Samsung’s Nub-Like Wireless Earbuds Completely Cut the Cord

This is definitely the year of the hearable as more and more are starting to crop up. While there are Kickstarter campaigns for upcoming smart earbuds likeLifeBeam's Vi and Bragi Dash are already out, Samsung's recently joined the fray with its own activity tracking wireless earbuds called Gear IconX.

Revealed alongside the new Gear Fit2 fitness tracker, Samsung hasn't supplied too many details on its smart earbuds, and until we get our hands on one for review, here's everything we know so far about the Gear IconX.

Samsung Gear IconX: Design

The Korean tech giant's hearable comes with three different sizes of eartips and wingtips, and can be activated by dropping them in your ears with no wires in sight.

Sammie's also said that the IconX's were designed small to remain discrete when you're exercising at the gym or out and about. As you can see in the photo above, there are removable parts that should make cleaning simple enough.

Upon launch, there will be colors available in black, white and blue.

Samsung Gear IconX: Features and specs

The IconXs' have touch controls similar to Bragi Dash, and even work in a similar fashion where taps and swipes are used to control certain functions like skipping songs or changing volume. However, we'll only know with thorough testing if the interface is really as user-friendly as Samsung claims, considering Dash's controls are a bit confusing.

The earbuds have 4GB of onboard storage to pile on your music (about 1000 songs in total) and a charging case to keep them powered on the move.

As for the fitness tracking side of things, the IconX has a built-in accelerometer and heart rate monitor to track your movement, heart rate and distance traveled, which then calculates calories burned.

Just like the Gear Fit2, it's able to sync all of that data to Samsung's S Health app, which can export to a handful of other fitness apps. The earbuds can also connect with Endomondo, MapMyRun, Runkeeper and Strava as a Bluetooth heart rate monitor.

Interestingly, there's a Voice Guide feature that provides instant voice feedback on your workout progress, and sounds a bit like LifeBEAM's Vi hearables. However IconX's guide probably won't be able to provide in-depth, actionable insights which is what Vi promises to do.

Again like the Gear Fit2, the earbuds are only compatible with Android phones running at least Android 4.4 that have 1.5GB or more of RAM, and will not work with iOS devices.

hen streaming music from your phone, or a little over three and a half hours when playing music that's stored.

It seems Samsung has sacrificed battery life for a smaller form factor, but it's not too awful if you don't work out for longer than the time allotted. Still, daily charging may be a hassle. 

Samsung Gear IconX: Release date and price

These cord-free earbuds will also cost significantly less than the $300 Bragi Dash in-ears. Priced at $200 and available in black, white, and blue, they’ll go on sale sometime between July and September.

Priced at $199, the Gear IconX is slated to launch later this year in Q3. That's anywhere from July to September and falls under the Bragi Dash's cost by a hundred dollars.

While it's more affordable in comparison to Dash, it's still a lot for a pair of earbuds. But if the IconX can deliver on the promised features, they may just be worth it.