WEBVTT

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as a kid whether you had a walkman an ipod or an Android smartphone if you had

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a pair of headphones and a three and a half millimeter jack you could always

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count on things to just work

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you know like it's a good jack and nothing has ever made me

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appreciate it more than reviewing bluetooth earbuds now it's not that the

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galaxy buds are bad they're actually pretty good they feature excellent audio

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quality a great fit and near zero latency with samsung devices but there

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are some other things about the buds that sour the experience and when we've

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had this other almost perfect audio standard for nearly 80

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years is pretty good good enough

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at the link in the video description

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now the galaxy buds are not samsung's first foray into the world of true

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wireless earbuds their gear icon x

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launched back in 2016 and was refreshed again in 2018 they had features like

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fitness tracking for active users along

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with swipe support for volume control and 4 gigs of on-board storage

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unfortunately battery life was not so good and the originals only worked with

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samsung devices for the galaxy buds samsung took what

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they learned from the iconx and made a more refined product with more universal

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appeal in short they dropped the internal

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storage added a wireless charging case improved battery life added support for

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bluetooth 5.0 and dropped the price to undercut competitors like apple's

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airpods and google's pixel buds but that

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would all be for naught if they kept that pesky

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samsung only limitation fortunately they didn't the galaxy buds

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should work with any Android or iOS device

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even though they do still work best with samsung ones

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more on that later first let's take a look at them samsung

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seems to have taken a lot of design cues from the iconx down to the rounded

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triangular touch pad and like all decent

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earbuds they include three sizes of rubber ear tips and three sizes of wing

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tips to make sure that they will stay in your ears this made riley who wrote this

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review and his freakishly asymmetrical ears

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very happy moving on to the inside we find the

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charging contacts and this curious little black dot which is a sensor that

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helps the buds detect whether or not they're in your ears and allow them to

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automatically power on or go to sleep accordingly

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battery life is a strong point with 6 hours of music listening time and 5

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hours of talk time but curiously the case only gives you about a third of the

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extended battery life compared to apple's case in spite of its similar

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size on that subject if samsung would have had to increase the size to get

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more battery life into it i'd probably have left it the way that it is too as

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it is it slips easily in and out of even very small pockets with an exterior led

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indicating the battery level for the case itself and an interior led which

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indicates the earbuds level of charge now it comes in white black or yellow

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just like the earbuds and if you've got a galaxy s10 it's

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kind of awesome being able to plug in your phone turn on wireless powershare

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and then charge your earbuds wirelessly it's just it's just one of those things

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that makes you go huh nice

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something else that's nice is the audio quality samsung is clearly getting their

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mileage out of their 2016 acquisition of harman compared to the airpods which to

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be clear are fine for most people the galaxy buds can put out a delightful

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amount of bass along with full bodied mids and balance treble

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of note however is that part of this superior performance is just the fact

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that you can customize your galaxy buds to seal correctly in your ear canal

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by comparison the air pods don't really fit snug and therefore let in a lot of

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ambient sound now with that said there's a clear

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safety advantage to being able to hear the world around you fortunately if

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you're into that the buds have an ambient sound mode that's similar to the

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one that we first saw on the here one from doppler Labs

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basically they use their two external microphones to record the noise around

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you and pass it through the speakers that are right in your ear holes

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overall we found that it didn't interfere too much with music quality

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and it was helpful especially in an office environment to know if someone's

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yelling your name from across the room now let's move on to the app

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it's not available for iOS which blows

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but other than that it's pretty cool it's actually got some great features so

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you can adjust your eq we liked the dynamic and clear presets best you can

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update your firmware without any voodoo magic you just press a button called

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update firmware like every other tech product thank you samsung i didn't think

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this needed to be a good thing but there you go and this is a really cool one you

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can actually both see your bud's battery level and locate them by playing a high

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pitched chirping noise it's almost like samsung gives a crap if

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you lose them and wants to help you cool

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also from in there you can customize some of the buds touch gestures you

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cannot change the single tap to pause or play and that's on both sides the double

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tap to skip a track or the triple tap to go to the previous track but you can

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assign the long press action to activate your voice assistant of choice it even

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works with alexa turn volume up or down or turn ambient sound on or off

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now each earbuds long press action is independent of the other so you can set

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them to do different things that is unless you want to use them for volume

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control in which case the right earbud has to be volume up while the left one

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is volume down as with the airpods you can turn the volume up down or to a

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specific percentage with your voice just watch out though because the buds

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themselves still don't have voice activation so if

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your phone's mic can't hear you then you'll have to summon cortana manually

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with a long press i'm just kidding cortana sucks

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now overall our experience with the galaxy buds has been pretty freaking

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sweet but there are a few flies in this mostly happy ointment just like the

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airpods and apple devices the galaxy buds work best with samsung devices and

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while that kind of a phrase can often be taken as

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just marketing i mean of course samsung

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wants you to buy all the samsung products it's really true here the galaxy

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wearable app is pre-installed on samsung phones allowing you to instantly pair by

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opening the case while other users of Android phones will need to install the

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app and as we mentioned before iphone users can't get it at all so they can't

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customize their gestures even and while latency is near zero with a

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galaxy s10 it's very noticeable on the pixel 3 and

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even more so on the iphone 10r that we used and the thing is while we didn't

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experience any glitchiness while listening on the iphone or on the s10

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our music tended to glitch out much more frequently on the pixel 3 especially

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when walking around with the earbuds in-ears and then the pixel 3 in a front

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pocket another big negative and this was

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actually true on all devices was the call quality now it's decent in a quiet

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environment if i was trying to talk to you guys in our studio here that would

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be just fine but if you're outside or in a busy room

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pretty much good luck having a coherent conversation

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so no matter how advanced bluetooth earbuds get with their gesture controls

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and advanced features it's the little issues like this that

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always make me kind of long for the simplicity of a headphone jack i mean

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don't get me wrong i know that by the time this zipper finally really wears

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out i'm gonna have to replace these

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i guess i just wish that the technology had matured a little more before we

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started you know yanking the three and a half millimeter ports out of our phones

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so the community over at drop.com asked for a closed back headphone with

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excellent price to performance and they're about to get it with the foxtex

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tr xo ebony headphones they're based on a model first developed in the late 80s

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with a lightweight magnesium alloy frame ebony wood earcups and breathable

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material on the ear pads so you can listen for hours in comfort

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they also feature higher flux density audio drivers crisp and detailed sound

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signature and a rich bass that doesn't become bloated so check it out at the

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link below so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that

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button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking

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out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link down below also down there

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is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one by the way and our community forum which is definitely

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worth a join these things are like really comfortable by the way

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totally forgot i had them in while i was just talking to you guys

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it's nice some good buds