Huawei has just upgraded its most premium true wireless earbud, the Huawei Freebuds Pro 3, which has a starting price of $169, boasting respectable sound and excellent ANC for a budget under $200. These noise cancelling buds boast a compact, comfortable splash-resistant design.
The Huawei Freebuds Pro 3 can connect to two devices simultaneously, with LDAC support for high-quality audio streaming. It’s not quite as pricey as Sony, but not exactly cheap either. But are they worth your music? Well, I’ve been testing them out for well over a week, and now here’s my full Huawei Freebuds Pro 3 review.
Design and Build
So first, the case of the Huawei Freebuds Pro 3 hasn’t exactly changed up much from the previous generations, and that’s fine with me because you still have a rather compact pebbl-style design that slips very easily into any pocket bag wherever you’d like to stuff the earbuds. The case itself is just plastic, like pretty much all earbud cases, but the hinge feels pretty solid and doesn’t feel like the lid’s going to snap off.
If you get a bit too violent and the buds themselves, despite having quite a smooth, slippery surface or being easy to pull out, it’s definitely been half an hour fumbling with. And we have Freebuds Pro 3 in silver Frost, and you can also grab in ceramic white or green; the buds weigh just 5.8g. You’ve got four different sizes of silicone tips bundled in the box; you’re bound to find one that will suit your own particular ear hole. That’s skin-friendly silicone.
I found the Huawei Freebuds Pro 3 certainly very comfortable to wear, even for hours at a time. They just fit in there, all nice and cozy; it’s just like squeezing warm custs into your ears. I don’t know why I said that, but despite being comfortable, they fit in there nice and securely as well, so no amount of running, jogging, or jumping up and down will dislodge them, so absolutely fine for wearing down the gym, and just to prove a point, the MH test and the buds also have IP54 water resistance or splash resistance as well, I should say, so they could certainly get rather damp, absolutely no troubles there.
Setup and AI Life App
When Freebuds Pro 3 connects with your smartphone for quick and easy pairing, you can pair up to two devices at once. So I had mine generally paired with my smartphone, which I was using, and also my laptop. You can flick between the two nice and easy, just like you can with all modern Buds.
I found that connection stayed strong and stable, even when I was out and about in public. I had a couple of pauses when I was streaming over LDAC, but that was literally in London Bridge Station, where hundreds and hundreds of other people were all around me listening to stuff on their Bluetooth headphones, so basically all is well.
One of the unfortunate things about owning a Huawei device is that it doesn’t quite work the same way that others do, so for instance, when you want to download the app onto your smartphone, Huawei AI Life app, you have to download it via Huawei’s website, but once you’ve done this, I found it works absolutely perfectly. Get synced up with the buds, you can quickly check out the battery life of the buds, and also the case itself. You can quickly and easily organize which devices the buds are connected to.
You can also meddle with the noise cancellation swap between the different modes on the Fly, although you can also do that using the touch controls. More on that in a bit. You got a selection of different audio presets. You can also prioritize sound quality using the likes of ldac, otherwise the connection quality instead. So Freebuds Pro 3 then shunts down to the likes of SBC. As I said, even in London, I didn’t really struggle much with that higher quality streaming, so that was all good. I got the usual shenanigans, like finding your earphones and getting a tip-fit test.
Touch Controls
In the Huawie AI Life app, you can fully customize all of the different touch controls, like the pinch once. For instance, you can only deactivate them; you can’t set them to perform some other function. but with some other gestures like pinch and hold, you do have a bit more choice, and with all of these touch controls, you basically just squeeze pinching and swiping the stem bit that dangles down; it’s got a bit of a groove in it.
So you know exactly where you’re supposed to swipe and pinch. I found the touch controls worked absolutely fine. You’ve got a slight audio feedback when you do pinch; you know if you’ve actually double-pinched triple-pinch, you know that it’s all registering fine. You can do single-, double-, and triple-pinch to pause or play your music and skip tracks. You can also swipe up and down to adjust the volume, which is really helpful. I really like that feature, and you can pinch and hold in order to either cycle through the different ENC modes or otherwise conjure up your voice assistant.
Audio Quality
When it comes to the audio quality, the Huawie Freebuds Pro 3 rocked Huawei terms and an ultrain dual driver; it’s an 11-millimeter dynamic driver, and you’ve also got support for high-res audio with less streaming as well. as the likes of LG Apetx HD, etc., all the stuff you would hope for and expect to have at this sort of price, and the sound quality is certainly respectably good from the Freebuds Pro 3.
I was happy enough with all of the different genres that I tested, from metal and rock to classical and more jazzy shenanigans that said I couldn’t pick up on all of the finer details on more complex tracks. So if you are a true audio file, you’ll want to spend a bit more cash at a Sony or something like that. You also get a small selection of audio presets. I did notice a massive difference between most of them, but the Base Boost certainly does its job.
Active Noise Cancelling
As for the noise cancellation on the Freebuds Pro 3, well, it’s the suitably grandiose-sounding intelligent Dynamic ANC 3.0, powered by a triple mic setup. On Freebuds Pro 3 earbuds, you get the dynamic smart so we can detect just how noisy your environment is and then boost up the Inc to really try and block out as much of that crap as possible. And I found that certainly in general everyday circumstances this worked really well.
The NC isn’t quite as powerful in a quiet environment like a studio or a cafe, but as soon as you jump onto a train or you walk by a really busy road, it does boost that to really block out all of that rumbly horribleness. It certainly works really well on trains and even on the tube as well. It was only thwarted as always by the Northern Line, and all of its screechy awesomeness. You got bug roll wind feedback as well, so really good for a bit of outdoor jogs and that sort of stuff, even in wintry blustery conditions.
Mic Test
While we clearly put a lot of thought into the name and all of its various technologies, when Freebuds Pro 3 comes to chatting, you’ve got Pure Voice 2.0, which is very fancy and includes precise environmental noise removal. When you’re taking a call, you should come through loud and clear with no distortion.
So I’m now simulating being in a really noisy, busy, and horrendous environment with lots of drilling and beeping and people and things like that, and my voice is still coming through cleanly and clearly despite all that background noise right next to my head, so no matter where you’re, if you’re on a call, people should still be able to understand what you’re banging on about.
Battery life Test
The battery life on the Huawei Freebuds Pro 3 is also pretty damn solid; I found the power tended to drop around 14% per hour. when I was using them with that active noise cancellation switched on so that give you just under 7 hours of full on use before you need to put them out of your ear and Chuck them back inside of that lovely pebbly case.
The Huawei Freebuds Pro 3 charge up pretty quickly once you put them in there, you also got support for wireless charging, so if you’ve got a phone with reverse wireless charging, just Chuck them on the back and you’ll get powered up again in not too much time. Otherwise, if you want to power up the case a bit quicker, you can just plug a USB-C cable right in its bottom and the charging starts.
Is it worth it?
So the new Huawei Freebuds Pro 3 as I say $169, so a fair amount of change. If you want the absolute best out there, then you can upgrade to the likes of the Bose and the Sony’s, but if you can’t quite stretch to that, we still want decent sound quality, strong battery life, and excellent ENC. Well, definitely, the Freebuds Pro 3 will do the job done.
The Huawei Freebuds Pro 3, while not the absolute best in the market, offer a balanced package of decent sound quality, strong battery life, and effective noise cancellation at a competitive price point. For those unable to invest in premium brands like Bose or Sony, the Freebuds Pro 3 prove to be a reliable choice.
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Desing9
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Bluetooth and Pairing8.5
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App Support8.5
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Touch Controls7.5
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Audio Quality9
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ANC8
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Battery Life7.5
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Price Value8
