New Delhi: Samsung has finally made a pair of earbuds that hook over your ear. The Galaxy Buds On, announced October 1, are the company’s first clip-on design. They go on sale in South Korea on October 27 for 299,000 won, roughly $220. A wider rollout is coming, though Samsung hasn’t said when.
If you’ve never worn this style, the pitch is simple. Nothing gets jammed into your ear canal, so you can wear them for hours without that sore, plugged-up feeling. The trade-off is that you give up active noise cancellation, which is why you’ll hear the world around you whether you want to or not. Samsung is clearly counting on enough people wanting exactly that.
The company says it studied a range of ear shapes and ran simulations to decide where the speaker and battery should sit. The goal was to spread pressure out across a larger contact area so the buds stay put when you’re moving around. Whether they actually do is something only real-world testing will show. Fit claims are easy to make and hard to live up to.
On sound, there are TwinBoost speakers aimed at better bass, which is usually the first thing open-style earbuds lose. The buds also adjust volume to your surroundings and include leakage reduction, so the person next to you on the bus shouldn’t be hearing your playlist.
Inside is a Snapdragon S7 Gen 1 chip paired with a Class D amplifier. Samsung quotes up to 9.5 hours of playback on one charge, which is solid but not record-setting.
Calls get some attention too. Three microphones, a bone conduction sensor, and machine learning work together to pull your voice out of background noise. Pair the buds with a Galaxy AI phone or tablet and you can handle calls, notes, and notifications by voice, and Gemini Live calling is supported.
The odd extra is head gestures. Nod to answer a call, shake your head to decline it or kill an alarm. It’s a fun idea. I’d want to know how often it misfires on a bumpy commute before calling it useful.
The real question is price. At around $220, these sit in a crowded part of the market, and a lot will come down to how they feel after a few hours.
