Samsung's pricey Galaxy Buds 3 Pro seem to have been delayed due to big quality issues
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As exciting as it may have been for many hardcore Samsung fans to see their favorite company pull out all the stops for the fancy new Galaxy Buds 3 Pro last week, we can totally understand if that excitement quickly morphed into disappointment at the extravagant $250 list price of the ultra-high-end earbuds.
On the bright side, that made a lot of early adopters expect a level of audio performance and build quality unmatched by the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, non-Pro Galaxy Buds 3, or even Apple's AirPods Pro 2. Unfortunately, the commercial reality doesn't appear to coincide with those pre-release expectations, which is forcing Samsung to delay shipments and halt sales in many parts of the world.
Following major complaints in Korea of some pretty bad quality issues, Amazon seems to have pulled its Galaxy Buds 3 Pro product page altogether stateside, while Best Buy is simply (and confusingly) listing the item as "coming soon" at the time of this writing.
Although the latter retailer has yet to change the initial July 24 release date communicated when the super-premium earbuds were formally unveiled alongside their AirPods-mimicking non-Pro sibling, Samsung's official US e-store now estimates pre-orders will be fulfilled "by August 28."
Also read:
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That's quite a significant delay for such a highly anticipated product, but the important thing is clearly for the company to actually fix all problems until then. That may prove rather challenging looking at the long list of flaws reportedly noticed by Korea-based reviewers and even regular users.
Most issues seem to be related to the physical design and poor manufacturing quality of the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro rather than the user experience or anything that could be solved with software updates. That makes it hard to imagine how Samsung will be able to contain this budding (no pun intended) PR disaster without going back to the drawing board and re-building the state-of-the-art (in theory) earbuds from scratch.
Hopefully, we're merely looking at a faulty first batch of units here, and future batches will be able to meet the minimum quality standards of a pricey $250 product. Until Samsung releases a complete statement clarifying the situation and its plans to mitigate it, all you can do is wait, hope for the best, and if you've already received your Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, return them immediately for a refund or replacement... somewhere down the line.
Alternatively, you could opt for the "standard" Galaxy Buds 3, which seem to be on track for an uneventful July 24 release, or the oldie but goodie (and relatively affordable) Galaxy Buds 2 Pro.
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