You may remember Huawei’s flagship wireless earbuds with active noise canceling, the Freebuds Pro, which was one of the best noise-canceling earbuds that we ever reviewed. If you never read the review article before, please feel free to check out the Freebuds Pro review from here.
But today we bring you guys another latest product in Huawei’s Freebuds series, the Freebuds 4i, and now without further ado, let’s get right to the earbuds.
I’m quite fond of the styling of the Freebuds 4i. It has a very round shape, like a pebble. The back of the charging case looks like it was cut down to reduce the area. Although it looks like a surface that supports wireless charging, it doesn’t.
It just a design that allows you to stably place the case on the desk. But considering the cheaper price tag than the Freebuds Pro, the lack of wireless charging is somewhat acceptable with equally excellent performance in other departments.
On the side, there is a pairing button and at the bottom, it has a Type-C charging port. One thing I really appreciate is that the charging case is as small as the AirPods Pro’s, which is much smaller than the FreeBuds 3i and FreeBuds Pro’s cases. And also its rounded shape is very comfortable to hold in your hand or to put in your pocket.
Open the case, we can see that the earbud’s design is consistent with the case, which looks like a combination of the Freebuds 3i and Freebuds pro. Compared to the Freebuds Pro, the overall design is rounded with no corners visible. And the 4i comes with a new red-color variant. No doubt the design could be much more popular with female users.
As for ear fit, it’s pretty comfortable to wear and does not fall off easily. Even for someone who has small ears, the proper cavity design of the earbuds causes no obvious discomfort even when wearing for a long time.
The earbuds are very easy to use, double click on either one of the earbuds to play or pause the music. A long press on the left or right stick to switch noise-canceling modes. Other than that, you can also go to the official app to reset the earbuds operation you want.
The Biggest surprise is that the Freebuds 4i’s noise canceling is not compromised by its price. With active noise cancellation on, it still isolates noise well and is not a lot weaker than other expensive noise-canceling earbuds.
The sound quality is also not bad. Like most high-end earbuds, it supports up to AAC Bluetooth decoding. Specifically, the FreeBuds 4i is outstanding at the delivery of high-frequencies, while the bass is relatively less impressive.
The latency performance of the 4i is pretty good on most android devices, but as an earbud product developed by Huawei, it’s naturally better when connected to a Huawei device. Rather than my verbal description, it’s better to hear for yourself how much of a difference in latency there is when connecting to a Huawei model and another phone. Please check our video at the top to see the latency of the earbuds.
The official app for setup the 4i is AI Life, which has all the usual functions, so we won’t dwell on them. If you are interested, you can refer to our Freebuds Pro video. One point I have to compliment Huawei on is that the 4i also features seamless switching between devices which works similar to the feature I mentioned in the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro review. It’s a feature that will make it easy for people who have to work with two devices. And now you don’t need to pay a premium price for flagship earbuds for this great feature as you can enjoy it on the cheaper Freebuds 4i.
So that’s all the important details that we want to share with you about the latest Freebuds 4i. It’s well worth your money.
For only half the price of the Freebuds Pro, you can have 90% of the features with a more portable design. If you’re looking for less expensive wireless earbuds but don’t want to miss out on too many features, it could definitely be one of your options. Due to its elegant and compact design, we strongly recommend it to female users.
And if you’re a Huawei phone owner, this is an even better choice for you.
