Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4: The Earbuds For Audiophiles With Huawei Phones

Huawei is known for making some of the very best hardware around, and the Chinese tech giant’s latest, the FreeBuds Pro 4, once again sets a high benchmark. These wireless earbuds are the first in the industry to offer 48kHz audio at 24 bit resolution. By comparison, Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 can only produce 20 bit resolution audio, and Google’s Pixel Buds 2 are even lower. The FreeBuds Pro 4 achieves this because it can achieve 2.3Mbps lossless transmission between device and earbuds, something developed using Huawei’s proprietary connection technology.

There is one major caveat: as of right now, the earbuds can only achieve this maximum quality of audio if paired with the company’s latest foldable phone, the Mate X6, running the latest software. If you have any other phone, the earbuds cannot achieve maximum 2.3Mbps of lossless audio transmission, but can still do a very respectable 1.5Mbps with an older Huawei phone or 990Kbps with another brand’s phones.

You also need, of course, lossless audio files to hear the full quality too — if you’re just streaming music off YouTube or Spotify’s free tier on mobile network, you’re not pushing nowhere close to 24-bit 48kHz audio.

The thing is, most people — I’d reckon over 95% — are not audiophiles who care about achieving lossless audio quality. To most people, the music they stream off YouTube sound good enough.

So this makes the FreeBuds Pro 4’s main draw a bit of an enthusiast, niche feature. But still, a breakthrough is a breakthrough. And even if you do not use the FreeBuds Pro 4 to play lossless audio, you’re still getting a very comfortable set of buds with some of the best active noise cancellation and transparency mode around.

The FreeBuds Pro 4 keep the design language of the last few FreeBuds Pros, with a blocky stem that is thicker than rival earbuds. I don’t mind it, because the blockier, thicker stem houses more microphones (four in each bud) and a dynamic 11mm driver. And it’s also easier to hold, and control audio via the touch sensitive panels.

Of course I want my earbuds to have no stems — nothing sticking out of my ear — but if there are going to be stems, then their size do not matter much to me.

The earbuds work like any other earbud — pair it with your phone or laptop and it just works. Huawei does have a companion app that offers customization of EQ and touch controls, but for the most part you don’t need to use it.

The audio produced by the 11mm driver are full, lively, with noticeable bass kick — this is testing mostly “normal” audio streamed from Spotify and YouTube Music, by the way, not the audiophile 24-bit lossless audio. I did test a couple of lossless tracks, and they do sound marvelous, but I would be lying if I said I could hear significant difference. I am, ultimately, not an audiophile.

A longpress of the touch sensitive panel on the stem switches between listening modes, with the active noise cancelation among the best I’ve heard, thanks to the earbuds’ four microphones. I’d rank the ANC here neck and neck with the AirPods Pro 2 and Bose Ultra earbuds for the best overall at silencing the world around me.

Another area the FreeBuds Pro 4 excels at is microphone pickup, because one of the four microphones inside is a bone conduction mic, meaning it can pick up my voice via vibrations from my skull, not external audio. This means even if I’m in a very loud environment, the bone conduction mic can pick up my voice. During test calls using the FreeBuds Pro 4 and the AirPods Pro 2, the other party did confirm my voice was a bit louder and clearer when I wore the FreeBuds Pro 4.

Battery life has been good too, with the earbuds offering about 6.5 hours of playtime – I know because I took these on a 7 hour flight recently and the earbuds almost lasted the entire flight – with the case adding another four charges for a total of over 30 hours of listen time.

Despite offering some industry firsts, the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4 are not expensive, at least not by the standards set by competing tech brands. Priced at about $210 (price converted from its Europe and Asia prices), the FreeBuds Pro 4 are cheaper than what Samsung and Apple asks for their highest-tier earbuds, and I think the FreeBuds Pro 4 does not lose to those two in any area. If you care about audiophile lossless audio, then the FreeBuds Pro 4 brings something those two cannot offer too.