It’s not always a bad thing when technology companies borrow each other’s ideas. In fact, it often benefits us, the consumers, who are stuck in ecosystems with barriers that prevent us from accessing certain features or designs we want.

For example, think about if Apple hadn’t adopted Samsung’s larger phone screens. Anyone who didn’t want to switch to Android would be stuck with tiny 3.5-inch iPhones. Or imagine if Samsung hadn’t taken inspiration from Apple’s latest wearable designs. It’s a relief we don’t have to ponder that because Samsung’s new products clearly show Apple’s influence.

And that’s mostly a good thing.

We’ve thoroughly tested Samsung’s new Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, and I can tell you they’ve significantly improved by taking cues from Apple. Previous Galaxy Buds were oddly shaped, like small potatoes or jelly beans. The new ones, however, are more refined, resembling the AirPods Pro 2 with their stem design.

The addition of stems to the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro provides a larger area for controls like pause/play and volume adjustments, and it offers a convenient grip for using these controls. This, along with the new “squeeze” gesture introduced by Apple with the original AirPods Pro in 2019, makes them much easier to use.

Squeezing the stem to play or pause music, or to skip tracks, is much easier than tapping the body of the earbud as required by older Samsung models. The Galaxy Buds 3 Pro offer better feedback with a soft click when controls are activated, reduce the chances of missed gestures, and eliminate accidental taps when adjusting them.

These are the best Galaxy Buds yet. They sound better, fit more securely (at least in my ears), and have improved controls. Many of these enhancements can be traced back to their AirPod-like design. Samsung says the new buds have double the number of amplifiers this year – one for the woofer and one for the tweeter. While the exact impact of this change is hard to quantify, the new earbuds sound fantastic, with clean highs and substantial lows.

Another notable feature is the Real-Time Interpreter. When paired with a recent Samsung phone with Galaxy AI translation, it reads translations into your earbuds during conversations in different languages. We tested this with YouTube videos in various languages, comparing the translations we heard to those on-screen. While not always identical, the translations were accurate enough to follow along.

In my experience, most top-tier earbuds sound great, and it’s the fit and controls that make the real difference. The Galaxy Buds 3 Pro excel in these areas, boasting more features than any other earbuds we’ve reviewed. They have battery life indicators, a hearing-aid mode that performs detailed hearing tests to adjust the ambient mode, and a noise cancellation system that switches to ambient mode when detecting voices or sirens. However, in tests with recorded voices and emergency sirens, this feature didn’t activate, and another feature that adjusts noise cancellation based on ambient noise levels also didn’t work. We might have had faulty buds.

I’ve compared the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro with other top-tier noise-cancelling earbuds, like Sony’s WF-1000XM5 and Technics’ EAH-AZ80, by wearing one of each in either ear and listening to a variety of music and podcasts. Apart from the Sony buds having slightly more defined bass, there’s little to distinguish them in terms of sound quality.

While we’re still testing Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Ultra, their take on the Apple Watch Ultra, there’s a concern about battery life. We’re hoping to find a setting that extends the battery life to three days, similar to Apple’s, before we give our final verdict.

Ultimately, the exchange of ideas between tech giants like Apple and Samsung leads to better products for consumers, blending the best features and innovations from both companies.

This feature, requiring a Galaxy AI phone, is something Apple might struggle to copy directly in the next generation of AirPods Pro. But it wouldn’t be surprising if Apple incorporated similar innovative features in future models.