Samsung is set to expand its Galaxy Buds with a FDA-cleared hearing aid function, aiming to rival Apple’s recent deployment of similar health features, signalling a disruptive shift in earbud-based hearing support.
Samsung is preparing to move its Galaxy Buds deeper into health tech, with a hearing-aid function that has now received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration. According to Samsung’s announcement, the feature will launch first in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2026, before expanding to more than 150 countries and regions. It will be limited at launch to the Galaxy Buds3 Pro and Galaxy Buds4 Pro and will require a recent Galaxy smartphone running One UI 8 or later.
The system is built around a short hearing test that users can run from the Buds settings on a compatible phone. Samsung says the process takes about five minutes and assesses each ear separately, placing users into one of four hearing-loss levels: normal, mild, moderate, severe or profound. The results are stored in Samsung Health and used to create a personalised hearing profile, much like a clinical audiogram.
Once the profile is set, the earbuds can boost frequencies and sounds that are harder to hear, including whispers, distant speech and higher tones. Samsung says noise cancellation and beamforming, a microphone technique that focuses on sound from a specific direction, will help improve voice clarity while reducing background noise. The company developed the feature with the National Acoustic Laboratories and the Samsung Medical Centre, according to its announcement.
The move puts Samsung closer to Apple, which introduced a hearing test and hearing-aid experience for AirPods Pro 2 in 2024. Apple’s system also uses a home hearing test and creates a personalised hearing profile for people aged 18 and over with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss. Apple has since expanded the capability across later AirPods Pro models and says the feature can also help users with little or no hearing loss by adjusting specific frequencies.
For consumers, the significance is practical as well as technical. Hearing support has traditionally been tied to separate medical devices that can be costly and carry a stigma many people would rather avoid. By placing hearing assistance inside a product many users already wear daily, Samsung is lowering the barrier to entry for people with early-stage hearing loss. For hearing-device makers, it adds another large technology rival to a market that Apple has already entered.
What remains unclear is how Samsung’s implementation will compare in day-to-day use, particularly in tuning, comfort and the accuracy of the self-test versus a clinical examination. Samsung has not yet given a firm timetable for launch outside the US, and it has not said whether older Galaxy Buds models could be updated later. For now, the company is joining a small but growing group of consumer tech firms trying to turn earbuds into basic hearing-health tools.
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