Freebuds 3 Review, what are Huawei's first noise-canceling headphones worth?

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They are Huawei’s answer to Apple’s AirPods. Unveiled at the IFA in Berlin last September, the Freebuds 3 were presented as a revolution by their manufacturer, with their "made in China" noise reduction system. Except that a few weeks before, Sony had drawn its WF-1000XM3 and that Apple has since amazed everyone with its AirPods Pro. The Freebuds 3 thus find themselves facing two rivals that are difficult to dethrone.

To be completely honest, these headphones don't quite play in the same court as those of the other two brands. They are sold for 190 euros, 90 less than the AirPods Pro and 60 less than the Sony 1000XM3. Above all, their design is very different, since they are not in-ear headphones, but "open fit" headphones. Like the first AirPods of the name, they rest on the pinna, but do not completely obstruct the ear canal.

Suggesting active noise reduction on such a form factor is daring. The most efficient models on the market – whether headphones or earphones – offer above all an excellent passive noise reduction made possible by materials such as foam or silicone. Only Bose had previously managed an effective in-between with the StayHear + tips of its QuietComfort 20. Very insulating, without however being completely in-ear.

Huawei misses noise reduction

The challenge was therefore difficult for Huawei. And as much not to make the suspense last, the result is … disappointing. The bet seemed crazy to us, it is mostly lost. The effect of noise reduction can hardly be heard. For example in transport, it slightly reduces certain road noise, but still lets the vast majority of sounds reach our eardrums.

Noise reduction can be adjusted using a dial available within Huawei’s AI Life app. It is thus adapted to the specifics of its ear canal by orienting the noise reduction in the earpiece. There is indeed a slight difference when it is properly adjusted, but nothing helps, Huawei is far, very far, from achieving the impressive performance of its competitors.

To manage the system, the Chinese manufacturer has designed its own Kirin A1 chip, a kind of equivalent to Apple's H1 chip included in the AirPods Pro. As with its American competitor or Samsung with the Galaxy Buds, this chip also allows easy pairing with Huawei smartphones. Just open the charging case containing the headphones near a branded phone and a window will appear on the health home screen and offer to pair the two using Bluetooth. However, to take advantage of this functionality, you must have the EMUI 10 overlay on your smartphone. It is currently being deployed on Huawei and Honor devices.

Where has the promising BT-UHD codec gone?

The other big news comes from the codec offered here by Huawei. The manufacturer has developed the BT-UHD which allows up to a theoretical speed of 2.3 Mb / s. The information is important since until now the codec providing the best speed was the LDAC from Sony which approached 1 Mb / s. This allows to pass a signal containing an uncompressed audio file and therefore to enjoy better sound quality.

This absolutely unprecedented speed in the Bluetooth world would, for example, allow almost lossless 24bit / 96 kHz stereo streams to be streamed to headphones. However, Huawei has not really been able to explain to us under what conditions this codec would be accessible to users, simply that it would only be used to transmit the signal between the two headphones. For our part, we only managed to broadcast the sound to Freebuds 3 in AAC format.

In practice, above all, Freebuds should already offer sufficient hardware capacity to take advantage of this sound quality. This is not at all the case. As shown by the bandwidth Review carried out by the absmarthealth lab, the Freebuds 3 are the champions of high mids. Forget the bass that makes you vibrate, forget the treble that sharpens the details, you will only benefit from the voices. And again, up to a certain point, the distortion is heard quickly when you turn up the volume.

Finally, the Chinese manufacturer is even struggling to catch up on the autonomy of the product, since with the noise reduction activated it barely reaches 3 hours. It is therefore better to deactivate it – given its usefulness – to reach 4.22 a.m. much more in line with the canons of the market. At this price, it is therefore better to turn to the convincing Libratone Track Air +.

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