Galaxy Buds Pro vs. AirPods Pro vs. Sony WF-1000XM4: Which is the Best Option?

Overview of Galaxy Buds Pro, AirPods Pro and Sony WF-1000XM4

| #1  Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro Noise-Canceling True Wireless In-Ear Headphones

Google Users Rating: 4.2/5

• Samsung: $149.99 (up to 2% cashback)

• Walmart: $119.99 (up to 4% cashback)

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro are the most stylish and comfortable buds Samsung has made to date, with a sleek, curvy design. They are available in four high-gloss colors: Phantom Black, White, Phantom Silver, and Phantom Violet. Thanks to their IPX7 rating, they endured splashes of water and kept on ticking.They sounded great with a variety of music genres, providing deep bass, crisp guitars and vocals as well as a solid soundstage that allowed you to hear every component of our favorite songs clearly. There are four ambient sound levels, and it switches from ANC to ambient model when you are speaking. The dual mic array provides clear audio.

The battery life is more than adequate, playing your favorite music for 5 hours on a single charge before needing to recharge (with ANC enabled). The carry case holds extra 13 hours and supports Qi charging.  Thanks to the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, Android users have a worthy AirPods Pro alternative built specifically for those not tied up in the Apple ecosystem. While these Buds will work fine with an iPhone, they offer a ton of useful features exclusively for Android phones include the ability to switch between multiple sound presets, customize the Buds Pro’s touch controls and activate the Bixby virtual assistant with your voice on Samsung devices — not to mention strong active noise cancellation (ANC) and the ability to let in outside noise when you need it.

| #2  Apple AirPods Pro with Wireless Charging Case

Google Users Rating: 4.6/5

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AirPods Pro is Apple's only in-ear headphones with Active Noise Cancellation. To ensure a rewarding listening experience, it utilizes Adaptive EQ to automatically sculpt the tonal output to suit your unique ear shape. Their custom high-excursion drivers and high dynamic range amplifiers deliver clear, detailed sound with bass down to 20 Hz, all while keeping distortion low and upholding extended battery life. Unlike the standard AirPods, the Pros come with a choice of silicone tips. Once you've achieved a good seal, you'll enjoy some of the most effective noise-canceling we've ever experienced. Transparency, a new listening mode, uses microphones to amplify the sounds around you so you can hear your surroundings better. It’s great when you don’t want to miss any important announcements, and you can toggle Active Noise Cancellation back on by squeezing the stem again.

Additional, AirPods Pro is small, lightweight, and has an IPX4 rating for water resistance.Itdeliver five hours of listening time on a single charge—or 4.5 hours of listening time in Active Noise Cancellation mode, and they're made to keep up with you thanks to a wireless charging case that holds multiple additional charges for more than 24 hours of listening time or over 18 hours of talk time. Just 5 minutes in the case gives you approximately one hour of listening time. Although they were released in 2019, Apple's AirPods Pro remain top true-wireless earbuds, thanks to their comfortable fit, decent sound, Active Noise Cancellation and compelling feature set, which includes Apple's spatial audio virtual surround feature.

| #3  Sony WF-1000XM4 Truly Wireless Noise Canceling Earbuds

Google Users Rating: 4.3/5

• Bestbuy: $279.99 (up to 0.5% cashback)

• Abt: $278 (up to 4% cashback)

The Sony WH-1000XM4 is the new flagship headphone offered by Sony and it certainly lives up to its reputation. Not many wireless headphones can compete with these headphones in terms of features, ANC performance, and sound quality. The new Sony WH-1000XM4  retooled the noise-canceling algorithm and now offers a new Bluetooth SoC to block more noise in the mid-range and higher frequencies. As a great noise canceler, the Sony WH-1000XM4 doesn't just cancel noise: it adapts to both your environment (read: changes in barometric pressure) and your movement/activity (sitting, walking, running, etc.) to intelligently and effectively block noise. In addition, the Sony WH-1000XM4 uses a new technology called Precise Voice Pick Up to help your voice come through loud and clear. It works by using the four microphones on each earcup to hone in your voice while talking and reduce the amount of ambient noise that it picks up.

The Sony WH-1000XM4 also support Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format that enables spatial audio on stereo headphones plus the LDAC codec that can send a bitrate of up to 990 kbps. The unfortunate bit there, though, is that they no longer supports aptX or aptX HD, so your Hi-Res Audio support mileage may vary. The WF-1000XM4 have the longest runtime of any earbuds among the three. With noise cancellation engaged, the WF-1000XM4 lasted eight hours and 10 minutes; they stretched to 12 hours and 30 minutes with ANC off. It also adds the auto-play function sensing when you take the headphones off and pause the music. As well as playing music once you put them back on.The Sony WH-1000XM4 comes equipped with Bluetooth version 5, which does have some extra functionality. The biggest is multi-point connections. This allows the headphones to be connected to more than one device at a time, which makes switching between devices seamless.

Galaxy Buds Pro vs. AirPods Pro vs. Sony WF-1000XM4: In-Depth Comparison

Before diving into my in-depth discussion, look at the table below to get the key specs of them.

Design and Control

Speaking of Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro's case, it’s sort of shaped like a little treasure chest – there’s a concave lid that unhinges in the middle and flips up. It’s fairly compact, which is nice when you want to slip it into your pocket.As for the Buds themselves, they’re a far cry from their bean-shaped predecessors. The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro are back to their usual form as eartip-equipped funnels of sound.Each Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro earbud features a touch-sensitive panel on the side that covers the typical range of playback controls. Tapping either earbud once starts or stops the music you’re playing, double-tapping skips a song, and triple tapping goes back.

AirPods Pro still have the smallest case among the three. It's white, glossy earbuds proudly sport angled stems, and their simplicity defines them as culturally iconic. Their protruding stems also feature capacitive force sensors – squeezing these areas will activate noise-cancelling / Transparency mode, or skip and pause tracks. Unlike the original AirPods, the AirPods Pro are offered with a selection of silicone tips, making it easier to find a comfortable fit.

The new Sony WF-1000XM4’s have an all new design. These buds are smaller than their predecessors, with rounded housings and a choice of polyurethane eartips. The charging case is sufficiently compact to slip into a pocket. The surface of each earbud is touch-sensitive, allowing you to control music playback, and you can assign different controls via the Sony Headphones app. Possible controls include ‘volume up/down’, ‘play/pause/skip forwards/skip backwards/summon voice assistant’, and ‘active noise-cancelling on/off/adaptive’.

Water-Resistance

The AirPods Pro and Sony WF-1000XM4  only offer a rating of IPX4, meaning they can also withstand sweat with no problems.

With IPX7 certification, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro are protected against fresh water immersion for 30 minutes at a depth of up to one meter, which is a big improvement for Samsung, and rivals the highest standards of other earbuds. so Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro is the clear winner in this department.

Sound Quality

In terms of audio performance, the Sony WF-1000XM4 are the winner, hands-down. They feature a balanced, driving sound that displays excellent detail and rhythmic agility. The WF-1000XM4 also has the newest version of Sony’s digital sound enhancement engine (DSEE), called DSEE Extreme, which upsamples lossy tracks to slightly improve quality of low-quality audio files. In addition, the Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds support hi-res audio playback, thanks to the company’s bespoke LDAC codec – although aptX support is missing here.

Airpods Pro offer a much-improved audio performance compared to their predecessors, with a lively sound and rich mid-low frequencies.However, they just can’t compete with the Sony earbuds for detail.  Saying that,, AirPods Pro do now feature Spatial Audio, which brings Dolby Atmos immersive audio to the true wireless earbuds. While the Sony WF-1000XM4 do support Dolby Atmos and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, they lack the built-in accelerometers that allow the AirPods Pro to track your head movements.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro sounds pretty accurate and relays music close to the way musicians and producers intend it to sound. You can always select from the EQ presets in the Galaxy Wearable app to boost the bass, treble, or other frequencies. But you won’t be able to manually set your equalizer, but the presets offer a good range of options.

Active Noise Cancelation and Transparency Mode

Though the isolation isn’t quite as guaranteed with the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro due to its silicone ear tips, it still functions well. Achieving a proper fit with your earbuds is really important for maximizing the active noise cancelling performance. The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro has two selectable active noise cancelling settings: low and high. Both settings work quite well considering it is a pair of true wireless earbuds. If you want to attenuate more low-end noise, such as airplane rumbles or the sound of your dishwasher, you should go with the high setting. On the other hand, if you want to block out more mid-range noise, such as people talking, go with the low setting, though it won’t completely cancel out human speech.

The noise cancelling on the AirPods Pro is also very good, while it won’t completely mute the low rumble of planes and trains, it renders midrange sounds half as loud as they’d sound without any kind of ANC.

The Sony WF-1000XM4 has the best noise cancelling than the Apple AirPods Pro and Galaxy Buds Pro. Thanks to the memory foam ear tips that come with the Sony WF-1000XM4, it already has a leg up on its isolation and noise cancellation, particularly in the higher frequencies.  It cuts sounds higher than 50Hz down to anywhere from one-fourth to one-sixteenth as loud as they’d sound with unoccluded ears.Add on the crazy-effective active noise cancelling, and you’re practically blocking out all sounds.

All the three earbuds come with a transparency mode that allows you to tap into your surroundings by blending outside noise into whatever you’re listening to. But the AirPods Pro have the best performing ambient mode among the three.

Call Quality

All the three earbuds are perfectly fine for personal phone calls.The Sony WF-1000XM4 uses a bone conduction sensor to more accurately recognize when you’re talking. It can detect when you’re speaking and boost your voice while quieting the environmental noise around you.The same is true for the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro—it does a good job of dulling ambient sound and picks up voices pretty well regardless of their pitch with its neutral mic frequency response. The AirPods Pro has a pretty decent microphone too, which accurately reproduces the human vocal frequencies.

Battery Life

The Galaxy Buds Pro's playtimes is 5 hours with ANC on and 8 hours with ANC off. And the Galaxy Buds Pro case can do between 18 to 28 hours.

Not only does the WF-1000XM4 receive a generous boost in ANC playtime (8 hours) from the previous version, but you can extend playtime to 12 hours when turning off ANC. Be mindful that volume, streaming, and running multiple features will decrease battery life by about 1 hour. The charging case holds between 24 to 36 hours, depending on how you use the buds.

A full charge of AirPods Pro only gives you 4.5 hours of ANC playback and 5 hours when the feature is turned off. That isn’t very compelling. The charging case can hold up to 24 hours when fully charged. There is no difference in quick charging; a 5-minute charge equates to 60 minutes of use.

Bottom Line

Galaxy Buds Pro vs. AirPods Pro vs. Sony WF-1000XM4: Which is the Best Option?

In my opion,  Sony WF-1000XM4 are the best all-rounders. The ANC on these earbuds are now leading the pack when it comes to the amount of noise blocked.  The WF-1000XM4’s also have a very impressive battery life even with a relatively small case. In addition, its audio is more customizable.

But there are some instances where the Airpods Pro and Galaxy Buds Pro may be the better choice. There are exclusive features for them  that are platform-specific. If you use a lot of Apple products, you’ll benefit from the easy pairing afforded by the AirPods Pro, as well as their ability to integrate into your wider Apple ecosystem and offer support for Spatial Audio. If you’re buying the Samsung Galaxy S21, using Galaxy Buds Pro is your best bet to get the most out of your earbuds.

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