Thought there were more than enough premium wireless headphones around at the moment? Think again.
Samsung could soon be throwing its hat back into the over-ear ring, if recent reports are to be believed. According to a leak from Samsung-dedicated site SamMobile , the Korean company is currently developing a set of over-ear headphones to accompany its in-ear Galaxy Buds models, with a new pair of cans – codenamed 'Galaxy H1' – spotted in the Galaxy Wearable app.
That probably won't end up being the final official name of the upcoming headphones, though it's likely that the word 'Galaxy' will feature somewhere to keep the cans in line with Samsung's established ecosystem of mobile and audio products.
Aside from the headphones being Bluetooth-based, details are thin on the ground. SamMobile predicts that these will be premium headphones designed to do battle with the likes of the Apple AirPods Max 2 (£499 / $549 / AU$999) or Sony WH-1000XM6 (£400 / $450 / AU$699), though as we don't have official pricing figures, we can't be sure exactly where the Galaxy H1 will be positioned within the premium market.
In terms of features, we're once again in the realm of speculation, but active noise cancelling, some form of AI assistant integration, and support for Samsung's hi-res SSC UHQ audio codec from compatible devices would bring the prospective over-ears in line with their in-ear counterparts.
That SSC UHQ codec, for instance, was a key part of the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro's repertoire, so we'd expect to see it transfer over to the over-ears.
These won't be Samsung's first-ever over-ear headphones. The Korean titan released the 'Level One' back in 2015, but we haven't seen it release much in the way of over- or on-ear cans since then.
That could be set to change. We don't have an official release date for the Galaxy H1, but with most outlets speculating a release date sometime in 2027, it could yet be a while before we see if Samsung can challenge the likes of Sony and Apple for over-ear supremacy.
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