How Samsung’s beans broke the mold of wireless earbuds

It was not hard to find Yongseok Bang, chief designer of the new Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, the moment I sat down with him and another employee at a video call, gathering around a table in one of Samsung’s conference rooms in South Korea. Directly in front of Bang sat a black notebook with a large white bean stamped on the front. He quickly confirmed to me that the team internally had named Samsung’s latest true wireless earbuds with the same “beans” nickname that the rest of us did when the leaks began. Samsung went in a different direction with the definitive branding in an attempt to emphasize the outdoor design of Buds Live. Oh well.

For the next 30 minutes, Bang talks to me about how Samsung made it a priority from the beginning to come up with a design that stood out from everything else on the market. This is Samsung’s first set of open-type earphones, and in a world of AirPods knockoffs everywhere you look, the company wanted to get a little bold.

It is fair to say that Samsung succeeded.

Image: Samsung

Bang said it took Samsung two years to bring the Buds Live to market, a time frame that involved a lot of experimentation and trial and error. There were three focus areas: originality in design, ergonomic fit, and the desire for form to follow function – another way of saying that these earbuds should sound good, regardless of how they ultimately looked.

So how did the company get on the bean form? Samsung studied the concha of the ear closely and found that a bean-like form factor could weigh cleverly in the ear with a pleasantly surprising, comfortable fit. It conducted design tests with more than 2,000 people to finalize the exact measurements and weight.

But getting the Galaxy Buds Live for smaller ears was one of the biggest design challenges. (In my review, I mention that a friend had trouble fitting them comfortably to her ears.) The small wingtips were added to the earbuds for this purpose; the Buds Live naturally sat in the folds of the concha for people with medium and large ears without help, and the wing types – two sizes come in the box – helped keep them on the small side in the ears. They should at least.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Samsung also had to approach the engineering process differently than it had with the more traditional Galaxy Buds and Galaxy Buds Plus. Bang pointed out that the components are placed sideways as opposed to vertically stacked as in the Buds Plus. This resulted in a thinner, more subtle design that would not stand out noticeably from the ear like many wireless buttons.

Image: Samsung

Since the Buds Live are completely the contours of your ear, the Bang team had to think about mic placement. The distance between the two external mics was initially quite far to guarantee performance, but user tests showed that one of the mics could sometimes be covered by longer ears. That engineers optimized the distance and added a small groove on the outside of each earbud to help turn your voice toward the mic. Bang told me that Samsung is testing the mic performance with hundreds of people.

Image: Samsung

Image: Samsung

As for the carrying / charging case, it actually started with a bean shape similar to the earbuds inside. But according to Bang, the consensus was that this style looked more like a sunglasses case than an earbuds case. With a focus on pocketability and easy opening, the team landed on the definitive business design that some have compared to a jewelry box. There is a groove along three sides, making it easy to open in any way you find most comfortable.

Sound quality was never lost in the shuffle. Samsung was aiming to nail down their first open-type earphones, and I was very pleased with the listening experience. You can turn the Buds Live so that they sit deeper in your ear for louder bass and less overwhelming ambient sound – which is how I prefer to wear them. It does not matter how you fit them, there is always a ridiculous amount of noise leaking through from the outside, as is to be expected with this form factor.

Bang struck me with an auto-analogy, and compared the Buds Live to a convertible. The outdoor style is like putting the roof down, he said, and the active noise level is nothing more than a canvas roof. It will not block out all the noise around you – not even close by – but it may help reduce mid and low band noises. The noise level was the most subversive part of the Galaxy Buds Live in my testing. With no in-ear seal, Samsung is significantly limited in what it can do to dampen your environment.

Image: Samsung

But in almost every other approach, Samsung has succeeded in those focus areas that guided the development of the Galaxy Buds Live. The style is unique and fresh, the fit is comfortable, and they sound pretty good. As for what’s next, Bang said it all comes down to customer feedback. The company has been encouraged by early reviews, so the factor for beanform may be here to stay.