The Samsung Gear series expands into fitness-centric earbuds with the launch of its latest member, the Gear Icon X. These truly wireless earbuds, a first from a Samsung, offer freedom from wires — and from your smartphone, with a new standalone playback mode. And there's also a big fitness angle, with workout coaching features, and the ability to sync back to S Health.

Samsung's Gear Icon X buds are unassuming little gadgets. They're each about the size of a small Bluetooth earpiece, and fit neatly into the bundled, pill-shaped dock. And we found them comfortable in our short time wearing them at a meeting ahead of today's announcement. There's a little more weight to them than your average set of wired earbuds, and that's to be expected — there's a lot going on in a relatively small space.

Gear Icon X has lot going on in a relatively small space.

First, the basics: The Icon X earbuds come in three colors: black, white and blue, and they're described by Samsung as being "sweat-proof," meaning you can use them on a run out in the rain. Just don't expect to take them underwater for any length of time. Like any other pair of Bluetooth earphones, the Icon X pairs to your phone, erm, over Bluetooth, allowing you to use them with your streaming music service of choice. But what's really smart is the built-in 4GB of storage, letting you load a few albums worth of MP3s directly onto the buds themselves, so you don't have to carry a phone with you. Samsung tells us the storage is duplicated across each bud to avoid having wireless crosstalk when they're in standalone mode.