EarFun Air Pro 3 review: ANC headphones ready for tomorrow

Best Prices Today: EarFun Air Pro 3

$79.99

Forgive me while I rise and salute EarFun’s new flagship noise-canceling headphones, the Air Pro 3. These feature-packed powerhouses deliver dynamic, detailed and full-bodied sound. Although they’re just a bit shy in bass articulation, they offer much of what you’ll get from buds with much higher price tags.

The comfort level is good – I can wear them for hours – and the active noise cancellation (ANC) is improved over the company’s previous efforts, eliminating a fair amount of plane, train and street noise. bus as well as the noise of the wind. .

What really sets the Air Pro 3 apart from its mid-priced competitors is a futuristic feature set that could gain utility and service for years to come. Harnessing the all-new Qualcomm QCC3071 audio chip, EarFun has outsmarted the majors to deliver the first-ever earphones to support next-generation Bluetooth LE Audio architecture, working hand-in-hand here with the all-new LC3 (Low Complexity Communications) codec. . Collectively, these upgrades could provide a series of user-friendly improvements — whether hardware manufacturers on the playback side of the equation are also embracing these standards and exploiting their strengths. As it stands, however, it’s a very big “whether.”

EarFun also offers the Air S – similarly styled nozzle-tip buds that are also much more affordable alternatives to “true wireless” offerings from Apple, Bose, Jabra, etc. While I liked the Air S’s battery specs, price, and overall sound profile, I had some gripes: these buds are slippery in my ears and need periodic readjustments to stay seated in the primo position. They also have poor noise cancellation and flaky touch controls.

The Air Pro 3 solves and resolves most of these issues, which makes me feel a bit prescient.

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

The curvature of the enclosure of the new buds has been shaved off and reoriented, so these things stay still and maintain a tighter seal in my ear canal – which is crucial for passive and active noise cancellation – and they offer fuller bass performance.

The newly planted dimples at the top of the headphone pipes are not only a nice decorative design element, they help the wearer put a finger in the right place to some thermal touch control operations. EarFun’s user guide, however, still doesn’t adequately explain how to turn the volume up (using the dimple control on the right earbud) and down (on the left earbud) to cooperate. The instruction to “tap once” should really suggest “browse quickly your finger up (or down)” in the thermal touch zone. Let your finger linger and the bud sensor will interpret the gesture as a double-click, pausing the music. It’s very strange. And it’s very boring.

On the plus side, I’m happy to report that the Air Pro 3’s noise cancellation has been improved with a six-microphone array (the previous model used four microphones) and I’ve found it to work reasonably well to suppress a variety of engine whining/roaring as well as wind noise. It’s still not very useful for silencing the sound of other people chatting in your presence (live or on TV), or for removing extraneous ambient noise when you answer a phone call. Callers said I sounded choked up and asked “Are you outside?” even when I wasn’t.

These problems are not found on today’s most sophisticated ANC headphones – the Bose QuietComfort II headphones, the Apple AirPods Pro (2^n/a generation), and the Sony WF-1000XM4 – but you’ll pay three or four times as much for a set of these.

How does the EarFun Air Pro 3 sound?

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

The EarFun Air Pro 3 sits nicely in your head, with a very clear and present midrange and well-articulated high-end response. There’s a bit more low kick here than in the Air S, though the warm, woolly bass still isn’t as nuanced as in the top-end buds.

I’m also happy to report that the factory-set EQ of all three Noise Canceling modes has been adjusted, so the sound contour of the most power-efficient “Normal” setting is now more balanced and less sharp.

A less than ideal maximum volume level remains an ongoing EarFun issue with the Air Pro 3. They play loud enough for me indoors, but on a noisy walk around town I really wanted more kickstarter from a new collection of rock concerts I found on Amazon Music: Glory days, glory shows!, compiling tracks from Springsteen (of course), Bowie, The Doors, Genesis, Talking Heads, Chuck Berry and Roger Waters. As I discovered with the Air S, it is possible to offset, circularly increase the volume of the Air Pro 3 by at least a few decibels by opening the equalizer screen in the app EarFun and pushing the virtual sliders on the six frequency bands to the maximum position. Do this and you will find that there is more than enough volume to play, but with some signal compression.

This sound compression is barely noticeable or distracting when listening outside; but in quiet areas, with less distraction, my gross stuff dulled the intimate charms of the singer’s cooing voice and Melody Gardot’s arty-acoustic ensemble on the aptly named absence, until I remembered to hit the EQ reset button. This returned all the frequency sliders to the “flat” position, restoring the mellow tones of Ms. Gardot’s soundscape.

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

What else is new with the EarFun Air Pro 3?

EarFun’s premium earphones support Bluetooth 5.3 – they must do so to work with Bluetooth LE. Their deeper bass response is due to their 11mm wool composite drivers. They offer a battery life of around 7 hours with ANC on, 9 hours with it off. And their charging case can provide four full recharges. The box itself can be recharged with its USB-C cable or on a Qi pad (bring your own). You can track both earphone and case battery level in the app.

Enabling Game Mode reduces audio latency to 55ms (compared to 100ms in the Air S) to improve gamer twitches and video lip-sync; but in the “no free lunch” department, Game Mode takes a toll on battery life.

I was surprised to discover the lack of a common feature of modern headphones, which automatically pauses music when you take them out of your ears. The AirFun Pro 3 continues to play and will only turn off if you disconnect it from the paired device or put it back in its case. They will be pause the music and temporarily switch to a phone call, even if you’re streaming music from another Bluetooth source. This is how the multipoint connection works: you can pair the headphones with two devices at the same time, one active and the other in standby.

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

A word on the next generation of Bluetooth

In development since 2015, the advances of Bluetooth LE are numerous and significant. Start with lower power consumption for longer battery life. And the Bluetooth SIG says the new LC3 codec can compress a 1.5 Mbps audio stream to just 160 Kbps, compared to 345 Kbps using the SBC codec that came with the original Bluetooth specification.

Some other promised Bluetooth LE features have yet to ship, but the biggest problem is the classic “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” dilemma goes on here. There might also be a few issues not ready for prime time. Even with Bluetooth 5.2 and 5.3 compatibility built into several new smartphone models and “LE Audio” notations appearing in a few spec sheets (e.g. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4), smartphone makers have yet to fully embrace the new standard.

Are the EarFun Air Pro 3 good value for money?

The EarFun Air Pro 3 sells for $79.99 / £79.99. You can buy them directly from EarFun US and EarFun UK, or Amazon US and Amazon UK. Amazon often offers discounts on this product, bringing the price down to $59.99 / £59.99 (US readers can use the code AP315OFF in the coupon field on Amazon).

Even if your playback device can’t take full advantage of the EarFun Air Pro 3’s advanced Bluetooth features, these wireless headphones deliver plenty of performance thanks to technologies like AAC and aptX Adaptive codecs – which are more widely supported today. And they do it at a very reasonable price. Add to that the long battery life and very good audio performance, and you have a solid value for personal audio.

Check out our tables of the best headphones and best budget headphones to see how rivals stack up.