I've been listening to the Galaxy Buds Pro the last couple days, so I thought I'd drop some impressions here. I won't focus too much on the technical traits, as honestly, I don't care about that stuff very much. I was surprised by how small the case is, though! It's a little thicker than the AirPods Pro case, but feels more compact. The controls of the Buds Pro do seem somewhat finicky; for example, I don't like how they inadvertently pause or swap through the ANC modes each time you physically adjust them. You also lose access to a lot of flexibility on iOS (as there's no app).
But as for the actual sound, well, I have to say...they sound really good. I couldn't get them out of my ears the evening they arrived and almost fell asleep with them on! They’re warmer, more V-shaped than their predecessors; the bass shelf doesn’t level out until slightly past 600hZ. The quality of the bass is good overall, sporting appropriate levels of slam and texturing; however, bloat does seem imminent at times which I’d attribute to a lack of intangible control. While the upper-midrange presentation doesn’t seem to have changed much, this more gentle slope to the bass region makes the Buds Plus a tad less lean (a criticism of most Harman-oriented IEMs) in the notes. Another welcome change is the treble. Treble is almost perfectly linear throughout the impact and crash regions. Yeah, it’s still fairly elevated, and while I don’t think extension is much better, this is impressive considering how rare normal treble is in most cheaper IEMs. The FR graph corroborates this, and I don't hear sibilant or tinny treble; your mileage might vary and all that.
Technical ability is, of course, more middling and I don’t think it’s really an improvement over the OG Buds or Buds+ in this regard. In fact, I suspect some might find the OG Buds and Buds+ slightly more resolving because they’re brighter, leaner in the notes with the Buds+ in particular having a much more incisive bass shelf. I'd also be remiss if I did not point out a notable lack of center image incisiveness; even for a TWS, the Buds Pro are pushing it on this front. Nonetheless, the Buds Pro have an extremely pleasing tonal balance. Good enough, in fact, for me to say that not only is this the best TWS I’ve heard yet, but that the Buds Pro are also competitive with many of their similarly-priced, wired counterparts. Hope these impressions are helpful!
TL;DR Definitely some technical limitations - particularly if you're on iOS - but the sound itself is quite good, even class-leading for TWS.
