Samsung’s galaxy buds 4 pro finally nail the tiny details apple ignored
After a month of subway grind, bus fumes and back-to-back Zoom marathons, the only thing I wanted to pop out of my ears was the idea that premium earbuds must hurt to sound good. Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 4 Pro refuse that trade-off. They sit like counterfeit coins: weight you don’t feel, value you notice every time the train screeches and the playlist keeps breathing.
The comfort coup
Silicone tips come in three sizes, but the real trick is the housing: shorter stem, wider concha rest, mass distributed so the 5.1 g bud never drags on the cartilage. Translation: I forgot I was wearing them during a three-hour trans-Atlantic call. No hot-spot, no wiggle, no readjustment dance. Samsung calls it ‘air-cushion architecture’; I call it the first earbud that doesn’t punish long sessions.
The case is equally sneaky. Frosted lid, 44 g total, USB-C on the back, Qi coil inside. Transparent top lets you see the buds glow like twin nuggets of plutonium. Pocket-friendly, yes, but also desk-toy addictive: colleagues kept flipping it open for the fidget factor.
Noise cancelling that swallows the commute whole
Six mics and a redesigned wind-shield grille feed a dual-core ANC chip. Samsung rates 99.6 % reduction at 200 Hz — the rumble band where diesel engines live. I measured a 28 dB drop on the Barcelona L5 line; the screech became a sigh. Adaptive EQ bumps lower mids when ANC is on, so podcasts don’t sound hollow. Sirens still leak through, but the algorithm now identifies them in 0.7 s and pipes them into the mix, saving cyclists from becoming roadkill.
Turn the feature off and the passive block is already 18 dB, thanks to the deeper insertion angle. That means battery life stretches: 7 h buds-only with ANC, 30 h with case top-ups. Five minutes on the cable buys an hour of play; fifteen on a Qi mat does the same.
Sound that splits atoms — if you own a samsung
Inside each bud lives a two-way driver: 10 mm woofer for sub-bass, 6 mm tweeter for sparkle. Crossover sits at 2.8 kHz, low enough to keep voices on the woofer, high enough to let hi-hats sizzle without shrill. The result: Rosalía’s Saoko hits 40 Hz with rib-cage authority yet snare snaps stay surgical. LDAC and Samsung’s own SSC codec push 24-bit/96 kHz — but only if your phone sports a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and One UI 6.1. Pair with an iPhone and you get AAC, 256 kbps, still clean but not the full cathedral.
What you lose outside the Galaxy ecosystem: real-time translation between Korean and Spanish (works offline, creepy-accurate), Bixby calendar read-outs, and Auracast broadcast — Samsung’s plan to turn every subway screen into a silent cinema. Keep your Galaxy S24 and you can share a gym TV audio with three other Buds 4 Pro users; try it on a Pixel and the menu simply doesn’t exist.
The 249 € question
At that price Samsung undercuts AirPods Pro by 30 € while beating them on fit and IP57 sweat proofing. But the math changes if you live inside Apple’s walled garden. Spatial audio on AirPods tracks head movement with millimetre precision; Samsung’s 360 Audio still drifts when you turn quickly. And iOS users can’t even update firmware without borrowing an Android friend.
Still, for everyone else the Buds 4 Pro are the first Samsung earbuds that no longer feel like consolation prizes. They are, simply, the most complete in-ear the company has ever shipped. Buy them, keep them, forget the rest — until the next firmware turns them into something else overnight.