Realme Buds Air Review - Are these the new Airpods Alternative

Apple removed the 3.5mm headphone jack in 2016 from iPhone 7 and introduced their truly wireless solution called ‘Airpods’. Since then other OEMs have slowly started to remove the headphone jack and have been constantly introducing their take on truly wireless earphones. One of the solutions from Realme resulted in the introduction of the Realme Buds Air. So here is my take on the Realme Buds Air after using them for over a month.

Design

The Realme Buds Air’s design is mostly a copy of the Apple Airpods. Not that they are bad but they have just gone ahead and copy pasted the Airpods design except for a pairing button that comes in the front. But nonetheless, like Airpods the Realme Air Buds is small and is easily pocketable. The earphones although containing a 400mAh battery weighs in just about 42 grams along with a wireless charging coil present inside it. The earbuds not containing any sorts of rubber tips or so might not suit every ear out there. But once they sit in your ear just correctly they are good to go. The design is a big bonus if you are considering a convenient and a portable truly wireless solution.

Audio and Call Quality

The Realme Buds Air sports a 12mm driver on each of its earbuds. I’m no Audiophile when it comes to judging the sound signature or audio clarity, but this earphone was fairly good to listen to songs on the go and was loud enough with plenty of bass. The high, low and the mid frequencies were well pronounced and the vocals were clear. Some may like the sound signature and others may not, but the majority of the crowd will love it. Even if you want, you can tweak the sound signature using an equalizer app. The calls made and received from these earphones were fairly good, while sometimes the receiver would face some noise from my end. It also comes in with Environmental Noise Cancellation (ENC) for calls using the two mics present in each of the earbuds.

Connectivity and Range

The Realme Buds Air has Bluetooth 5.0 on board. The earphone faced no connectivity issues. Having the Realme’s R1 chip and supporting Google Fast Pair, you can almost connect to your smartphone seamlessly except the very first time you pair it with your smartphone. The range was good enough to. Overall the earphone faced no issues when it comes to connectivity and range. Also having the R1 chip on board, these earphones are able to provide Super Low - Latency Audio for pleasurable gaming to those who consider gaming with these earphone

Battery Life and Charging

The Realme Buds Air offers a 400 mAh battery on board. One paper these earbuds alone offer a 3 hour battery life without the case, but along with the case the battery life can be extended to about 17 hours. For the most part these claims were true and while using these earphones the battery life offered by them were solid. But the 17 hour claim can be true only if you listen at 50% volume. There can be a small hit in the battery life if you listen to songs at max volume. So, even if you run out of juice you can top them up using a USB Type - C cable or you can also top them up wirelessly using a wireless charger if you have one. The Wireless Charging feature also comes in handy if you sport a phone with reverse wireless charging, so that you can top it up on the go.

Additional Features

The earphone offers some pretty cool features for its price. Both the earbuds feature touch controls such as double tap on either of the earbuds to play/pause song or to answer call, triple tap on either of the earbuds to skip to the next song, touch and hold on either of the earbuds to call voice assistant and touch and hold on both the earbuds to enter into gaming mode. The controls can also be altered using the realme Link app from the PlayStore. Although the touch controls might seem cool and futuristic, it takes time for you to figure the sweet spot in the earbuds for performing these actions in a seamless manner. The earbuds also support Smart In - Ear detection using an optical sensor present on each of the earbuds. This feature comes in handy when you want to talk to someone and you remove the earbuds and the music stops automatically and plays automatically once again when you wear them

Verdict

The Realme Buds Air is a sweet deal for ₹4000 or $54. These are the perfect pair of earphones if you are planning to get into the world of truly wireless earphones. Not that these are without its flaws but the price that this comes in and the pros that these earphones offer surely outweigh the cons.