The Realme Buds Wireless Pro, released by Realme a while back, for Rs 3,499. Should you buy them or go for the competition, which currently, in my opinion, can be the Oppo Enco M31 or the Bullets Wireless Z Bass Edition launched by OnePlus a couple of weeks back? Well, our review might be of help in making your next buy.
Realme has introduced Active Noise Cancellation in their latest wireless earphones, but is it up to the mark? Let’s take a look. For starters, you get the earphones itself, a Type-C charging cable, and some extra pairs of ear tips of different sizes in the box.
Design
The earphones obviously have a neckband style where the size of the neckband is fairly big and is comfortable to wear. Coming to the earphone part, the earphones are also bigger than average size because of mics that have been used for implementing Active Noise Cancellation. But, I didn’t face any issues where the earphones just popped out of my ear. And Realme also provides different pairs of earbuds based on different sizes within the box so you can choose the one that fits you perfectly.
The yellow cable with the black neckband definitely follows Realme’s theme here and looks cool in my opinion. The quality of the cable itself is very good with a textured finish and looks like it is built to last.
Coming to the neckband part, we have clear Left and Right indications and on the right side, we have 4 buttons including the multifunction button, volume up and down, a button which will activate/deactivate noise-cancelling and other modes, and also a type-c port with a cover on it which is a nice touch. The buttons are also tactile and easy to click.
A notable mention is that the earphones are also IPX4 rated which makes them water-resistant. Overall, we felt that the device didn’t feel heavy or uncomfortable to wear in daily use. Although, the Oppo Enco M31 are a bit lighter and more comfortable to wear.
Features
Before talking about the sound quality of Realme Buds Wireless Pro, let’s get you through the features of the wireless earphones as it has a bunch of them.
Starting off with the first one, the earphones have the Google fast pair technology. Meaning as soon as you detach the earphones from each other, your Android phone will show you a prompt (above image) that the realme wireless buds pro earphones are ready to pair so you can connect to the earphones with just one click.
Secondly, the realme buds wireless pro has the functionality that it can link with the ‘Realme Link’ App that will help you navigate through the features which the earphones have. It can also show you how much battery is left in the earphones, switch modes, etc.
The earphones also have a low-latency gaming mode that can be activated through the Realme Link app or by long press on the ANC button, which can bring down the Latency by upto 50%. Keep in mind that for the gaming mode to work, you would have to disable LDAC codec (yes the earphones also support LDAC). I tried to enable the gaming mode and observe the difference but as the earphones already have a very less latency lag, the difference between gaming mode ON and OFF was negligible.
Then we have multiple device support meaning you can connect to multiple devices simultaneously and switch between them by double-tapping the ANC button so you can choose which device should handle the audio output for the earphones. It worked perfectly fine for us and was a nice addition to the feature set.
Basic features such as magnetic instant connect are also present where if you separate the earbuds from each other, they will turn on and when you magnetically attach them together, the earphones disconnect and the audio playback stops.
Audio Quality
The realme buds wireless pro have a 13.6mm driver on which the audio quality relies. It is equipped with Bluetooth 5.0, LDAC codec support, Active Noise Cancellation along with Environmental Noise Cancellation.
Talking about audio quality, the earphone performed fairly well. With LDAC turned ON, the quality was good. The vocals were clear with good but not excellent bass. The low range frequencies were average while the medium frequencies sounded good. I could find the sound a little bit muffled when compared to Oppo Enco M31 as those too have LDAC, but even then the earphones sounded good enough.
The earphones can also get pretty loud. I wasn’t able to get past 60-70% volume, forget 100%.
Within the realme link app, you will also find an option for a Dynamic Bass Boost feature which just increases the bass and suppresses the vocals. In my opinion, I would keep it disabled for the best original experience.
With the right equalizer settings that suit you, you can even further enhance the audio experience by increasing the bass even further. During my usage, I used Poweramp music player to play around with the sound quality, and it did make a huge difference in bass and vocal balance. I could increase the bass much more while balancing the vocals which really brought a big difference.
Call quality and ANC
The elephant in the room here is the ANC feature. Realme claims that ANC can work and cancel noise upto 35dB. During my usage, Active Noise Cancellation worked pretty well. Obviously, it doesn’t cancel out all the background noises but does help a lot in crowded areas or places where background noise can affect your listening experience.
The earbuds come with 3 modes which are the transparent mode which doesn’t cancel out any noise. A normal mode which does reduce background noise but not much. And then ANC which cancels out all noise. I tested ANC both while calling and listening to music, and the experience was just amazing.
Coming to call quality, the other person could hear me loud and clear without any issues. Though with ANC, my voice did reduce for the other person and increased when I turned off ANC. And the earbuds were also picking up background noise for the other person quite much but not on a level at which the other person couldn’t hear me. But no matter what the scenario, the buds were able to transmit my voice without any disturbances and the call quality was fine.
Battery Life
One of the most important aspects people consider while buying earphones is the amount of time it would last them after every charge. And the Realme Buds Wireless Pro should be your choice if battery life matters to you.
I tried to push the earbuds to its limits and it stood strong. I got about 8 hours and 2 minutes of total battery backup with ANC and LDAC turned ON. This time period also includes around 2 hours of calling alone, around 3 hours of gaming with voice chat, and the rest is music playback. All at around 70-80% volume.
The earphones took 1 hour 20 minutes to charge which is fine in my opinion.
As said above, if you are looking for battery life in wireless earphones, the Realme Buds Pro Wireless are the earphones you should go for. And my testing was on the basis of heavy usage. With light usage, ANC turned OFF and less volume, this should easily last you more than 11 hours, or maybe even more.