A solid, affordable ANC headset

Redmi launched the Redmi Buds 5, the company's latest wireless earbuds, in India last month. This was released in China last year. The main attraction of the headphones is the lightweight design, the hybrid ANC of 46 dB and the long battery of up to 38 hours with the case. It is worth the price of Rs. 2999? Let's find out.

Contents of the box

• Redmi Buds 5 in Fusion Purple color
• Ear tips in small and large sizes (medium pre-installed)
• User manual

Design and build quality

The charging case has a round case that has a matte finish that gives a pleasant feeling to hold and does not attract fingerprints and is not prone to scratches easily. The Redmi branding is present on the front.

You can see the LED indicator on the front, which only glows white. The USB Type-C port is next to the light. It also comes in color. The charging case measures 61 x 50 x 24.60 mm and weighs 42.47 grams, making it compact and lightweight, so you can carry it in your pocket.

Opening the case, you can see the slots for the buds and there is a large LED light. Although the cover of the case has no magnets, the headphone slot has magnets, so they don't fall off easily.

Like the case, the earphones also have a plastic finish, with a matte look on the back and a glossy finish on the inside, making it prone to fingerprints. You can see microphones on top and bottom. The earphones measure 29.52 x 21.44 x 23.45 mm and weigh around 5.1 grams. These have an in-ear design and won't fall out of your ears when running, cycling or during strenuous workouts.

Inside there are charging contact points. It has sensors for detection in the ear. The headphones are also IP54 rated for dust and water resistance so they can withstand splashes or light rain, but you can't submerge them in water.

There are touch controls on the back of both headphones that let you control playback or pause or skip music, launch the voice assistant, and accept or reject calls. The touchpad is at the top. With the big slot, the touch controls aren't perfect, but that's okay.

Connectivity, pairing and controls

It has Bluetooth 5.3. The pairing process is very easy, just remove the buttons from the case and the lights will flash to indicate that it is in pairing mode. Turn on the Bluetooth function on your device, select “Redmi Buds 5” and connect. It also has Google Fast pair support. I did not encounter any connectivity issues during my use with the Galaxy A55 and the vivo V30 Pro.

You can enable the dual connection option that allows you to connect to two devices at the same time and switch the audio playback between them.

The headphones turn on when you remove them from the case. Just place the buds in the case to turn them off. To save power, it automatically turns off when it is not connected to any device for 10 minutes.

This allows you to skip tracks, switch between noise canceling modes and adjust the volume, all with a touch. The controls can be customized in the activated Xiaomi Earbuds app Android e iOS.

The volume control is disabled by default, but you can customize them with the app. You can change the actions to single tap, double tap and triple tap. Touch and hold is set to noise control, but you can change them to voice assistance.

Audio quality

The Redmi Bus 5 includes 12.4mm dynamic drivers with a titanium plated polymer, 1.6m dynamic coil and a robust neodymium magnet. This can handle high and mid frequencies well, but the bass is loud on the higher side for low frequency sound.

You can improve the treble, bass and voice in the audio effects option, but there is no manual EQ mode. Since they are loud, it's good even at 50% volume. However, there is a problem of audio leakage, so others can hear the music at high volume.

Noise cancellation and call performance

As for noise cancellation, active noise cancellation (ANC) blocks ambient sound up to 46 dB, wide range of 2 kHz, three levels of noise reduction: light, balanced and deep. It doesn't do a good job of canceling noise. You can switch between noise cancellation, transparency, and no noise cancellation with the long press gesture.

It also has the transparency mode that allows you to hear the surrounding sound so that you can recognize the surrounding situation and potential hazards. There are three modes: Regulate, Voice Enhance, and Ambient Sound Enhance. This is great.

There is no separate low-latency game mode. You won't notice anything when watching videos, but when playing games you may feel that the latency is high.

In terms of call noise cancellation, they excel in calls with dual microphones and artificial intelligence noise reduction, even in windy conditions to cut the wind up to 6m/s to ensure crisp and clear calls. This worked well for calls and easily cuts out wind noise.

Battery life

The headphones come with a 54mAh battery that promises 10 hours of autonomy without ANC and 8 hours with ANC. During my use with AAC and noise cancellation on occasionally, I got just over 7 1/2 hours at about 50% volume, which is good.

With the noise cancellation fully disabled, it lasted about 10 hours. For calls, it only lasts around 5.5 hours with ANC on, as it uses call noise cancellation technology.

With the 480mAh charging case, it promises up to 38 hours of total battery life without ANC and 30 hours of total battery life with noise cancellation enabled. You can't expect wireless charging in the range. Fully charging the case with the headphones takes about 2 hours. It also has fast charging, so you get 4 hours of playback (case + headphones combo) without ANC with 10 minutes of charging.

Conclusion

Overall, the Redmi Buds 5 are good true wireless Bluetooth headphones with ANC for the price of Rs. 2999. It comes with 3 ANC and transparency modes, does a good job at canceling call noise and also offers good battery life. The company could offer a game mode and custom EQ settings.

The Redmi Buds 5 is available from amazon.enFlipkart, Mi.com, Mi Homes and Xiaomi retail partners.

Pros

• Good audio quality
• Compact and lightweight case
• Good ANC and transparency
• Dual device pairing
• Good battery life with fast charging

Cons

• No custom EQ
• No low latency game mode