind of
on full display here. And it's funny cuz the main thing they show front and
center on the website is like true high-fi listening experience, new bigger
diaphragm, super woofer. So, I guess
they delivered on that part. So, the drivers on these compared to last year
are almost 20% bigger. That's cool. 19.8%. The if the non-pros, you get the
non-pros, they only have one driver, but these have two. Dual driver, dual amp,
baby. One other thing that is nice to see that we confirmed on this set
compared to last year is a like a Fletcher-Munson curve volume dependent
EQ, which basically equates to the sound of some frequencies, particularly bass,
changing depending on how loud you play it because we can't hear bass as we're
not as sensitive to bass as other frequencies. So, if you turn them way
down, you actually want the bass to go up so that you can still hear it. And
then when you crank them way up, you want the bass to go down. And these do that. They didn't before. They didn't
last year. So, that's an improvement. Needless to say, I don't love the sound of these out of the box, but I should be
able to EQ it to something I do like. So, let's open up the app and see what
options they give for that. And there's there's everything in here. Got your battery level reading up here. Couple
different modes for the active noise canceling. Off, ambient sound, adaptive,
and just on. I like on. But, let's try
out the ambient sound cuz I've learned that some people really care about this
feature. I'm not the kind of person who does, but I've saw people in the comments saying, "I use ambient all the
time because I have my kids. I want to listen to music and be able to hear my
kids, make sure they're safe." And And you know what? As a dad,
valid. Maybe I should use this more often. As I speak right now, my voice
sounds natural to me. It actually sounds more natural than when I had the ANC on.
Can you speak to me? Hey, how's it going? You sound like normal. Awesome.
All right, that's pretty good. Let's go back to having that on though cuz I like to be alone. Then you get this active
noise canceling level. So, that's just how intense is it? That's cool. There's
five levels there. Auto switch to ambient sound. I believe that means when
you take it out. Turn on ambient sound do do do do do. Oh, no. No, it's not
when you take it out. It's when you start speaking, which is crazy. What if
I start yelling at a podcast or singing along? I don't want the ambient sound to
turn on. And there's options. It can be based on when you start speaking or when
it hears sirens, which is kind of cool. Wow, this is interesting. It says that
if you can't hear your own voice, that can be kind of less comfortable and it
can lead to you yelling while talking, which I'm probably doing right now. You
know what would be a great first step though is if people just used headphones
at all while talking in public. I don't know where you live, but it seems like
it's it's a spreading around the world where people are just You know what? Why don't I have a call on speakerphone
while I'm on the bus? We should be allowed to volleyball slap phones out of
people's hands if they do that Grow up. Your ear butt controls is something I always look for. You can
pinch to play and pause and you get a really satisfying tick tick kind of
sound in there when you do that. I like that a lot. Pinch to play and pause,
that's intuitive. Double for next, triple for previous. Swipe up and down
for volume control. That's actually exactly how I would set it. But you can
just turn all of that off if you don't want media controls, which is kind of
interesting. Then you get your left and right. Oh, so this is just for pinch and
hold. So you can choose between, you know, Bixby for some reason they haven't
canceled it yet. Switching between your ANC, digital assistant, which says
Google, that's a that's a good one. Okay, and then you can just turn on and
off whether pinching answers or ends a call or declines a call if you pinch and
hold. So it's just there's some options. I've seen better,
but at the same time at least they happen to pick the default config that I
would run anyway, so I'm okay with it.
Wow, that's just not even in English. That's weird. Whoa, this whole menu is
just not in the language that we have selected. That's bizarre. What if we go
to English Australia? English India? What is that? How is that different from
English UK? I'm ignorant on this topic, guys. Hit me up in the comments. What is
English India? English Can- Where's English Canada? What the hell? This is
Uh I want to get to the EQ. Wait, why is it so buried? Oh,
equalizer, there it is. All right, equalizer, we found it. Wow. Nine band
equalizer, that's nice. And plus or
minus 10 different gradations, too. So this is a really nice kind of gradual
equalizer. It has some presets. I guess balance is what we started with. Smooth
gives you even more bass. Clear might be the one. Bass boost. Just get ready to
Yeah, I would probably would do something like, I don't know, bring those down, maybe bring those down. Yes,
this is something like this. I wonder if you can upload one. That would be cool.
I've seen that before. I don't see an option to do that now. Shall we? I will
just check out advanced features real quick. They got the neck stretch
reminders, you know. Oh, you got to calibrate though. Look forward with your
head level for 10 seconds until you hear a chime. Tilt your head down until you
hear a chime. Oh, can imagine I'm on my phone like this far. Couldn't do it.
It's telling me to make sure I'm following instructions carefully. I
Sorry, those were simple, but I I'm not smart enough. Find my earbuds,
that's always nice. I thought that the last year's model also lit up cuz it had
an LED bar down the stand. And that would have been cool like in a in a dark
room or in the couch cushion. These ones are just making sound. Pretty basic
these days. Now, one of the new features this year on these anyway is the ability
to respond to notifications with a head gesture. You can nod or shake your head
no to answer a phone or to like read a text, that kind of stuff. And the button
for that would be right here. But on this S23 Ultra, which is running One UI
8 instead of 8.5, we don't have it yet cuz that update isn't coming until it
says April or May. So, unfortunately, we can't try that out. But I don't know, I
have mixed minds about it. To me like when I when I see that feature get
announced, I think who the heck is going to use that? It looks so lame. However,
you know, Brad's telling me that he uses it all the time on his AirPods and it's
really useful. Let's say your hands are wet or you're they're not. Maybe they're
just in your pockets and you're walking outside. It's just really intuitive and fits into your life apparently to just
be able to deny things or accept things just by moving your head. So,
your mileage may vary. Mic test. Okay. Recording with Galaxy Buds 4 Pro. This
is what they sound like. Now, that last nodding and whatever gesture feature is
a Samsung only feature as well as a couple other features I'll
tell you about now including one of the codecs. So, the codec this comes with
are SBC, which is the just normal Bluetooth codec, and AAC, which is a
pretty good one. But if you have a Samsung phone, you also get their
Samsung seamless codec, which gives you 24-bit audio at 96 kHz wirelessly. And
this is over Bluetooth 6.1, the latest and greatest. And another exclusive
feature is Samsung's super clear call, even in noise. And one problem I have
with these is that they advertise them on the front of their page, but they
only tell you that it's Samsung only in a little footnote. It's kind of scummy.
For battery life, Samsung is saying 7 hours with ANC off, which I would never
do, and 6 hours with ANC on. So, that's the claim that matters to me. You get 25
to 30 hours in total with the case charging your buds a bunch of times. So,
how do we like it? Well, it's going to come down to the price. Same price as last year, even though there's no cable
in the box, $250, which makes them more expensive than Bose Quiet Comfort
non-Ultras, which are 180, more expensive than AirPods 4s, which are 130
or 180 depending on whether you got ANC, and more expensive than the Samsung Buds
non-Pro 4s, which are 180. Makes them
the same price as AirPods Pro 3s, and
cheaper than Sony XM6, which are 300 bucks, and the Bose Quiet Comfort
Ultras, which are also 300 bucks. However, we should know Samsung does put
their buds on sale quite often. So, if you see them on sale, why not give them
a try? They're really slick. If you can EQ the
sound to something you like, I think that there's really no reason to not at
least consider them. Earbuds, you know, you can't really go wrong with some of
the big ones. They're They're all pretty dang good these days. So, maybe it just
comes down to the look. Maybe you want that pink. But if you're on the fence about getting something that goes in
your ear at all, maybe check out these over-ear headphones from Nothing that we
recently covered, the Nothing headphone A. Or is that what they're called? Yep.
Yeah. Their names You always got to check what their names are.
They're all over the place. Okay, bye.