Huawei brought to Romania this week its newest headphones, Huawei FreeBuds 4. It's a pair of wireless headphones, with noise cancellation, but not ANC, not having that isolation associated with plugs, but another type of noise canceling . I saw the headphones at the Huawei presentation a few weeks ago and I really liked the "chrome" version. Now I received them on white and what came out is an unboxing and review below.
Summary
The product costs 599 lei and comes as a successor to FreeBuds 3, which I used during the last year. I also tested FreeBuds 4i this spring, if you were curious and impressed with the autonomy. FreeBuds 4 has a more compact design, can be connected to two terminals simultaneously and are classic midrange headphones.
Unboxing
In the box are the USB-C to USB-A cable, the manual, the headset and the headphones
Design
Huawei FreeBuds 4 is similar to FreeBuds 3 in both the heel and the design of the headphones. However, the heel is a bit more compact, and the headphones are a shorter idea and have a less bulbous tip. They are made of plastic, and the heel fits snugly in your jeans pocket. Each helmet weighs 4.1 grams and the heel weighs 38 grams. It comes with an LED that indicates the charge level and a USB-C port for power.
The headphones fit well in my ear, I didn't feel like they could fall when I did sports. Does not create unpleasant pressure when activating sound insulation. The design of the headphones remains inspired by Apple AirPods. We also have IPX4 certification for perspiration resistance.
Technology
We have 14.3 mm drivers, Bluetooth 5.2 support and 2 microphones per headset. The good news is that you can connect headphones simultaneously with two devices, say Huawei P40 Pro and Huawei MateBook laptop, alternating between them without any problems. We also have a touch area on the outside of the headphones, which we can press or slide with our fingers to stop parts, walk at volume or other tasks.
Autonomy
Huawei FreeBuds 4 comes with a 30 mAh battery on each headset, but also a 410 mAh in the carrying case. On paper it promises 4 hours of playback with ANC off and 2.5 hours with ANC on. Well, it's not really the ANC, but we'll call it that, because it's written on the official page. The heel brings autonomy to 22 hours with the ANC turned off and 14 hours with it on.
After a week of use, I caught about 3-4 hours of listening until the next charge. By the way, the full charge takes an hour, and after 15 minutes of power you have power for 2.5 hours of playback. Unfortunately we do not have wireless charging.
Sound
What do the headphones sound like? It's a clean, balanced sound with well-separated frequencies. The bass isn't very strong, but there's a Bass Boost feature in the AI Life Equalizer on Huawei phones. Even so, owning one is still beyond the reach of the average person. The volume is just OK, I don't think it breaks records. It seemed like FreeBuds 3 sounded louder and I needed to take breaks sometimes because my ears ached.
Where these headphones shine is actually voice capture, vlogging and calling. You have HD calls and 48 KHz voice capture. I say that the vloggers will be satisfied as well as the journalists and those who talk a lot on the phone. Rarely is voice clarity on an ordinary consumer product and not an enterprise product. Video conferencing or audio conferencing can also be held with them.
Noise isolation works for a common everyday scenario, but if you get to a very noisy environment, like the airport or pickhammer workers can no longer cope. He also has some difficulties when the subway enters the station, for example. For gamers we have a latency of 90 ms with a HarmonyOS terminal and 150 ms with one with EMUI.
Software
In terms of software, we have AI Life on a Huawei P40 Pro, from which we made 2 software updates. From here you customize the tactile control gestures, activate the noise canceling modes and you also have 2 Boost modes for Bass and Treble. We also have voice amplification, HD voices, Find My Earphones function.
In the Noise Canceling section you have two options: Cozy (ideal for low noise places) and General (ideal for noisy areas). There is also a Smart Wear function, which automatically shuts off the song when you remove the headset.
Verdict
Pro:
Versus:
My advice is to wait for the price to drop by at least 100-150 lei. What you get from these headphones is great clarity in recording and playing voices, balanced sound, and in-ear comfort. The "Chrome" version is very good looking. On the other hand, there are cheaper, more bombastic-sounding models, noisier and with more bass, if that's what you're looking for.
It depends a lot on what you want from the product and if you are more focused on voice than bass, I can recommend them.
Huawei FreeBuds 4, updated prices: