Every single time I have ever gotten Samsung Buds lineup units in, they all sound great and have amazing features. It’s why so many people keep buying them every generation. This year was no different. Great reviews hit about the earphones. They even took the spotlight away from Sony’s XM6s, which was no small feat. Samsung really went to town with the feature set and making sure they kept one of the most unique features: their command-wordless voice controls. This has been, by far, the best feature gimmick ever on earphones since ANC and Hear-Through first launched. Voice controls without command words are the fastest and most unique way to control earphones ever. They even managed to step up their game with ANC and Hear-Through, which again was no small feat. All of this while maintaining a great, small, lightweight design and slick look. All of this is what made these my earphones of the year.
But just when things looked great, I started to notice right away something I’d seen time and time again in the past that I had hoped they would have corrected by now: the battery life stability. Every single year that I have ever bought a new Samsung bud design, the one area that kept me leaving them behind was the decline in battery life efficiency. Within less than 5 months, the battery life would decline faster and faster, leaving fewer and fewer hours than were promised to users. This is something you typically don’t see until two years or more with other earphones. And every year I still have faith that this is going to be different, and it isn’t.
Here we are yet again with the efficiency of battery life rapidly declining. The picture above shows my battery life even on “Off mode” after just 13 minutes of listening (92%), and this unit is only 5 months old yet again. It’s like clockwork or something. It’s really frustrating to think you can’t have faith in a product lifecycle, especially when the product is from such a well-known brand with tons of money. Samsung should be better than this, especially when you have $60 brands like Earfun that can do things better in battery life than them. As well as companies like Sennheiser, who are coming out with earphones that have replaceable batteries. It’s really starting to create barriers for me against their accessories like earphones. If you’re going to copy Apple, for God’s sake, match their quality at least.
Look, at the end of the day, I can’t guarantee you will have the same results, but it can’t be a coincidence that all models I have purchased have this same issue. And even if it is, maybe I should just listen moving forward and stay away from their earphones regardless.
Tech-N-Things 