Firstly, they work out of the box. Secondly, both earbuds default to only short press for pause/play and long press to change between ANC and ambient mode. There’s also a bit of latency when watching Youtube BUT this is what you need to do;

Borrow an android device from anyone and download the Galaxy Wearable app and the Buds2 plugin, update the buds (this can be done in less than 5 minutes). Set the touch control for both earbuds (mine is noise control on left bud long press and smart assistant;Siri on the right buds. Also turn on the double tap and triple tap to control the tracks). Go to labs and turn on volume control if you want them. The feature works by tapping the edge of the buds, but here’s a tip; tap your ears and they work too. You can also set noise control to work with one earbuds. This feature works similar to the Airpods Pro, when you take off one earbud, the other one will change to to whatever mode you set them to. What I do is to have the one earbud on ambient mode whenever I take off the other one. And turn off the seamless device switching (i forgot the actual name of this settings, but it’s for switching the buds between Samsung devices and you don’t need that and also I read somewhere it helps with latency. I have no more latency issue but I really cant tell if it’s because I turned the setting off or simply due to the update).

Now the review; they sound better than the Airpods Pro, they cancel as much noise as the Airpods Pro, their ambient mode is really good and does not sound robotic, you can hear the outside world really well but your own voice will still be muffled, I think the Airpods Pro has an extra mic to solve this.

TL:DR, update the buds and save some money. Unless you really need spatial audio or seamless switching between Apple devices (which don’t even work well for me, I have a Mac, and iPhone, an iPad and an Apple Watch). Btw it’s really easy to use Buds 2 with multiple devices, you don’t need to disconnect them from your current device, just hit connect on your other device and they will disconnect automatically.

The Labs feature where you tap your ear to raise or lower the volume seems to be really under rated and almost shown in a lesser method. Instead of tapping your inner ear part (tragus) twice, you tap the outside of your ear(helix) twice to raise or lower the volume. This works great because you can tap it, 2,4,6,8 times in a row and it will keep on lowering or raising the volume accordingly. You just need to keep the taps a consistent speed and pressure and it really has worked for me 99 percent of the time. Tonight I was walking my dog while listening to music and I had my jacket hood on. I was able to raise and lower the volume with my hood on, by pressing on the outside of my hood,with no issue. Also, I pressed my hood against my head tightly and tapped my ear and it raised and lowered the volume as needed. I will have to try it out with my hat on. But its a pretty fucking awesome feature and the lack of it was the reason why I returned the FEs. This all might have been said before, but it's worth mentioning again as many online reviewers never mention it.

Just shot the bullet to get the Buds 2 earlier since there's no way in hell I'd afford the new buds that leaked recently, and the beans lives honestly when I tried my siblings pair were absolutely hell to try and put on, kept falling off and couldn't get use to how weird it felt. Coming from a realme buds user I feel like I'd get more accustomed to the silicone fit of the buds 2 more, but anyways. Samsung add 360 audio to the buds 2 late after launching, did they add anything else? I heard 360 audio sucked when they initially came to buds 2 and live and I wonder if that was fixed and etc etc and if they added stuff like voice detect now, you know the pro features that made pro models pros. And overall ingeneral if I made the right choice getting the Buds 2 over the Live?