Pros:
– Good sound quality after audio tweaks
– Excellent feature set for the segment
– Impressive active noise cancellation
– Very good call quality, dual-pairing support
– Support for LDAC codecs, Hi-Res wireless audio
– Comfortable in-ear fit, wear detection sensors
– IPX5-rated splash resistance
– Realme Link app offers a lot of customisation
Cons:
– Battery backup on LDAC codec could have been better
– Fails to take full advantage of the dual driver setup
– Average midrange performance
Rating: 4.25/5
Price: Rs 4,999
The moment the specifications of the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro were leaked online, we were quite excited for its arrival. When its pricing was confirmed to be under Rs 5,000, the excitement went into overdrive, and why not? The features and specifications of these new Realme earbuds are quite similar to the Oppo Enco X2 (that we rate as the best around 10K) for half its price. But time and again, we have learnt in audio products that spec-sheet is one thing and sound quality is another.
In this review, we will take a closer look at the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro and figure out if these buds can indeed scale Mount X2. At the same time, we will view it for what it is – a pair of true wireless (TWS) earphones under Rs 5,000 and gauge it accordingly against the existing competition. So let’s get down to business.
Realme Buds Air 5 Pro: Design and Comfort (8/10)
The Buds Air 5 Pro speaks the typical Realme Buds Air design language, and in many ways is quite similar to its predecessors, Buds Air 3 and Bud Air 2, with the addition of an Applesque grille. No complaints as the design is still very likeable with the angled buds and short cylindrical stems with a smooth finish. We now have a new colour variant called Sunrise Beige, which looks nice. The fancy name aside, it is covered in the lightest shade of beige with a hint of orange at the back of the silicone ear tips (yes, that’s the sunrise bit).
The stems have a matte finish, while the buds as well as the charging case have a coat of gloss. Despite the glossy finish, fingerprints or smudge marks are barely visible on this colour variant. The charging case is similar to that of the Realme Buds Air 3 with a glass-like top for the company logo. It is fairly compact and a little flatter which makes it easily pocketable. The case has a tiny power indicator LED at the front, a USB-C charging port at the bottom and a distinct metallic Bluetooth pairing/reset button on the side.
The earbuds are fairly light, offer a snug fit and are comfortable to wear for long hours. The silicone tips sit well in the ear canals and provide decent passive noise isolation. Three pairs of ear tips are bundled including the preinstalled medium-sized tips. It is important to choose the right-sized pair for active noise cancellation (ANC) to work well. The top half of the stems is touch-enabled but there is no marked area to denote the touch zones. The overall build quality of the product is perfectly fine.
Realme Buds Air 5 Pro: Features and Specifications (9.5/10)
This is an area where the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro is packed to the brim, starting with the dual-driver setup. Just like the Oppo Enco X2, these buds use an 11 mm dynamic driver for bass and a 6 mm micro-planar tweeter for highs and mids. You also get support for LDAC codecs with Hi-Res Wireless Audio certification, which is great to see under 5K. These Bluetooth 5.3-compliant buds also support AAC and SBC codecs. There is support for Dolby Atmos too if the source device is Atmos-compliant.
You get wear detection sensors to pause the audio when you remove a bud from the ear and resume when you put it back in. It works just fine. The buds have an IPX5 rating for splash resistance, and one can wear them to the gym or for a jog in a light drizzle without a worry. The case doesn’t have any ingress protection though. The touch sensitivity is good as long as you tap in the right area. You hear a beep for each successful tap.
You can assign different tasks to the touch gestures through the Realme Link app. You can assign play/pause, previous/next tracks, ANC toggle, voice assistant and more to double-tap, triple-tap or touch-and-hold gestures. Volume control is also available here but can only be assigned to triple tap. That’s a good option to have, but you have limited gestures available to accommodate all the key functions unless you do not assign Play/Pause to anything and rely on wear detection for that.
ANC toggle can only be assigned to touch-and-hold gesture on either bud. There are three microphones on each earbud to handle calls and ANC. The latency can go as low as 40 ms for the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro in Game mode. There was no noticeable lag between video and audio when watching content in normal mode either. These earbuds support dual-pairing and can be paired with two devices simultaneously. Even better, you can use the LDAC codec on both devices.
And lastly, you get the best ANC in this segment on these buds, at least in terms of numbers. You get three ANC modes to switch between – ANC on, ANC off and Transparency mode that lets ambient noise through. The company claims these buds can cancel up to 50 dB of noise across a 4000 Hz wide band. And then there are further customisations for the ANC, Transparency and the overall sound in general that I will talk about in the next section.
Realme Buds Air 5 Pro: Performance (8.5/10)
Before we head to the sound quality, let’s talk a little more about ANC. We rated the 42 dB ANC on the Realme Buds Air 3 as the best under 5K till now. The Buds Air 5 Pro has upped the game further, and not just in terms of numbers (from 42 dB to 50 dB) but efficacy too. The noise cancellation is definitely better than what you get on the OnePlus Buds Z2 or even the Oppo Enco Air3 Pro which touts a comparable 49 dB figure.
It not only cuts out low-frequency sounds like the hum of an AC or the fan noise when indoors, but also reduces some midrange sounds like human voices, though it doesn’t eliminate them completely. Travelling in local trains with ANC switched on was blissful (for the ears only). When outdoors, it significantly reduces traffic noise too. There are four noise cancellation modes – Max, Moderate, Mild and Smart, and I could barely tell the difference.
Smart mode automatically sets it to one of the other three modes depending on the quantum of ambient noise. You also get a personalised noise cancellation option, but it’s still work in progress and not exactly a ‘one shoe fits all’ solution. So it would be best to choose Smart mode for ANC. The Transparency mode here sees an improvement too but cannot beat the one on the OnePlus Buds Z2. While it works well indoors, it lets in a lot of wind noise when outdoors. There is a ‘Smart de-wind’ option but best to leave that as well as voice enhancement off for best results.
The wireless range is good with a strong connection at 10 metres with no obstruction between the source and the listener. These Realme buds are among the loudest around with volume enhancer enabled, and loud enough in the 50-60 per cent volume range even in noisy areas. You get four audio presets – Nature Balance, Clear Vocals, Clear Bass and Bass Boost, of which the first is the most balanced of the lot and the last completely useless.
As I mentioned at the start, these earbuds flaunt dual drivers, just like the Oppo Enco X2. Having two drivers gives you the flexibility of distributing the frequency range across the two rather than having one driver manage everything. But just having the extra driver doesn’t magically make the output great; the drivers have to be tuned well too. Unfortunately, the Realme sound engineers could not replicate what Oppo and Dynaudio did with the Enco X2.
The Realme Buds Air 5 Pro produces a pronounced V-shaped sound with boosted lows and highs. The midrange frequencies get suppressed from both sides. When using the Clear Bass EQ, the excess bass eats into the lower mids, and when set to Nature Balance, the bass is nice and tight, but the highs feel a bit too bright and overshadow the upper mids. The Clear Vocals EQ is better suited for voice-heavy content like podcasts rather than music, and Bass Boost is best left untouched.
Thankfully, Realme offers a 6-band equaliser similar to what you get in most OnePlus earbuds (but with different frequency bands) to tweak the sound, and that is what helps in making the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro’s output much better. The treble frequencies aren’t tempered as well as I would have liked, making the highs sound a bit sibilant. The equaliser helps in reigning in the highs and boosting the mids and the sub-bass, thus bringing a far better balance to the output with good detail and vocal clarity.
No, it doesn’t turn it into the Enco X2, but the overall sound output feels more refined and quite good for the sub-5K segment. The soundstage is reasonably broad too, providing a decent sense of space. As compared to its closest competitors, it sounds slightly better than the Oppo Enco Air3 Pro as well as the OnePlus Buds Z2, and noticeably better than its predecessor, Realme Buds Air 3.
The above observations about sound quality are based on the LDAC codec. The detail in sound drops a notch when you switch to AAC, but the output isn’t drastically different and is far from poor. The sound feels a touch more bassy, and in fact, the highs feel more palatable. So you may use it occasionally to save battery; more on that in the battery section.
The Golden Sound feature found in the Oppo Enco Air3 Pro and flagship products from Oppo and OnePlus is also available here. Using a listening test, it creates a custom profile based on your ear canal structure and hearing capabilities. You can create multiple profiles by manipulating the test a little if you do not like the results of the first test. When enabled, the output does sound more lively in certain tracks but not always. Do give it a try a few times.
Realme Buds Air 5 Pro: Call quality (8.5/10)
The call quality is very good on these earbuds. In fact, the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro would be a very good option for those seeking good TWS earbuds under 5K for calling. People on the call were perfectly audible to each other with excellent voice clarity indoors as well as outdoors.
When outdoors, all those microphones help keep the wind noise and other ambient noise in check. Even better, the noise suppression does not impact the voice clarity much. I actually tried calling from a high-traffic area, and while the background noise wasn’t eliminated completely, it didn’t interfere with the conversation either.
Realme Buds Air 5 Pro: Battery life (8/10)
Get ready for a bit of number crunching. If you aren’t too keen on that, let me quickly sum it up for you. The overall battery backup of the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro is quite good when using AAC codec, with and without ANC, but drops to almost half on LDAC. That is one area where Realme could have done better and pulled more juice out of the battery. Let me elaborate on the numbers.
The company promises an impressive 10 hours of playback for the buds and 40 hours along with the case when using AAC codec at 50 per cent loudness with ANC off. The corresponding battery figures with ANC switched on come down to 7 hours and 28 hours respectively. If you switch to LDAC codec, the numbers drop further to 5 hours and 20 hours respectively, and that too without ANC. Those LDAC numbers with ANC on would have been perfectly acceptable, but are below par as is.
To Realme’s credit, the numbers are accurate. During our testing with LDAC codec, ANC was off and loudness a shade over 50 per cent, the buds did last for 5 hours. With ANC switched on, it dropped just under 4 hours. On AAC codec, the buds managed to go on for close to 8 and a half hours before one of the buds ran out of juice. With ANC on, we got close to 6 hours out of the buds. The case managed to charge the buds fully thrice over.
That takes the overall battery backup of the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro in the range of 15 to 20 hours when using LDAC codec, depending on the quantum of ANC usage. When using AAC, the battery life ranges between 24 to 34 hours, which is impressive. In comparison, its prime competitor, the Oppo Enco Air3 Pro that we reviewed recently manages to last between 16 to 23 hours on LDAC codec, but when it comes to AAC, these Realme buds do a lot better.
These buds support quick charging too. A 10-minute charge can give you close to 7 hours of playtime (buds and case combined) on AAC with ANC off. The buds take less than an hour to charge fully from zero, while the case takes another hour to go to 100 per cent from empty. The battery level of each earbud and the charging case can be seen in the companion app. I would suggest using LDAC all the time till the battery level of the case is above 30 per cent, and then switch to AAC if you wish to prolong the battery.
Realme Buds Air 5 Pro: Price and verdict
The Realme Buds Air 5 Pro can be purchased for Rs 4,999 with a one-year warranty, which is a great price for what it offers. Yes, its spec sheet did raise our expectations a bit too high, and though not Enco X2 level good, its sound quality is perfectly acceptable for the segment, and better than most that sell under 5K in India. On top of that, the ANC is the best in class too, the call quality is very good and its feature list checks more than the requisite boxes for the segment. All things considered, the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro easily earns our recommendation.
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