Me and Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 initially get along very well. The headphones sync quickly with the phone, the app is easy to navigate and nice, the headphones are small and neat. The bean-shaped headphones sit well and comfortably in my ears. But, it must be said, when I have used them a couple of times, I can see the shortcomings. More on that a little further down.

You can count on unexpectedly clear, almost crystalline sound. You have to be happy with that. Possibly some slight bass though. When I sat and listened to a headphone presentation by another manufacturer last winter, they bragged that their speaker elements pumped bass in a good way. It was fun, I thought, and educational. You get a picture of how the small elements in the ears struggle, sweat! To meet the feeling you want when you start Spotify’s Beast mode playlist. In this case, with Galaxy Buds 2, I think the base pumping is a bit meager. But it’s a matter of taste, of course.

Galaxy Buds 2 comes with active noise reduction (ANC) and the ability to listen. I think both modes do the job. Attenuates, or lets in the ambient sound satisfactorily.

5 hours of listening time is promised by Samsung, which can be a total of 20 hours with the charging box. However, the playing time may vary, depending on the settings in the app.

The headphones are most suitable for android devices. It’s only in the environment the Galaxy wearable app exists. The headphones can be paired with IOS, but then you have to live with a very limited experience.

As for the microphones, I hear from those I talk to that my voice is clear and distinct. But that there is also a kind of sounding clinical sound? Like I’m in a very sterile environment. Operating room type. A little hard to describe, and when I record myself I can understand what they mean.

Weaknesses?

Yes, they are there too. My biggest problem with them is the sleek design. Excuse? Let me explain. The polished and nice surface on the outside of the headphones means that you do not really learn where the touchpads are located. So if the headphones end up out of position and you need to fix them, it is very easy that you happen to activate listening or pause what you are listening to. It can still be seen as annoying. Design won over function.

A little further up I wrote about how comfortable and stable they sit in the ears. It turned out that it only applies when I sit still. The package comes with a set of three pairs of silicone plugs. In the most stingy team perhaps. I have tested all three, but nothing seems to make the headphones sit still – when I move. In combination with what I wrote about the touch pads on the headphones, it happened both once and twice that I happened to hang up in the middle of an ongoing conversation. Do you know what you become then? Sour.

The IPX2 classification. Hello? What happened here? This means that they are resistant to “a small amount of drip water”, which in humans can be translated as “moderately sweat-protected”. Training with them should then more or less be avoided.

The app

I like it. Here you dive into a world of lively design and user-friendliness. It’s no frills. You make your settings and then you leave the app.

The only weakness in the app is that it has 6 equlaizer modes. Choose between “Normal”, “Bass boost”, and so on. Here I would have liked to have had the opportunity to pull the sliders myself.

A clever feature of the app is that you can tune so that the headphones fit properly. Because you do not always know.

Review Samsung Galaxy Buds 2

I think the headphones are perfectly ok. After the first moment of testing, I was really saved. Thought that a sensible title on the test would be that “so good that I never want to take them off”. Further testing, however, nuanced my feelings for the headphones.

It’s a pair of high quality headphones. They are neat, flexible and the sound can not really be complained about. But it is a problem that you do not really know where the guide plates on the headphones are located. Taking a break when you have to fix a nap in the ear is actually very annoying, especially when you work blindly.

And that with the IP classification then. It’s a crash.