Samsung Unpacked was full of new foldable smartphones – the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 – two new smartwatches and a pair of improved noise-canceling earbuds – but that wasn’t the most important announcement of the event for me.
Bluetooth 5.3 is included in the new Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro.
While codecs – the format in which data is encoded, transmitted, and decoded – sound pretty boring, they play a very important role in how headphones sound and how long their battery life is. And bluetooth 5.3? Well, it’s the best of both.
We’ve seen quite a few of these earbuds out in the wild so far like these Clone Apple AirPods that only cost $20 on Amazon (Opens in a new tab)They didn’t have the Samsung Galaxy Buds speaker design and lost key features like active noise cancellation.
Equipped with Bluetooth 5.3, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro checks all the boxes.
What is bluetooth 5.3?
Every year or so, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) develops specifications for a new version of wireless transmission technology. There are Bluetooth 5.2, 5.1, 5.0, 4.2, 4.1, etc… Each of them offers some new advantages over the old versions.
While new Bluetooth versions are constantly evolving, Bluetooth SIG doesn’t actually make earbuds that use the new technology – it’s up to manufacturers like Samsung, Sony, LG, etc…
However, while new Bluetooth versions are constantly evolving, Bluetooth SIG doesn’t actually make earbuds that use the new technology – it’s up to manufacturers like Samsung, Sony, LG, and others – and it can take a while for the specifications to become even when they are made. It is implemented in a pair of headphones.
Bluetooth 5.3 was technically introduced this time last year in a blog post on the SIG website, but we didn’t really start seeing audio products using the codec until earlier this year. Until then, it wasn’t present on big headphones like the Sony WH-1000XM5 or the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2 (both still using version 5.2) but instead it was only on a few JBL products.
Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro is using the latest version, which is very exciting to me.
What are the features of the new version?
The main news of Bluetooth 5.3 is that it can identify packets of data already received by the device and discard that data instead of using additional processing power to decode it.
This seems like a small feature, but think about how much data is sent from a device like your phone to a pair of headphones. It’s a ton. Bluetooth devices also send redundant copies of information, just in case the first packet is lost in transmission. By reducing the amount of data that has to be processed, an audio device can save a lot of battery life.
However, instead of providing battery life for longer listening sessions, battery life may be spent in other ways like better noise cancellation or a better processor that can handle higher bit rates… which seems to be the case for the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro headphones.
Bluetooth 5.3 can also switch between low power and high power modes faster than previous versions, as well as maintaining connections better. Finally, Bluetooth 5.3 introduces better security protocols that make it more difficult for unauthorized third parties to access data that is sent between two connected devices.
So what does it all mean for the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro?
The great irony of the Samsung event is that not all of the products announced – outside of the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro – use Bluetooth 5.3. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 use only Bluetooth 5.2.
Unfortunately, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro doesn’t seem to benefit from the battery life gains made with Bluetooth 5.3. As far as I can tell, they have worse battery life than other noise-canceling headphones like the Sony WF-1000XM4.
As for its great ability to receive 24-bit audio, it’s certainly a great idea and one that Samsung has explored in the past with their Scalable Codec, but the advantages of 24-bit audio versus 16-bit audio are a bit vague.
Without getting bogged down in technical details, the signal noise generated by 16-bit audio is negligible compared to 24-bit audio and the “clarity” gained through 24-bit sound depth exceeds the range of human hearing. In short, it may not be something you can hear the difference between.
That doesn’t mean the earbuds won’t be good, or that the noise canceling on them won’t be top-notch. Likely to be. I just haven’t heard them myself so I can’t tell one way or the other.
The Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro is the company’s sixth pair of earbuds in four years — so at this point, Bluetooth 5.3 is something I’m looking forward to seeing in action myself.
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