Realme Buds Air Pro master edition
Active noise cancellation and app support, for less than Rs. 5,000. Sounds too good to be true?
The Realme Buds Air Pro is the company’s most expensive headset yet
The SBC and AAC Bluetooth codecs are supported
Sound quality and ANC performance are quite good for the priceRealme's foray into audio started with the basics; the affordable wired Realme Buds wasn't the most impressive offering in its segment even back then, but it was a reasonable first attempt from a company that only started selling smartphones in India in 2018. Since then, Realme has launched many more models, including wired, wireless, and true wireless headsets. The Realme Buds Air Pro is its most expensive pair of earphones yet.
Priced at Rs. 4,999, the Realme Buds Air Pro offers premium features that are rare in this price segment, including active noise cancellation and app support. Like many of Realme's other audio products, the Buds Air Pro is feature-filled and rather impressive on paper. but how do these earphones perform? We review the Realme Buds Air Pro to find out.
The Realme Buds Air Pro is among the most affordable true wireless earphones to feature active noise cancellation
Lots of features in the Realme Buds Air Pro
Although the changes from product to product have been gradual, Realme has come a long way in a short time. The Realme Buds Air Pro looks considerably better than most of the company's earlier earphones. It also fits a lot better and more comfortably, thanks to a proper in-canal design, unlike the outer-ear fit of the Realme Buds Air and Buds Air Neo. I quite liked the glossy plastic finish of the Realme Buds Air Pro,
The charging case is a bit larger and nicer looking than what I've seen on earlier Realme true wireless headsets. The earphones latch into the case and the lid snaps shut magnetically. The easy-to-miss pairing button is on the right side, while an indicator light at the front tells you the charge status of the case itself.
Each earpiece has three microphones – two for active and environmental noise cancellation, and one to capture your voice on calls. The earphones are IPX4 rated for water resistance, and are powered by 10mm dynamic drivers. For connectivity, the headset uses Bluetooth 5 with support for the SBC and AAC codecs. There is also a super-low-latency mode, which Realme claims can bring down the audio delay to 94ms.
There are touch sensors on the outer part of each earpiece, and the Realme Buds Air Pro recognises simple tap-based controls. These can be customised through the Realme Link app for Android. Although I did occasionally have misfires, the tap controls usually worked well for me. You can assign four different functions to the double-tap and triple-tap gestures on either side, including the ability to control playback, cycle through noise control modes including ANC and hear-through, invoke the default voice assistant on your smartphone, or deactivate the gesture.
Battery life: 3.5
Value for money: 4.5
Overall: 4
Which are the best truly wireless earphones under Rs. 10,000? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.