Pros
- Relatively inexpensive
- Very good sound and overall performance for their price
- Decent noise canceling
- Support for AAC, AptX and LDAC audio codecs
- Robust feature set (wireless charging, ear-detection sensors)
Cons
- Touch controls and voice-calling performance could be slightly better
If you’ve ever searched for a new pair of earbuds on Amazon, you’ve probably noticed that there are a plenty of budget-priced models to choose from. While their performance is somewhat hit or miss, you can now find surprisingly decent buds that cost a whole let less than premium buds from Apple, Samsung, Bose, Sony and others.
Among the best of these “cheap” models is the Earfun Air Pro 4, which sell for a little more than $60 when you clip the instant coupon code on their Amazon product page and apply the code EAP4CNET at checkout to get an extra 10% off. Not only do they perform better than you’d expect for their relatively modest price, but they have a robust feature set, which is why they’ve been awarded a CNET Editors’ Choice in 2024.
Read more: Best budget earbuds for 2024
The Air Pro 4 aren’t a major upgrade over the earlier Air Pro 3s, but they do have a few enhancements that make them slightly better earbuds. Earfun has moved from Qualcomm’s QCC3071 to the newer QCC3091, which supports aptX Lossless Audio for a select few Android devices. The buds also support Sony’s LDAC audio codec, which is available with more Android smartphones, and the AAC and SBC codecs (iPhones support AAC).
The Earfun Air Pro 4 come in white or black.
Like their predecessor, the Air 4 Pro are lightweight and comfortable to wear — I got a good seal with the largest ear tip size — and they feature slightly improved noise canceling and sound quality along with better battery life (up to 11 hours with noise canceling off and 7.5 hours with it on, according to Earfun). While the default sound leans slightly warm with a touch of bass push, you can tweak the sound in Earfun’s companion app for iOS and Android. I do think the sound measures up well to earbuds that cost twice as much.
As I said, these aren’t a big upgrade over the Air 3 Pro, but once again Earfun has delivered a set of earbuds that deliver strong performance for their modest price. They also pack in a lot of features, including a wireless charging case, multipoint Bluetooth pairing (they’re equipped with Bluetooth 5.4 and LE Audio) and ear-detection sensors that pause your music when you pull a bud out of your ear and resume playback when when you put it back in. The latter feature isn’t typically found in cheaper earbuds.
The buds largest ear tips allowed me to get a tight seal.
The voice-calling performance is slightly improved from their predecessor, but it’s not as good as what you get with higher-end earbuds like Apple’s AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2, as well as Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro. The background noise reduction is solid, even in noisy environments, but there were times when callers said my voice warbled a bit and they could tell I was outside. Another small gripe: I thought their touch controls could work a little better than they do.
Aside from that, I didn’t have much to complain about. No, these buds won’t necessarily blow you away with their sound quality (they lack that extra bit of depth a refinement of higher-end buds). And their noise canceling and transparency falls short of what you get with flagship noise-canceling earbuds from Apple, Sony and Bose. But the point is they’re not a big step behind those premium buds for both sound and noise canceling; the gap is smaller than their price would indicate.
In many ways, these have a lot in common with Anker’s Soundcore budget earbuds, including its P40i buds ($60), and for all I know, all these buds could be made in the same factory in China. I do like those Soundcore P40i buds (that their case turns into a phone stand is a nice bonus), but the Earfun Air Pro 4 have a little more robust feature set and are slightly better overall.
