Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro review: A bit of a fixer-upper

It’s hard to ignore when big tech companies come out with a new top-of-the-line set of earbuds, and Samsung has joined in on the party in early 2026. Dubbed the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro, the latest flagship earbuds from the Korean electronics giant have a lot to offer users of its smartphones, but what about the market in general? Will they follow in the beleaguered footsteps of its predecessor? We took these through the lab to find out.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro is a set of interesting-looking earbuds with a lollipop stem and bud design. Each earbud uses an ovoid nozzle with a silicone ear tip, which should have no trouble fitting to your ear. If you do have any issues, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro comes with three additional sizes of ear tips for you to try. Each earbud is a fairly-light 5.1g, which shouldn’t put too much pressure on your ear canals — which is good, considering that the earbuds do not have a fin to hold the chassis in place, and rely on the ear tip to hold the product in your ear. Thankfully, the earbuds are comfortable enough for long listens.

On the back of the lollipop stems are a sheet of metal-looking plastic, which serves little other purpose than aesthetics and volume control. The stem itself has a nub near the bottom to indicate to users where the pinch control is located — which can be a bit of a pain to use, if you ask me. If you’ve got a Samsung phone and you’re feeling extra spicy, you can also toggle head gestures to control your earbuds — though this is limited to answering or rejecting incoming phone calls.

The charging case is quite small, and can fit into most pockets without difficulty. The clear plastic top allows you to see if your earbuds are in there at a glance — or if you need to go get your pet’s stomach pumped. On the back of the case is a USB-C charging port, and a pairing button that you’ll need to get comfy with if you intend to use your earbuds with multiple devices. The case can be charged wired or wirelessly, which is a nice convenience feature if you have a wireless charge pad on your desk.

Finally, these earbuds are built to withstand moisture and dust pretty well. With an IP57 rating, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro can theoretically take a dunk underwater without immediately giving up the ghost. However, we caution you not to put it to the test — or tempt fate by using them in the shower every day.

What are the best features of the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro?

For those of you with modern Samsung phones, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro has a lot to offer. For example, ultra-wideband microphones (16kHz bandwidth limit) and Ultra High-Quality (UHQ) audio will require a recent Samsung phone (S23 or newer with One UI 6.1.1+ installed). If you don’t use such a phone, then these features will be inaccessible to you, and you’ll be limited to SBC and AAC.

However, the Galaxy Wearable app does offer an interesting slate of options, such as being able to use the “adapt sound” to adjust the phone’s output to your own personal hearing test results. Additionally, spatial audio and “boost dialogue” options should prove to be popular for those who are into that sort of thing.  For those that lose their earbuds often, Find My Earbuds makes its return as well.

One thing we’re excited about here is the inclusion of Auracast. While it should become more and more standard as time goes on, it’s always a good thing when you can use your earbuds to listen in on public or shared broadcasts. For example, if you need to use your earbuds with a TV or at an airport terminal, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro can listen in on the broadcast so you don’t lose out on anything.

How does the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro connect?

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro connects to devices via Bluetooth 6.1 with SBC and AAC. If you have a Samsung phone to use with these earbuds, models running One UI 4.0+ should be able to unlock the use of Samsung Seamless Codec, along with other Samsung-exclusive goodies. The earbuds don’t support true Multipoint. Instead, if you want to connect to multiple devices and switch between them, you will have to download the Samsung Wear app on each device. Android users should not notice issues with latency, as SSC and AAC both have fairly minimal lag.

How long do the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro’s battery last?

After a number of false starts due to the complexities of in-ear detection, we have final figures for our standardized battery test. The 61mAh cells in each earbud were able to last 6 hours and 1 minute in our tests (pretty much dead-on for the estimate listed on the specs page), and the charging case has a 530mAh cell inside that should allow for about 3-4 charge cycles before you need to find a wall charger.

Though the cells in the earbuds are much larger than those found in the Galaxy Buds 4, they’re still small in the grand scheme of things. Consequently, you’ll want to keep an eye on it over time. Should a firmware update say that it’s adding smarter battery charging, jump at it, as it’ll help you practice battery hygiene without putting any thought into it.

Though Samsung advertises 6 hours of play time with ANC on, we’ll report back with our figures once we have the results. In general, battery estimates are pretty good, however.

Despite only offering silicone ear tips, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro does a very good job of blocking out unwanted noise from the world around you. Not only is the isolation decent, but the active noise canceling (ANC) is quite good, too. When set to maximum strength, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro is able to attenuate an average of 84% of garbage noise across the audible spectrum — though there are some places where it’s not so good.

Specifically, the range from 500Hz to about 1.1kHz has a bit less effectiveness than this average, and that’s right where a bunch of annoying sounds can pop up. It’s entirely possible that you’ll hear strange things getting through quietly if you don’t have a great fit. But this is a very common performance shortcoming of the vast majority of products with the feature. Let’s not forget that these earbuds are more effective at canceling noise in this range than their predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, by 5-10dB.

How do the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro sound?

As far as earbuds go, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro makes a strong case for your dollar.

Reviewer’s notes

Editor’s note: this review uses a hover-enabled glossary to describe sound quality based on a consensus vocabulary. You can read about it here.

Can you use the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro for phone calls?

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro uses a combination of mics, and pickups (bone conduction) to achieve noise-free calls — but as microphones get more complicated, it makes getting good samples a very difficult challenge. You can hear below how the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro is able to capture voice in a series of simulated conditions, but your results may vary with a different speaking level. Also, our current fixture — while effective — is very experimental. It’s entirely likely that performance could improve once the earbuds reach users, or in the first firmware update after release.

However, both phones using the ultra-wideband voice and the networks need to support the more data-dense ultra-wideband calling, so you may not get that even with the feature enabled.

Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro?

At $249, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro sits at the upper end of the market, but it offers a competitive option to the AirPods Pro 3 and Sony WF-1000XM6 — if only in price. It’s tough to get too effusive with the praise, given that some of the things that set it apart from the rest of the pack are usable only with Samsung phones. If you do own one, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro are an easy choice. Otherwise, there’s a crowded field of competitors that might be more worth your time. Still, I would very much recommend these over their predecessors, the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro.

Not only is the sound quality decent when you play with the EQ, but the noise canceling is pretty good, and the software-based features are useful. Gym rats and moist environment-dwellers (not to mention the particularly sweaty) will appreciate the IP57 rating of the earbuds, and the number of convenience features is hard to deny. But if the bells and whistles don’t matter as much to you: there’s plenty of great earbuds out there — especially if you don’t want overly-bassy options.

What should you get instead of the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro?

First things first, if you use an iPhone, you want the Apple AirPods Pro 3 ($249 at Amazon) or Apple AirPods Pro 2 ($199.99 at Amazon), depending on your budget. Not only do these earbuds have a lot of iOS-only features, but since the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro has a lot of Samsung-only features: you’re outta luck if you’re not using a Samsung phone.

If you have a non-Samsung Android phone, you might be better off with something like the Sony WF-1000XM6 ($329.99 at Amazon) or JBL Tour Pro 3 ($249.95 at Amazon). While these options might not have the same kind of sound quality as the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro, they don’t come with OEM-locked features — meaning they won’t be incomplete products if you use them with different phones.

Finally, the Nothing Ear (3) ($179 at Amazon) may not be a complete toe-to-toe competitor, but the earbuds do come with bone conduction pickups to augment their microphones, and the sound is pretty good. With a lower pricetag, bargain hunters may want to keep an eye out for these.