Galaxy Buds 3 vs Galaxy Buds 2: What’s changed?

More than five years after introducing the first-generation Galaxy Buds, Samsung has finally launched the third iteration of its earbuds, the Galaxy Buds 3. These arrived alongside the more advanced Galaxy Buds 3 Pro at the Galaxy Unpacked event, where the company also launched a bunch of other products.

The Galaxy Buds 3 are a direct successor to the Galaxy Buds 2. The new earbuds offer huge improvements over the older buds in terms of design, build quality, durability, connectivity, sound quality, call quality, battery life, and advanced features. Let’s take a look at all these improvements in detail.

New design and better durability

The Galaxy Buds 3 feature a completely different earbud design as well as the charging case compared to the Galaxy Buds 2.

Starting with the earbuds, the Galaxy Buds 3 feature a stem design similar to the Apple AirPods. This design offers several benefits.

First, the Galaxy Buds 3 don’t protrude from your ears as much as the Galaxy Buds 2, making them look more attractive. Second, the Galaxy Buds 3 feel more comfortable and secure in your ear. Third, the stem design brings the microphones closer to your lips, providing better call quality, which we’ll discuss in more detail later.

Samsung has also made the Galaxy Buds 3 more durable and rugged than the Galaxy Buds 2. While the older earbuds have an IP52 rating for water and dust resistance, the new ones come with an IP57 rating.

As such, the Galaxy Buds 3 are more resistant to water, rain, sweat, and dust than the Galaxy Buds 2. This makes Samsung’s earbuds better in terms of durability than most other earbuds on the market, including the Apple AirPods with an IP54 rating.

As for the charging case, it has a vertical design as opposed to the horizontal design of the Galaxy Buds 2. This takes up much less space on your desk. The charging case also has a transparent lid, allowing you to check which earbuds are in the case and which are not, reducing the chances of losing them. The vertical design should also allow case makers to make better cases for the Galaxy Buds 3.

pairing button

The Galaxy Buds 3’s charging case features a pairing button, something the Galaxy Buds 2 don’t have. This button lets you quickly pair the earbuds to a new device. Here’s how it works:

If your Galaxy Buds 3 are already paired with a device but now want to pair them with a new one, simply press and hold the pairing button on the charging case for a few seconds to put them into pairing mode. Once that happens, your Galaxy Buds 3 can be found on the device you want to pair them with.

Better sound quality

While the Galaxy Buds 2 feature a dual-driver design, the Galaxy Buds 3 feature a single-driver audio setup.

This might immediately make you think that the Galaxy Buds 3 might not sound as good as the Galaxy Buds 2. However, that’s not necessarily the case. There are many earbuds with a single driver that sound better than those with two or more drivers. We can only judge the sound of the Galaxy Buds 3 after we’ve thoroughly tested them.

As for connectivity, the Galaxy Buds 2 feature Bluetooth 5.2. On the other hand, the Galaxy Buds 3 feature Bluetooth 5.4. The newer version of Bluetooth offers a more stable and secure connection compared to the older version. This means that you should experience fewer connection drops on the Galaxy Buds 3 compared to the Galaxy Buds 2.

Along with the newer Bluetooth version, the Galaxy Buds 3 also feature SSC HiFi and SSC UHQ audio codecs. In comparison, the Galaxy Buds 2 only feature SSC. SSC stands for Samsung Scalable Codec and UHQ stands for Ultra High Quality. The two new audio codecs offer a 24-bit/96kHz sampling rate, allowing for high-quality audio to be transmitted from Galaxy devices to the earbuds, which should result in much better sound quality.

Better connection quality

As mentioned earlier, the microphones on the Galaxy Buds 3 are closer to your lips than those on the Galaxy Buds 2, which provides better audio recording and therefore better call quality. However, the latest earbuds come with two new features to further improve call quality.

The microphones on the Galaxy Buds 3 feature Super Wideband (SWB) technology. This allows the microphones to record audio with a much wider frequency range than the Galaxy Buds 2 microphones. A wider frequency range means better audio quality.

This means that thanks to this technology, the Galaxy Buds 3 will be able to pick up your voice much better and transmit it to the person on the other end of the call, allowing them to hear you with maximum clarity.

Despite these improvements, the Galaxy Buds 3 may not be able to record parts of your voice correctly if you speak too softly or if there is a lot of background noise. Well, the Galaxy Buds 3 will use Galaxy AI technology to reconstruct missing parts of your voice so that the other person can hear what you are saying clearly. There is another Galaxy AI feature on board the Galaxy Buds 3 that we will discuss in a moment.

longer battery life

The Galaxy Buds 3 charging case features a 515mAh battery, which is 9% larger than the battery in the Galaxy Buds 2 charging case.

Thanks to this improvement, total audio playback time has increased by four hours with ANC on and one hour with ANC off, and total talk time has increased by five hours with ANC on and six hours with ANC off.

These are some amazing numbers. You can see the battery capacity of the new earbuds in the image below.

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It’s worth noting that the Galaxy Buds 3 have a smaller battery compared to the Galaxy Buds 2 (48mAh vs. 61mAh). Thankfully, this doesn’t affect the earbuds’ battery numbers as you can see in the image above.

Galaxy AI for real-time language translation

Thanks to Galaxy AI technology on the Galaxy Buds 3, you’ll be able to hear what the other person is saying in their language on your earbuds in your language in real time, a very useful feature not found on the Galaxy Buds 2.

To use this feature, put your Galaxy Buds 3 in your ear, open the Interpreter app on your Galaxy Z Fold 6 or Galaxy Z Flip 6, select Listening Mode, and you’re good to go. We hope Samsung expands this feature to older Galaxy smartphones and tablets with an update to the Interpreter app.

With all these features, the Galaxy Buds 3 are a lot better than the Galaxy Buds 2. If you think these features are worth the upgrade and if you are thinking of getting one, you can check the prices and release dates of the latest earbuds in this article or click the link below to pre-order them.