introduzzjoni
Since Apple launched its AirPods in 2016, the competition has picked up the pace and now offers an incredible range of TWS earphones with an ever-expanding feature set and at ever lower prices. Xiaomi takes another shot this year with its Buds 4 Pro earphones, which are more focused on the former than the later.
In fact, they come very close to the AirPods Pro and ask for more than competitors like OnePlus’ Buds Pro 2 or even Samsung’s Galaxy Buds2 Pro. At €250, the Xiaomi Buds have set themselves a rather ambitious goal. They’ve got all the bells and whistles: high-quality streaming, active noise cancellation, long battery life, dimensional audio, head tracking, so there’s definitely a lot to explore in this review.
Proġett
Xiaomi has gone for an elegant and classy design and the choice of colors is formal rather than fun. We have the Space Black version, but there is also a Star Gold version. Both options feature two-tone designs with a matte finish on the bottom and a glossy finish on the lid. This piece is somewhat polarizing as some colleagues in the office liked it while others felt it was “too much”. Objectively though, the glossy finish of the lid attracts grease and smudges, which are also quite visible.
The casing design resembles that of a space capsule and stores the earphones vertically. Strong magnets keep the earphones in their moulds. The same goes for the lid itself, the magnets hold it securely in place without any wobbling.
Near the bottom of the case, you’ll find the LED indicator that displays battery level and indicates charging progress. There’s also a pairing button next to the USB-C connector.
The earphones are distinguished by an unorthodox design. Yes, they still have the shape of most TWS buds out there, but instead of a curved oval design, the Xiaomi Buds 4 Pro have flat, square stems, and just like the case, they adopt the two-tone design. The plastic facing the ear is matte and a bit soft to the touch. This is where Xiaomi has kept the curves, however, to be more comfortable in the ear.
And it works because the Buds 4 Pro are downright comfortable. As long as you nail the size of your ear tip (Xiaomi provides three sizes in the retail package) they will never fall off even though we have tested them in various harsh conditions.
Then again, just like any in-ear design, your ears will start to get a little tired, for lack of a better word, during long listening sessions. Also, in-ear designs are largely a personal thing, as people’s ears are not created equal.
Softwer u karatteristiċi
The Buds 4 Pro can be used without an app, but the Xiaomi Earbuds app from the Google Play repository gives you access to a lot of extra features. You can customize gestures on each earbud (double-tap, triple-tap, long-press), toggle in-ear detection, voice detection, adjust ANC mode and level, and of course find your earbuds just in case you lost them.
Screenshot from Xiaomi Earbuds app
ANC settings are displayed at the top, and a persistent notification offers quick access to changing the mode. You can choose between Transparency, Off and Noise Canceling modes, which are self explanatory.
There’s also a toggle for automatic noise cancellation, which works great as we didn’t see any significant difference between the automatic mode and the constantly on ANC. The algorithm seems to do a good job of adjusting the ANC level appropriately, depending on the surroundings. In theory, this should save some battery life since ANC won’t be on all the time.
The voice detection feature was quite pleasant to use, especially when someone comes up to talk to you. When the earphones detect your voice, the volume is turned down and transparency mode is activated so that you can hear the other person. It’s reliable enough in a moderately noisy environment, but it didn’t perform well in a noisy gym, for example. Microphones struggle to pick up your voice when it’s too loud.
Xiaomi earphone app
Either way, the mode will stay on as long as you’re still engaged in conversation and talking occasionally, but it will automatically turn off after a certain amount of time that you can adjust.
The buds are also a hit with wear detection. Sometimes they will fail to pause your meditation when you remove one of the earphones.
The ear tip fit test plays a sound when you wear them and determines whether or not the tips are right for you. We suspect that external microphones try to pick up potential sound leaks.
There’s also the head tracking feature, which is active when dimensional audio is on and does a great job of adjusting the volume while you’re looking away from your phone.
Xiaomi earphone app
Now it’s time for one of our biggest complaints: wear detection. The software often turned off the ANC even though both earbuds were in place and playing music. Removing and then putting back one of the buds will fix the problem, but it’s quite annoying.
Il-kwalità tal-awdjo
The Buds 4 Pro feature dual 11mm magnet drivers, and when it comes to audio quality, there’s not much to complain about. High-resolution audio streaming via Sony’s LDAC codec is supported up to 990kbps, 96kHz/24bit.
We have tested them on many musical genres and they all sound great. Which usually doesn’t happen with tiny buds like these. Manufacturers often try to tune their earphones for more bass-heavy genres.
This is not the case with the Buds 4 Pro. While bass was decently reproduced, vocals are clean and high-frequency sounds are crisp even at high volumes.
Acoustic music and songs with many musical instruments also sound clean.
The dimensional audio feature can help with immersion, especially if you’re playing a live concert recording or when watching a movie, but the overall quality drops significantly. We didn’t like how distant everything sounded and the high frequency sounds became quite muffled.
This feature is only supported by a handful of Xiaomi phones for now: Xiaomi 13, 13 Pro, 13 Lite, 12X, Mi 11i, Mi 11 and Mi 11 Ultra, but more are expected to get it in the future.
To our surprise, there is little interference from the noise canceling mode. You really need to look for subtle changes to notice the difference. With the ANC turned off, the bass sounds slightly less spacious, as if you’re listening in a small, echo-friendly room.
Note that these are really subtle changes to the overall sound quality, which is great news as ANC has been known to interfere with music quite a bit. Xiaomi has struck a good balance here.
Kanċellazzjoni tal-istorbju
Xiaomi claims the Buds 4 Pro can suppress noise by up to 48dB, but the reality behind that rating is a little more nuanced. As many of you know, noise canceling works best with constant low frequency sounds, while sudden high pitched sounds are not suppressed.
The Buds 4 Pro use three microphones (on each earbud) to detect ambient noise, while a voice pickup unit (VPU) constantly listens to your voice during calls and when the voice detection feature is on.
In addition to the hardware improvements, the buds also feature an intelligent AI-based algorithm that eliminates wind noise up to 32.4km/h during phone calls. We can say that this feature works well in slightly windy conditions, but don’t expect miracles.
In any case, we found the noise cancellation to work adequately, even in noisy environments. For example, the normal noise of the gym and its often annoying music are suppressed very well. Even the noisy subway and public transport are hard to hear compared to the music you listen to. Only cars that pass you on the street can pass through the noise cancellation. We also pitted the ANC against a fairly loud vacuum cleaner and the buds handled it great.
Mikrofonu
Microphone performance is excellent across the board. Only noisy environments with strong crosswind can interfere with your phone calls. But the usual street noise or gym environment didn’t interfere with your conversations. We rarely see such good phone call performance from small TWS buds.
Konnettività
The Xiaomi Buds 4 Pro connect via Bluetooth 5.3 LE, which is what you’d expect from modern TWS headphones. Buds support LDAC, SBC and AAC streaming codecs. LDAC supports audio streaming up to 990 kbps with 32-bit audio depth, provided your phone supports it. If not, it will drop to AAC.
The earbuds also support multi-device pairing in case you want to stream music from your laptop, for example, and still want to take calls using your phone.
When it comes to actual connection performance, we’re not impressed. The advertised range of 10 meters is only true when the smartphone is in an unobstructed view. You will have to carry your phone around the apartment if you have more than a couple of rooms. We also experienced random hiccups and interruptions when walking down the street with the phone in our pocket. We haven’t been able to determine the cause, but it only happened when the ANC was on. However, we are not sure of the cause.
Either way, these issues, along with the in-ear sensing, are likely easy to fix with a future software update, and may have something to do with the pre-release state of our pair.
Il-ħajja tal-batterija u l-iċċarġjar
Each earbud has a 53mAh battery, while the case offers an additional 565mAh capacity. That’s pretty standard for a pair of high-end buds, but the Buds 4 Pro have one big advantage over its rivals: the case can be charged with a cable as well as wirelessly. It supports standard Qi charging, so the buds should be compatible with most chargers and phones that support reverse wireless charging.
In our experience, the case, along with the earphones, charge very quickly. Xiaomi claims that just 5 minutes of charging will give you 3 hours of continuous playback and this seems to match our experience.
Unfortunately, the actual battery life we got from the buds falls significantly short of the advertised 9 hours of listening, or a total of 38 hours after factoring in case charging. Sure, Xiaomi tested buds when streaming music with AAC codec which is easier on battery and all other features, like ANC or Dimensional audio, were turned off.
However, we streamed our music in LDAC with ANC turned off and got it right 6:20 U 5:20, depending on the single gem. Yes, you read that correctly. For some reason, the right gem drains much faster, sometimes leaving a 16% empty space.
While these results are far from what is advertised, they are still very solid. Most competitors appear to offer similar battery life with the Pixel Buds Pro being the only exception to the rule. They can go on for more than 7 consecutive hours with ANC on or 11 hours without.
The charging case provides approximately 3.7 charges, which brings the total music playback time to just over 20 hours.
kompetizzjoni
The competition has grown over the last couple of years and there are a few high-end options to choose from, but we’ll focus on the ones we’ve actually tested.
We’ve already mentioned the Pixel Buds Pro, which now cost just over $150 and have better battery life. Even the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro cost around $100 these days and offer similar audio quality and solid ANC.
Huawei’s Freebuds Pro 2 can be found for even less, and they too have great sound quality and decent battery life.
The recently released OnePlus Buds Pro 2 is also an option, albeit a bit more expensive than the others, asking €169. But even at that price, OnePlus’ buds seem like a great deal because the Xiaomi Buds 4 Pro are priced of 250 €. This is Apple AirPods territory, and Xiaomi’s option will have a hard time competing.
verdett
The Xiaomi Buds 4 Pro have a number of things going for them. Perhaps the most important factor to consider is their sound quality, which is truly outstanding. There’s little to complain about and even with ANC on, the sound quality is still excellent. The design is nice too, microphone performance is really good in most environments, battery life is decent, and we like the charging versatility.
On the other hand, the software problems we encountered, such as in-ear detection, cut-offs, the rather limited Bluetooth range and voice detection prevent us from giving the Xiaomi Buds 4 Pro a recommendation at all. Furthermore, the The high price is hard to swallow and we believe Gems needs to drop close to €100 to become profitable.
The good news is that pretty much all of the issues we’ve encountered are software-related, so future firmware releases are sure to fix most of them. And knowing that Xiaomi often runs sales on its products, perhaps these can become a real bargain in the not-so-distant future.
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