Now another prominent feature for the Buds Live is the inclusion of Active Noise-Cancellation. Samsung calls its ANC for Open Type, and while they do help slightly when you're listening to music in noisy environments, they are not nearly as effective as other noise cancelling earbuds like Sony's WF-1000 XM3s.
In fact last years Galaxy Buds Plus, despite not getting noise cancellation delivered better passive noise isolation because those earbuds came with ear tips that went deep into the ear canals, resulting in a tighter seal.
On the other hand, the new Galaxy Buds Live are somewhat limited by their open-type design, forcing the software to work harder to combat outside noise. On the flip side, if you're someone who doesn't mind a little bit of ambient noise, then you will appreciate these. More importantly, the Galaxy Buds Live sound fantastic and get just the right amount of loud when they need to. The bass is punchy but not overpowering, which is how I like it, and there's a good amount of detail in the mids and highs.
The earbuds are also compatible with Bluetooth 5.0 and support two high-quality Bluetooth codecs: AAC and the Samsung Scalable Codec. Unfortunately, there's no Aptx audio codec support over here, which I've always found more consistent when it comes to transferring high res detail wirelessly.