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- Super comfortable and secure fit
- Excellent noise cancellation
- Top sound quality
- Call quality could be better in noisy environments
- Some features require a Samsung phone
Samsung’s Galaxy Pro earbuds tend to get overlooked when it comes to the top headphone rankings, with the brand’s concurrently released smartphones taking the lion’s share of the hype. And it gets even tougher when they’re up against such stiff opposition from the big audio manufacturers like Bose, Sony and Apple.
The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro 4, however, deserve a lot more love than they’re inevitably going to get. Not because they’re the best earbuds on sound quality or noise cancellation – those accolades belong to the Sony WF-1000XM6 – but because they get close and they combine those qualities with superb levels of convenience and comfort.
What you get for the money
At £219, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro sit in the same price bracket as the Apple AirPods Pro 3, which makes sense as they’re a similar product – designed specifically to accompany Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S26 smartphone series, which launched at the same time.
For this model, Samsung is touting improved sound quality,“enhanced wearability” and refined design. The latter is certainly an obvious step forward. Gone are the flashy “light blade” status LEDs of the previous model, to be replaced by a more understated, serious look, with metal-topped stems and an angular, aggressive look. The earbuds are also available in white and pink gold colourways for anyone who thinks these black ones look too boring.
Samsung has also given the charging case a bit of an overhaul, with a new on-trend transparent lid topping a neat, square shape.
As for sound quality, the buds boast dual drivers, as before, but this time those drivers are larger, for claimed better bass and more detailed treble. Plus, there’s enhanced, adaptive active noise cancellation, which adapts to users’ individual ear shape automatically – no setup required.
Samsung has improved the microphone noise cancelling and added 360 audio recording. And, naturally, there are plenty of new AI-driven features here, with live translation, head gestures to answer or reject phone calls, and always-on Bixby, Gemini or Perplexity activation using a simple wake phrase.
What did we like about them?
The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro get most things right, to the extent that there isn’t really much to separate them from their nearest rivals. If you have a Samsung phone and you’re looking to get some noise-cancelling earbuds, just get a pair. The difference in performance between these and the Sony WF-1000XM6 just aren’t big enough to justify agonising over your decision.
Comfort and fit
Plus, if you value comfort, this is where the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro deliver over and above their rivals. They are not only lightweight and secure in the ear – I never once felt like they were going anywhere once I’d popped them in – but they are also very, very comfortable.
This is the one area that the class-leading Sony WF-1000XM6 fall short; you have to jam them in your ears to get a proper seal, whereas the the Buds 4 Pro just slip in nicely. Your mileage may vary, of course, but they do at least come with four sizes of ear tips to choose from, giving you the best possible chance of finding the perfect fit.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of true wireless earbuds with stems as it’s easy to catch them on clothing and have them flip out, but at least these don’t stick out like the stems on the AirPods Pro 3 do. They’re a lot less likely to catch, as a result.
Noise cancellation
Noise cancellation, too, is excellent. I wasn’t impressed after initially putting them in my ears; they seemed to let in a lot more ambient noise than the WF-1000XM6. However, if you give them a tweak and wait a bit, the adaptive ANC kicks in and silence – well, near silence – soon ensues.
There’s nothing like the customisability that Sony gives you here, but the Buds 4 Pro will ramp the noise cancellation strength up and down depending on how loud your environment happens to be at any time.
Ultimately, these can’t compete with the best noise cancellers – Sony’s WF-1000XM6 are better at cutting out high-frequency noise, for instance – but I wasn’t at all disappointed with them on a recent transatlantic flight.
Controls
Like the AirPods Pro 3, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro opt for pinch- and swipe-controls by default instead of the touch-sensitive taps of the Sony WF-1000XM6. These work well. Give the stem on the right a squeeze and audio plays or pauses, while a double pinch skips forwards and a triple squeeze skips back. All of this works well.
You can also allocate a custom fuction to pinch and hold, while swiping your finger up and down the front of the stem adjusts the volume. This is a big improvement over the Sony WF-1000XM6, which require you to repeatedly tap the right or left earbuds to adjust the volume, which isn’t particularly comfortable or intuitive.
Meanwhile, a long squeeze of the left stem drops the audio volume and mixes in some ambient noise. Again, this works well, but it is a little slow. It takes a good couple of seconds to kick in, and you have to hold and squeeze again to re-engage noise cancellation.
I must say I prefer Sony’s way of doing this: simply hold your finger to the left earbud to temporarily listen in to what’s going on around you, and release it to return to noise cancellation mode.
Sound quality
Generally, though, the controls worked well for me, and I also think sound quality is right up there with the very best. There’s support for 24-bit 96kHz hi-res audio, as with their rivals, and they hold their own admirably.
The Buds 4 Pro’s strength is the weight of bass delivery and instrument separation. I fired up Justin Grey’s Tapestry, a track that weaves all kinds of acoustic and electronic instrumentation together, requiring a deft touch to keep things from getting congested and muddy.
The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro coped well, pulling out all the fine details around the edges of the mix, delivering Grey’s bass guitar with heft and definition, while also introducing plenty of space between all the track’s various instruments.
This was echoed with other types of music, too: from classical to hard rock and everything in between, the Buds 4 Pro delivered a confident, balanced performance.
I did feel the presentation was a touch more laid-back than Sony WF-1000XM6’s, but as with the noise cancellation, this is not really a massive issue. Unless you were to sit down and listen to these earbuds back to back, you probably wouldn’t notice much of a difference.
Indeed, you might actually prefer the way they sound and, if you don’t, there are plenty of ways to tweak the sound profile with Samsung’s EQ. There are a number of presets available alongside the ability to create your own custom EQ.
What could be improved?
There’s only really one key area where the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro are lacking and that’s call quality. While I was impressed with the microphones’ ability to reject background noise, the clarity of voice pickup leaves a lot to be desired.
I tested this by leaving myself a number of voice memos using WhatsApp in a number of different noisy environments and although I was able to make out what I was saying, my voice sounded extremely muffled. The call quality on the WF-1000XM6 wasn’t great, either, but they were able to pick up my voice a little more clearly.
I also have an issue with the way Samsung restricts some of the headphones’ features to Samsung phones only – the head gestures feature for instance – only work on phones running Samsung’s One UI 8.5 or later. Samsung is not alone here, of course.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro?
Ultimately, though, despite the odd weakness, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro are seriously impressive true wireless headphones. They fit comfortably and securely, they cancel ambient noise with uncanny efficiency and they sound sublime.
Better yet, they come in at a price that undercuts their biggest rivals by the small but notable margin of £30. If you’re after a top-quality pair of noise-cancelling earbuds, these deserve to be right at the top of your list.
The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro are available to pre-order from February 25, 2026, and are shipping from 11 March .
