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Huawei Freebuds Pro 4 Review: A worthy AirPods Pro 2 alternative
Huawei's long-standing FreeBuds line has recently welcomed a new premium member, the FreeBuds Pro 4. The new model closely follows the footsteps of its predecessor, slightly revamps the design, refines the overall experience and adds some bonus features like the newest version of Huawei's high-bitrate L2HC 4.0 audio codec and head control (answering or rejecting calls by nodding or shaking your head).
Despite its premium feature-set, the FreeBuds Pro 4 are a competitively priced pair at EUR 199 (about $208). For reference, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 go for about EUR 280 in Europe and $250 in the US.
As you can guess, the FreeBuds Pro 4 will be widely available in Europe and Asia, but users in the US should also be able to find them without much hassle on Amazon, just like previous FreeBuds entries.
FreeBuds Pro 4 Design
The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4 case and the earbuds themselves have a rather exquisite, almost luxurious design. I’m using the black and gold model, which looks particularly classy. The case opens and closes with a reassuring snap, while the overall product has a nice heft to it, further cementing the feeling of a premium product.
The small button on the side of the case for engaging pairing mode is a bit stiff. It works, of course, but isn't super-comfortable to press. Thankfully, we don't have to use it very often.
Despite the classy design, the Huawei logo plastered along the stems of both earbuds is a bit too much. Users typically don’t want too many company logos on their products, let alone wearable ones.
The FreeBuds Pro 4 come with a great selection of tips in different sizes and materials. The memory foam ones felt a bit thick and hard to my liking, so I stuck with the more standard silicone tips. Whatever your preferences are, it seems likely you’ll find ones that fit your ears very well.
Pro tip: I found out that even if you remove the rubber eartips from the FreeBuds Pro 4, they still stay comfortably in the ears and don’t fall off. This means you can pick your preferred wearing style: with the in-ear rubber tips or without them. Of course, if you go without the tips, the Noise Cancellation will not work as well. They will also have less bass, which you can compensate for using the sound profiles or by creating a new custom EQ preset to your liking in the Huawei AI Life app. The process is rather simple. I personally enjoy the more relaxed fit without the rubber in-ear tips, but if you want the best possible isolation and bass reproduction these buds are capable of, the tips will have to stay on.
Listening experience and ANC
The FreeBuds Pro 4 are rather smart. If you put both buds on, they automatically go into Noise Cancelling mode. However, if you only put one earpiece on, it defaults to the Awareness mode. I often go for walks with just one earbud on, and so I really want Awareness at those times when I'm out and about. Plus, it doesn’t make sense to activate noise cancelling with only one earbud in.
Compared to the AirPods Pro 2, the ANC (active noise cancellation) is a bit worse. Apple’s earbuds manage to isolate even sounds like dialog near you a bit more effectively, while the FreeBuds Pro 4 struggle to cancel everything out. In general, the FreeBuds Pro 4 don’t have the best active noise cancellation out there. Their ANC is good enough to reduce ambient noises, but will by no means allow you to isolate yourself from the environment.
The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4 have an extremely flexible and customizable set of control gestures. First, you can pinch the stem of each earbud to cause an action to happen. You can also set different actions if you double-tap or even triple-tap each earbud. On top of that, you can set up a pinch-and-hold gesture, and if that’s not enough, you can also swipe up and down the stems to control volume.
All these interaction methods are welcome. Due to the small size of the earphones, they can be a bit tricky to use properly, but they work and are there if you need them.
FreeBuds Pro 4 sound quality
The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4 sound great. However, you’ll have to experiment with their different modes to find the sound profile that’s most appealing to you.
For some reason, the sound profile tends to change drastically as you switch the processing mode between Noise Cancellation, Off, and Awareness.
This doesn’t matter too much for calls or audiobooks, but it makes a big difference for music. The FreeBuds Pro 4 sound just fine with ANC set to Off, which is great news, because having ANC off means you get longer battery life. They get noticeably boomier if you set them to either Noise Cancellation or Awareness. Between these two profiles, you’ll need to also experiment a bit with the available EQ presets in order to arrive at the one that sounds best to you, but generally these are fantastic earphones for music listening.
There are some bonus features that get unlocked if you pair the FreeBuds Pro 4 with a modern Huawei phone. These are Huawei’s custom super-high bandwidth L2HC 4.0 audio codec with a bitrate of up to 2.3 Mbps, as well as HD Spatial Audio, which adds fun spatial effects similar to Apple’s Spatial Audio.
I’m sure that if you’re among the few people listening to lossless audio tracks, the high sound quality modes supported by these earbuds will make a difference, but even with my trained ear, I couldn’t hear much of a difference while listening to the admittedly not super-high-quality tracks on my YouTube Music. But these are the realities for 99% of users out there, so most of us might as well switch back to the “faster connection” setting and enjoy better latency and increased battery life (the high-quality audio setting consumes more power).
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