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- Speedy, detailed and full-scale sound
- Impressive standard of build and finish
- Great call quality and noise cancellation
- Stident high-frequency response
- Midrange pushed too far forward
- Overly complicated touch controls
It’s not easy to make wireless earbuds that need to be as small, light and discreet as possible look distinctive or in any way upmarket, but Huawei has managed it with the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4. The gold accents are sophisticated rather than cheesy, the overall standard of build and finish is excellent, and even the charging case manages to look a cut above the norm.
There’s been no stinting when specification is concerned, either. A dual-driver arrangement, with a planar diaphragm supporting an 11mm dynamic driver in each earbud, promises plenty, as does a comprehensive control system. Adaptive noise cancelling, a fairly complex arrangement designed to eke out class-leading call quality, and the ability to wireless stream at 2.3mbps (if using a Huawei smartphone), all add to the impression of painstaking design.
Noise cancellation and telephony need no excuses made for them; both are among the very best that £150 will buy you. And in many ways, sound quality is well up to standard, too. The FreeBuds Pro 4 are a detailed listen and can hit hard, but are not without finesse. With a little less aggression at the top end and not quite as much enthusiasm for midrange prominence, they would be very serious contenders indeed.
What do you get for the money?
As is quite common for a Huawei product, with the FreeBuds Pro 4, what you get is a product that’s recognisably built to compete with similar products at a similar price, but one that is equipped with more features and technical highlights than is generally the norm.
Perhaps most fundamentally, the driver arrangement that delivers the sound to your ears is a cut above the £150 standard. The Pro 4 use a dual-driver setup in each earbud, with an 11mm full-range dynamic driver augmented by a planar diaphragm taking care of the higher frequencies. Huawei isn’t quoting a frequency response, but this arrangement certainly bodes well.
Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth 5.2, and the Pro 4 can handle lossless audio at a giddy 2.3mbps, as long as it’s coming from one of a few select Huawei smartphones. Otherwise, aptX HD and LDAC Bluetooth codec compatibility will have to suffice.
Battery life from the earbuds is anywhere between five and seven hours, depending on the circumstances, and there’s a further four full charges in the case. The case itself is compatible with Qi-certified wireless chargers, and has a USB-C socket too.
In terms of control, the Pro 4 have even more sensors and options than their rivals. For instance, under the heading ‘Gesture Control’ you’ll find options for ‘Pinch’ (there’s a little pinchy surface at the front of each earbud stem), ‘Tap’ (at the top of each stem), ‘Pinch and Hold’ (take a guess) and ‘Swipe’ (move your finger up the inside surface of either earbud to control volume). Then there’s ‘Head Control’. Switch this on and you can answer a call by nodding your head or reject it by shaking your head instead – and Huawei has included ‘bone acoustic sensors’ to assist with call quality. Naturally enough, there’s wear detection too, so you can pause music playback by taking the buds out of your ears.
That’s a lot of options, but you have the facility to amend the meaning of your pinches, swipes or taps in the control app. It also allows you to investigate some EQ presets, to adjust the level of noise cancellation, to check on battery life and most of the other usual control app stuff.
What did we like about them?
This is a good-looking pair of true wireless in-ear headphones. White and green finishes are also available, but for me, it’s the black of my review sample that looks the best, especially with the subtle gold accents that define the top edge of the earbuds’ stems and pick out the brand name. Even the charging case looks good. By prevailing standards, the FreeBuds Pro 4 present as more premium than most, and they feel built to last, too.
And in quite a few ways, the earbuds sound just as good as they look. Make a connection to a FiiO M15S digital audio player via the LDAC codec, and there’s plenty to admire. A TIDAL-derived FLAC file of Idles’ Never Fight a Man with a Perm is delivered with all its energy, aggression and desert-dry humour intact, and it moves along at a considerable pace. Thanks to careful low-frequency control, the Pro 4 keep momentum levels high and have no difficulty in describing the shifts in rhythm and tempo the recording indulges in.
The dynamic fluctuations present no problems either, and FreeBuds 4 Pro are capable of revealing a lot of detail (both broad and fine) at every part of the frequency range. From the deep, textured bass end to the bright, substantial top end via the open and forward midrange, there’s plenty of variation to be identified and contextualised. The Pro 4 allow the entire frequency range to hang together coherently, too, even though the midrange is given slight prominence. The soundstage on which all of this happens is spacious and well-defined.
The Huawei are just as accomplished where the peripherals of performance are concerned. My part of the country is windy more often than it isn’t, and sometimes, making or receiving calls using wireless earbuds can be an exercise in futility. But the numerous and various sensors fitted to the Pro 4 mean call quality is never less than impressive, and the earbuds can suppress wind noise to a frankly unlikely degree.
The active noise cancellation is similarly competitive. ‘Off’ and ‘Awareness’ are self-explanatory, as is ‘Noise Cancelling’, but this last setting has four sub-settings: ‘Dynamic’, which is adaptive, ‘Cozy’, for relatively quiet places, ‘General’ and ‘Ultra’. Select the latter and the buds deal with the vast majority of external distractions decisively, and without leaving a suggestion of counter-signal behind, either.
What could be improved?
It’s possible to have too much of a good thing, of course, and it seems reasonable to say that the dual-driver arrangement is as responsible for the rather strident treble response as it is for all the good aspects of the Pro 4’s sound. Paired unsympathetically, or with a treble-happy recording like Chris Lake’s Reach For You playing, the Huawei can sound a little edgy, and more than a little if you’re playing at big volumes.
But this, along with the slight-but-definite V-shape to the frequency response that finds the midrange shoved rather further forward than is absolutely ideal, is about the extent of the audio shortcomings on display here.
There seems to be no way of reliably operating the earbuds, though. They simply have too many options, all too close together in physical terms on the earbuds, to allow you to operate them with any degree of confidence. Pinch can become swipe all too easily, and tap can readily become a thing even if you’re just trying to adjust the way the earbuds fit. Too much of a good thing again, then.
Should you buy the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4?
Nothing happens in isolation, which means the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4 are just slightly harder to wholeheartedly recommend than they otherwise would be.
If you fancy a pair of good-looking wireless earbuds with some technical highlights and the sort of sound that makes the word ‘fireworks’ spring to mind, you could do an awful lot worse. But if you’re making a decision purely on a pound-for-pound basis, then Cambridge Audio’s Melomania A100 represent better value – and they’re not quite so easy to inadvertently operate as the Pro 4, either.
