The Galaxy Buds 3 Pros are great Android/Windows earbuds

Samsung’s latest Galaxy Buds 3 Pro continue the company’s many-year streak of making great earbuds with a comfortable design, great sound quality, and solid battery life. You can argue that the design copies Apple’s AirPods, but it brings welcome improvement to the buds’ microphones and touch controls that are worth the trade-off.

I’d also argue that the silver model I tested did enough to stand out with their angular design, metallic sheen and cool light blades. The blades, while fairly useless in practice, even give the white models a sharp design when in your ears. The case makes you twist the earbuds a little awkwardly to place them inside, but beyond that, it’s a solid design, and the clear lid is a nice touch. I also like the small pops of colour that tell you which earbud goes in which charging port.

Overall, I actually really like the look of these buds in silver and I hope that Samsung sticks with it for at least a few more generations. It’s simple, looks good in the ear, and, more importantly, helps the buds feel more premium than plastic earbuds should feel.

In my testing, the buds easily lasted somewhere between the quoted 5-6 hour mark, depending on how much active noise cancelling (ANC) I was using. The case adds another roughly 20 hours or so, meaning these buds can easily go for days. You can charge the buds quickly with a USB-C port, or you can use a wireless charger for a slightly slower top-up.

Samsung also added adaptive noise-cancelling, which is decently powerful and seemed to do a decent job at modulating loud sounds as I moved around the city. The regular ANC is also fine and will block out a majority of noise, but it’s not the best I’ve heard, with OnePlus, Apple and Google offering more solid options if you want to block out all sounds. I haven’t tested them, but I have heard great things about the ANC on Bose’s earbuds as well. That being said, at the end of the day, once you have some audio going, the ANC does a really good job of isolating you.

In addition, the actual sound quality these buds deliver is tremendous, and once again, Samsung proves that buying Harman a few years ago was well worth it. Plus, being able to control them with the easier-to-use controls on the stems makes for a really pleasing listening experience compared to older models.

I am a bit disappointed that Samsung decided not to put in a universal form of multipoint connection. Still, I’m happy that it at least supports fast pairing systems for Windows and Android, so it is relatively easy to connect to and reconnect to devices as you move throughout your day. If you use a Windows computer with Bluetooth earbuds often, this feature alone should make connecting them much easier. You can still use Samsung’s Auto Switch feature to move the buds between Samsung wearables, phones and tablets, but it doesn’t include most laptops, which is one of the main devices people usually connect headphones to.

If you want to order Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, you can now, but I would wait a little bit to see if Samsung announces a fix for its earbud tips, which many users have reported are very easy to break. (Note: before this was published, Samsung started shipping out the Buds 3 Pro again, suggesting the quality issues have been addressed.) I didn’t break mine during my test, but I can see how people have. You need to use a lot of force to remove the tips.

If you don’t make a lot of calls with your buds, you can also get Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, which are cheaper and also offer superb audio quality. I’m also a fan of the standard Galaxy Buds 3 if you don’t really care about ANC.

At the end of my week of testing these buds, I can’t say they’ve left much of an impression on me. They look cool and feature good microphones and decent ANC, but since they’re $329 in Canada, I think many Canadians will be able to get comparable buds for less. It’s also worth remembering that Samsung earbuds often get pretty good discounts a few times per year.