Samsung Galaxy Buds FE: Problems & Best Features After 2 Weeks

so for the past 2 weeks I've been testing Samsung's new $99 Galaxy buds Fe a very promising pair of earbuds which brought back that wing tip which is very comfortable and very secure and I have to say these could have easily disrupted the entire earbuds market and become my most recommended earbuds of 2023 but they didn't there are two design choices that I think are holding them back from that legendary potential and instead they're just solid which is great like they're an easy recommendation and if you purchase them I don't think you'll regret it but

let's get into it and and figure out what those two things are that kind of hold them back from being like a really legendary pair of earbuds so after my initial Hands-On time a couple weeks ago maybe those was three weeks ago now I made a video for you guys showing generally what these earbuds were but I wasn't allowed to try them on which means I didn't get to test out the microphone the sound quality thec and most importantly the fit and the Comfort now I knew the fit and comfort was going to be good

because they have that same wing tip design we saw on the Galaxy buds plus and the original Galaxy buds which I was a huge fan of and I I recommended those for many many years but now that I've actually had some hands on time for about two weeks now of actually wearing these every day I could say yeah that's exactly what I expected it's fantastic the comfort is really solid the security is great like typically most earbuds fall out of my my left ear if I'm running or or working out like doing burpees whatever the

wing tip holds them in perfectly for both of my ears and I think it's easy to say that most people out there would have a very secure fit with these they're easy recommend for working out for that purpose as far as comfort goes for a long work day uh again the silicone was a little bit more rigid than I remembered but still perfectly comfortable for me I I really didn't have any ear fatigue I actually also fell asleep with these a couple times and again they they really did the job they're great and I'm a

big fan of the design of these earbuds not just for fit and comfort but the Aesthetics of them the case everything about it just is really nice except of course they don't have wireless charging that was a weird draw back that Samsung chose and that's one of the the two main design choices that that it feels like it would have been so easy to add because this is the same case geometry generally as the entire galaxy buds lineup and they all have wireless charging so it should be pretty easy for Samsung to use a lot

of the same components and just add wireless charging for a pretty low price but it feels like Samsung omitted that just to make the other ones Justified so that these didn't outsell them but something that these do really well actually there's a lot of things these deer buds do really well but one of them is the microphone uh especially in an indoor environment so let's actually get into a microphone test now so this is what it sounds like with the Galaxy buds Fe talking in an indoor environment and there is actually like a transparency like

a hearr mode so I can hear myself speaking as I talk so I I feel like I don't have to yell when I'm on the phone and uh generally I was pretty impressed with this like for a $100 pair of earbuds the microphones were were pretty decent in my opinion but let's go outside to a louder environment and see how they perform there all right so I'm outside by a busy right now it's pretty dark so sorry about that but we're going to see how this microphone actually performs um yeah and now this is what

it sounds like with the onboard microphone this is not the earbuds right here just for some reference by the way I I was thinking about this should I make a big Galaxy buds comparison like the Fe versus the Galaxy buds 2 versus the 2 Pro like leave a comment let me know like if you would actually watch that I think I'm probably going to make that so definitely subscribe so you don't miss that video but I think the microphones would probably be one of the most interesting comparisons in there like I think this might be

better than a lot of those microphones and sound quality then is actually another really interesting aspect of these I honestly just reviewed like the Sony XM 5s and the Bose Ultras and the jabre elite 10s like a lot of Premium earbuds so those are three to four times more expensive than these so I need to keep that in mind when I'm discussing the audio quality there's really no blatant issues that I see with the audio quality for these for their price and I think it makes a lot of sense that they sound the way they

do and I think a lot of people people would really enjoy them but to describe them in more detail just so you guys have a better idea of of what the sound quality is on these you're definitely getting a lot of warm baselines I listen to a lot of goose so Bob Dawn was one of the songs that starts off with a Baseline and it was really prominent was really warm and so if you're listening to rock or rap you're really going to enjoy the baselines a lot there as well as like acoustic music too

if you like the base end of it but it can be a little bit bloated uh with the mid-base making vocals slightly less pronounced probably a little bit more than slightly less announced so this can lead to some weaker instrument separation and honestly they lack a little bit of detail in the snares and other higher instruments overall it's a pretty fun Lively sound with some boosted base and although they lack a little bit of detail in the sound quality overall I think they make up for that with better active noise cancellation than I honestly would

expect for this price so the active noise cancellation on these earbuds did a really impressive job of not only blocking out lower frequencies as you can see right here from my jet noise test where a higher number is better meaning you're able to block out more more white noise and overall like yeah they're not Flagship level but they are much better than a lot of earbuds which are far more expensive than they are in addition in some other tests testing higher voices as well as crowd sounds which are both much more difficult and much more

reliant on passive noise blocking these did a good job so remember earlier where I said the silicone was a little bit more firm and rigid than I than I remembered well that actually tied into this a lot and that really helps it in blocking those higher frequencies now as far as transparency goes the transparency or the hearr mode on these uh was passable like I could kind of hear things around me but it wasn't by any means good it didn't feel like a natural environment and that's something Samsung has always kind of struggled with a

little bit and these in particular do sound much quieter so if transparency is important to you then I don't know I just don't think these are the best ones for that but when you connect these to your phone uh I've been using the Galaxy s23 alter for these there's a fit check in the app you can also customize the tap and hold function for either earbud uh when you're pairing it with any device by the way these obviously work best with a Galaxy Device but they work with anything even an iPhone any Bluetooth device out

there there's no button on the case you'll notice that so if you want to pair these you just open it and then tap and hold the touchpads on both earbuds at the same time until you get a blinking light there are quite a few other features on here which Samsung's always done a good job of adding but if you go to the app you can see earbud settings is going to allow you to customize The Equalizer by default I think it was pretty decent for these earbuds there's also the ability to read notifications aloud you

have Bixby voice wakeup if you want to have some quick Voice Assistant without having to touch and hold you can also have Ambient sound during calls which most earbuds don't really give you a choice on that but with these you can turn it on or off and of course there is inear detection which is something that a lot of budget friendly earbuds don't have and they also have gaming mode in Samsung Labs which gives you an even even lower latency on these earbuds and of course these are tied into the Samsung smart things app so

you can find them if you lose them or or for example be not notified when you leave them behind and now as far as price goes I know I said these were $99 and that's the MSRP but being a Samsung product they're always discounted that's like what Samsung does so I'll have an affiliate link below if you want to check it out you can actually get $25 off right now for trading in any wired or wireless ear earbuds or headphones so if you've got like old wired earbuds around now you get $25 for them even

though they're probably not worth any of that and I think there's also a 10% student discount as well so if you do the math on that that would bring these down to around like $68 is and I mean for that price like they're definitely a lot more compelling but kind of summarizing the pros and cons of these earbuds the pros Ultra long battery life 6 hours in the earbuds 21 with the case when you havec on without ANC you're getting 8 and a half earbuds 8 and 1 half hours in the earbuds and 30 hours

of the case another big positive the wing tip is back makes it so easy to recommend them for anybody and you don't have to worry about the fit or the Comfort or the stability when you're running working out whatever thirdly the ANC was actually quite impressive and forth like I said we have quite a few software uh features in here that I was really happy to see but you might notice I only mentioned one of those two things that Samsung omitted from these that I really didn't like so the first drawback as I mentioned was

a lack of wireless charging which feels more like a business decision instead of a design constraint and uh with that they're also lacking a lot of other features not a lot but a couple other features that I was expecting to see here like the ability to double tap your ear Edge to change the volume which pretty much every other pair Galaxy buds had including the Galaxy buds plus and voice detect these don't have that either so if you can't just speak and pause your music the second big drawback for me is that these don't have

true multi-point connectivity and Samsung keeps doing this as an artificial constraint so they do switch seamlessly among like Samsung devices if I have like a Samsung phone and tablet but if you have anything that's not Samsung then it doesn't work with that like you can't have a non- Samsung laptop and then a Samsung phone and expect them to switch seamlessly that it feels so artificial and Samsung probably should remove that in my opinion but it's what they do additionally they only have ipx2 water resistance not a huge deal breaker but a little bit less than

average on most earbuds so I think it would have been really easy for Samsung to add those things and really make these an incredible pair of earbuds but instead they're like they're still comfortable they're budget friendly but they're intentionally emitting things in my opinion to encourage the sales of more premium models in their lineup with that said these are still a solid pair of earbuds and for what they are like they are fantastic earbuds like I don't know of any other earbuds out there that perform better than these for like $68 or whatever the discounted

price ends up being so let me know what your thoughts are on the Galaxy buds Fe I know the the big one everyone's talking about is the wireless charging but what do you think of these