Earplugs for Huawei phone enthusiasts

Huawei is known for making the best hardware, and the Chinese tech giant’s latest offering, the FreeBuds Pro 4, sets the bar high once again. These wireless earbuds are the industry’s first to deliver 48kHz audio at 24-bit resolution. By comparison, Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 can only produce audio at 20-bit resolution, and Google’s Pixel Buds 2 are even lower. The FreeBuds Pro 4 is able to do this because it enables lossless transmission of 2.3Mbps between the device and the earphones, which is developed using Huawei’s proprietary connection technology.

There’s an important caveat: As of now, the headphones can only achieve maximum audio quality when paired with the company’s latest foldable phone, the Mate X6, running the latest software. If you have any other phone, the headset won’t achieve the maximum lossless audio transmission of 2.3Mbps, but it can still achieve a very respectable 1.5Mbps on older Huawei phones or 990Kbps on other brands of phones.

Of course, you’ll also need lossless audio files to hear full sound quality – if you’re just streaming music on a mobile network via YouTube or Spotify’s free tier, you’re not going to get anywhere near 24-bit 48kHz audio.

The problem is that most people (I would estimate over 95%) are not audiophiles who care about achieving lossless audio quality. For most people, the music they stream from YouTube sounds good enough.

So that makes the FreeBuds Pro 4’s main appeal somewhat of a niche feature for enthusiasts. But no matter what, a breakthrough is a breakthrough. Even if you don’t play lossless audio with the FreeBuds Pro 4, you still get a very comfortable set of headphones with some of the best active noise cancellation and transparency modes around.

The FreeBuds Pro 4 retain the design language of the last FreeBuds Pro, with its blocky stems thicker than competing earbuds. I don’t mind, as the chunkier, thicker stem accommodates more microphones (four per earphone) and dynamic 11mm drivers. And it’s easier to hold and control audio through the touch-sensitive panel.

Of course, I wish my earbuds didn’t have stems – nothing sticking out of my ears – but if they do, then their size doesn’t matter to me.

The earbuds work like any other earbuds – pair them with your phone or laptop and go. Huawei does have a companion app that provides customization of the EQ and touch controls, but most of the time you won’t need to use it.

The audio produced by the 11mm drivers is full and lively, with noticeable bass—incidentally, this was primarily testing “normal” audio streams from Spotify and YouTube Music, rather than audiophile 24-bit lossless audio. I did test a few lossless tracks and they sounded really great, but I’d be lying if I said I could hear a noticeable difference. At the end of the day, I’m not an audiophile.

A long press on the touch-sensitive panel on the stem switches between listening modes, and the active noise cancellation is the best I’ve ever heard, thanks to the earbuds’ four microphones. I rank ANC alongside the AirPods Pro 2 and Bose Ultra earbuds as the best overall at quieting down the world around me.

Another area where the FreeBuds Pro 4 excels is microphone pickup, as one of the four mics inside is a bone conduction mic, meaning it picks up my voice through skull vibrations rather than external audio. This means that even if I’m in a very loud environment, the bone conduction microphone can pick up my voice. During a test call using FreeBuds Pro 4 and AirPods Pro 2, the other party did confirm that the sound was louder and clearer when I was wearing FreeBuds Pro 4.

Battery life is also great, with the earphones offering around 6.5 hours of playback time – I know because I recently wore these on a 7-hour flight and the earphones lasted almost the entire flight – and the charging case holds four more charges, for a total of over 30 hours of listening time.

Despite offering some industry firsts, the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4 aren’t expensive, at least by the standards set by rival tech brands. At around $210 (based on European and Asian prices), the FreeBuds Pro 4 are cheaper than Samsung and Apple’s top-tier headphones, and I don’t think the FreeBuds Pro 4 loses to either of those two in any way. If you care about audiophile-grade lossless audio, the FreeBuds Pro 4 offers something these two can’t.