Samsung's first clip-on Galaxy Buds are here, but you can't buy them just yet

Remember those clip-on Galaxy Buds we heard about a few weeks ago? Well, they’re official now. Samsung has launched the Galaxy Buds On, its first pair of clip-on earbuds, designed for people who want wireless earbuds but hate having something stuffed in their ears.

The Buds On clip around the outside of your ear, leaving the ear canal open. That obviously means you won’t get the same isolation as traditional earbuds, but that’s also the point. You can listen to a podcast on your morning run and still hear a bicycle coming up behind you, or keep some music playing at the gym without completely tuning out everything happening around you.

Samsung has also put quite a bit of thought into making sure the Buds On don’t become annoying after an hour or two. The company says it studied different ear shapes to figure out where the speaker and battery should sit, and it widened the part touching your ear to spread out pressure. The flexible band has also been tuned to keep the earbuds in place while you’re moving. Of course, ears come in all shapes and sizes, so we’ll have to wear them before we know how universal that comfortable fit really is.

Controls are pretty straightforward, too. Rather than reaching for your phone every time you want to pause a song or answer a call, you can tap the back of an earbud to control the basics.

But can everyone else hear your music?

The more interesting challenge, however, is sound. Open earbuds have an obvious downside: if you can hear the outside world, the outside world can sometimes hear what you’re listening to. The company says it has developed an Audio Leakage Reduction system specifically to tackle that problem. If it works as advertised, you should be able to listen to music at a coffee shop, library, or on a quiet flight without sharing your playlist with the person sitting next to you.

Samsung is also using what it calls a TwinBoost Speaker system, alongside automatic volume adjustment that can react to your surroundings. In practice, that could mean less fiddling with the volume button when you move from a quiet room onto a noisy street.

Battery life also looks promising for an open-ear design. The Buds On use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S7 Gen 1 Sound Platform with a Class-D amplifier, and Samsung claims up to 9.5 hours of continuous music playback on a charge.

It has three microphones and a voice pickup sensor that detects vibrations when you’re speaking. Combined with machine learning, Samsung says the system can separate your voice from background noise during calls.

And because these are Samsung earbuds, they come with a few extras if you’re already using a Galaxy phone. Pair the Buds On with a compatible Galaxy AI device, and you can do certain tasks without reaching for your phone.

Gemini Live is part of the experience too, so you can start a conversation with Google’s assistant and continue talking through the earbuds. That could actually make sense here: if you’re cooking, working out, or walking with your hands occupied, asking Gemini a question through your earbuds is considerably easier than pulling out your phone.

Now for the not-so-fun part

There is one rather big catch, though. Samsung is launching the Galaxy Buds On in South Korea first, where they’ll be available in black from October 27 for 299,000 won (~ $220). A wider global release is obviously coming, but the company hasn’t said when.

The Buds On are also arriving at an interesting time for open-ear earbuds. It’s still a relatively small category compared to traditional wireless earbuds, but some compelling options already exist, including the Sony LinkBuds Clip, Shokz OpenDots One, and Bose Ultra Open Earbuds.

Samsung joining that list could give open-ear earbuds another big push, especially for Galaxy users who want something that fits neatly into the company’s ecosystem. Of course, a lot will come down to how good they actually sound, how comfortable that clip-on design is after a few hours, and whether Samsung has really managed to keep sound leakage under control. Those are all things we’ll be looking forward to testing when we get our hands on a pair.