Realme Buds Air
Verified23 reviews
Free but dodgy batteries – I have received it free when I purchased a realme mobile phone. while it looks nice the battery barely last 20 mins while playing music. i am not sure if anyone has a tip to somehow prolong the battery life. pity its a nice one but will become a trash. Show details
Faulty Battery and Product. Overall very bad experience – I got Realme buds(From realme) as promotional offer after buying realme 7 5g from Jbhifi. Battery lasts between 10 minutes to 30 minutes max(On calls, Watching videos, Listening music). Battery drains from 100% to 5% in less than 10 minutes. Right side battery drains faster than left side. I called Realme representatives on call centre but… Read more
unfortunately they are helpless and said I need to contact Service centre. I send it to Service centre and they said there is no problem and buds are performing as expected and sent me back. They cannot send the new buds as they consider it non faulty. Very frustrating and Strange response from Realme. My assumptions about this company is correct, My friends told me that never go for Realme products but I did not listen to them. My bad decision.
Faulty – This has a nice sound and good mic quality but doesn't work unfortunately. I had a really bad experience, the batteries are faulty and only last 30 minutes at a time. Would not recommend. Show details
Batteries are faulty – Had two pairs both were faulty, got the first pair and they wouldn't hold charge, only lasted 30mins. Received a second pair for a replacement that pair wouldn't charge at all. Waste of time, money. Will never buy this brand again. Show details
They not bad – Ill be very brief with my review; these earbuds have good sound quality and offer great price to performance value. However, the bluetooth is a nightmare for me. Perhaps it is just my product but the bluetooth is unstable and will disconnect every 10-20 mins and it can easily take that long to connect them in the first place due to it disconnecting and reconnecting constantly till it setlles. Other then that nightmare issue it does perform well. Show details
Music Quality sucks – Same price you would have better choice, no worth it for realme Buds Air, music quality is likes cheap earphone, compare with Apple, better just choose Apple. Don't waste your money
Perfect fit and sound – Very comfortable and awesome bass. Sounds quality is brilliant I love them. Fast charge and easy to carry in your pocket when not using. A must have for realme lovers
Horrible – Buds dont function as advertised, half of features dont even work like tap on buds. go for any other buds these are just waste of money. they are not even worth your time
Great Product – Simple to use and connect to phone. Crystal clear sound and extremely comfortable to wear. I would recommend this product to anybody whom would like to purchase these Buds. Sound and quality to the likes of top branded name buds.
Realme Buds – The buds are great, they work really well. The buds battery lasts a long time and they are easy to use. I have not found any issues with the buds
Wow! Perfect – I had never thought about purchasing ear buds, but wow! Wouldn't be without them now. These are so comfortable and the sound is superb . I love how they pause when you take one out of your ear. Perfect!
Good quality equal to i phone – I bought this phone with air buds brilliant. I will buy it again Real me phone again for my wife too . Quality is very good . And the price is very affordable.
Perfectly functional – Excellent value. Hook was easy. A couple of minutes to get used to the controls (tapping the buds twice etc,). Sound quality is very good. Very happy with the product.
Find out how Realme Buds Air compares to other Wireless Headphones
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Works well and reasonably priced – I am a bass lover and I like it , not overpowering , just the right amount Worth the price however battery doesn't last long like airpods No issues with connectivity All in all good buy for budget
Easy to use. Very handy – I received this pair as a free bonus when I purchased a realme mobile phone. Honestly the sound quality is just average but it's really convenient to use. Easy to charge and carry in the case.
Buds – Very prompt service from Realme. Will not pair up with my phone properly, but hook up manually. Manual hook up does not allow all the features. I will try again. Overall they are well made and I am happy with them.
Worst support and product – Hardly i can get 2 hrs battery with full charge.. even tws cheep earphone are far better than these. And forget about support as well never got a reply regarding this issue.
Sound quality good, but BASS could be better – My first ever earbuds, the quality of this product is good, however the sound quality could be better. Its lacking bass. I do like how this product syncs with my new Realme X3 SuperZoom phone very easily. However I'm still trying to get the hang of using all the controls while wearing them. Making and answering calls seems to be good. The range is… Read more
very good, but sometimes signal drops out when there is a wall or obstruction. Charging is very easy, but yet to see how long the usage is before having to recharge it. Overall happy, for my first earbuds.
Fit perfectly, great connectivity – Easy to use device that was easy to setup, fit perfectly in ears, no loss of audio from connection to a variety of devices. Would recommend to anyone wanting affordable headphones
Defo not worth 150 – The right ear slips out a lot. Both buds randomly disconnect (one will work at a time). Sound quality is good, nice base and sound stage for an in-ear option.
AirPods for half the price? Not quite – Pros: * AirPod looks and (most) features for $100-$170 less * Good quality feel and finish. * Comfy, reasonably secure fit (in my ears anyway) * Wireless charging case included as standard * Battery life pretty much as described (though markedly less than its main rival) * Black and yellow colour options if you want to avoid the 'Apple White'… Read more
look.
Cons: * Sound quality is only reasonable. * Bluetooth stream regularly stutters, especially in low latency "game" mode. * Touch controls are "touchy" and the lag before your device responds can be confusing. * Somewhat clunkier connection/reconnection process than AirPods on an iPhone.
Bottom Line: Most copy cat products are cheap and nasty - a reminder that quality design and manufacture actually do cost money. While the real.me Buds Air won't win any awards for design originality, they are well made and ape all the features of their more famous rival for notably less money. Middling audio performance, shorter battery life and a somewhat less-polished overall experience though might just convince you to pony up the extra dollars for Apple's offering.
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If you want to be polite, you'd describe the real.me Buds Air as pair of True Wireless Bluetooth earbuds (opposed to those units joined by a connecting wire)complete with a wireless charging case who's design parallels a certain well known electronic manufacturer's market-defining product. If you're less inclined to be polite, you'd describe them as a near carbon copy of the now ubiquitous Apple AirPods for about half the price.
Either way, the main question here is, clearly - how do the $149 (RRP) Buds Air compare to their AU$319 (or AU$249, if you forgo a wireless charging case) Apple equivalents?
I don't own or use AirPods myself normally, but the rest of the family does, so when the real.me Buds Airs arrived and were pried from their small, neat box, the first thing I did was grab my better half's to compare.
As the photos show, the Buds Air ape the AirPods design extremely closely. There are enough differences to the design of both the earbuds themselves and the carry case to prevent them being an outright knock off, but they are subtle. At a casual glance, most people won't notice the slightly flatter stem of the buds, the different driver outlets, or the USB-C port at the bottom of the thicker, rounder charging case. If you're hoping to get the AirPods look for less, you'll be pleased, assuming of course you get yours in white (real.me offer black and a, ahem, striking shade of yellow colour options too, if you want to avoid being seen as an Apple user).
Those seeking AirPods-for-less will also be pleased that the Buds Air also have a similar build quality and heft. The plastic feels good quality, and the charging case is reassuringly weighty, with both the ear buds and the lid clicking into place magnetically. It does not feel like a cheap product.
(Note: for testing purposes I used the Buds Air with an Apple iPhone 11Pro and 6th Gen iPad. Audio and other comparisons were made using Apple's included wired headphones, a pair of wired AKG K141 studio reference headphones, Sony Walkman WS623 in-ears, B-Sonic Bluetooth in-ears and Digitech AA-2145 earbuds.)
The Bluetooth pairing process is initiated with the charging case's front mount button and connection is like any other well behaving Bluetooth device, taking about 10 seconds to pair on first use, and about 3-5 seconds on subsequent activation. Predictably, here Apple's own AirPods benefit from tight integration with iOS and connect as soon as the case lid is opened, displaying remaining battery power in both left and right ear buds, as well as the case itself. Like any 3rd party device, the Buds Air have to make do with the tiny and singular default Bluetooth battery readout.
Fitment with these sorts of non-adjustable hard-plastic earbuds will always come down to personal ear shape. They're just going to suit some people better than others and unlike in-ear buds with removable silicone inserts, there's no ability to adjust them if they don't work out of the box. Fortunately I've never had too many issues with hard plastic earbuds- just as well, as they were the only option back in the late 80s and early 90s - and the Buds Air were no different, fitting comfortably and reasonably secure. I don't run or cycle around town'ears in' (and you shouldn't either, because it's flippin' dangerous) but made a point of running a reasonably spirited 5K around our local park to see how well they held their place. Good news - they hold well and only need the occasional adjustment. Bad news - the touch controls are very easy to activate accidentally when you do. That got annoying by the third kilometre.
In use, the Buds Air touch controls generally aren't too bad, but the lag in them responding to tap input often lead me to think I got the correct combination of taps wrong, would start double tapping again only to finally pause, activate Siri or skip tracks. In fairness, AirPods aren't really any better in this regard... I found myself wanting for a couple of proper, tactile buttons, especially for volume control which I'm used to on other headphones, though obviously water/sweat resistance would suffer as a result. Yes, you can ask Siri et. al. to do that, but it's just not as convenient (unless your arms are occupied).
Fortunately the Buds Air ear-detection sensors work well enough, pausing playback within a second or so of them being taken out maybe 90% of the time; every so often it'd fail to stop. While the AirPods were scarcely any faster to pause playback, they'd at least never fail to stop.
real.me say the battery life in the ear buds themselves is 3 hrs, with a total of 17 hrs of life achievable from a fully charged case. In practice, that seemed close to a reality, with the ear buds managing to get through a day's work of start-stop listening with a single top up charge around lunchtime. Similarly the case itself getting through most of the week before its red light would start blinking. I've read reports of handsfree telephone calling being particularly hard on battery life, however I managed a rather tedious 35-minute phone call with my insurance company using them without any power issues.
Those are good signs for the Buds Air, however it is one notable area where they don't spec-match AirPods, with their 5hr and 24hr battery life for the 'buds and case respectively. Fortunately the Buds Air buds themselves charge up quickly in their case, and the case can be charged either by USB-C or wirelessly, the latter a feature Apple don't offer for their entry level AirPods.
OK, let's talk sound quality. The Buds Air are good, decent enough - but not great. Bass extension is reasonable however the last octave or so feels weak compared to the AirPods or even the standard wired EarPods, which not only had a deeper bass but also a fuller, more detailed response in both the lower and and upper midrange. Listening in isolation there's nothing untoward or noticeably 'wrong' about their sound, and I wager most people listening to compressed/streamed music likely will be satisfied, but A-B testing between the three, the Buds Air's more 'hollow' character became readily apparent and less satisfying over time.
Also not entirely satisfying were the occasional audio dropouts and glitches that would occur from time to time. These weren't range-related issues - the Buds Air worked perfectly fine several metres away from my phone - but rather what appeared to be either interference or buffer issues anywhere between 5-10 minutes or so.
The buffer-lag issue becomes worse when putting the Buds Air into their low-latency 'gaming' mode. I don't game but I do watch YouTube and Netflix, and found the noticeable audio delay when watching videos in 'regular' mode annoying. Press and hold both earbuds for about a second until you hear a car revving - kooky - to put them into low-latency mode. Audio sync is much improved in this mode for a slightly lower audio quality - not really apparent with videos - however dropouts become much more frequent, often a couple of times a minute.
It's perhaps here where the AirPods justify their not-insignificant price premium best; the audio stream never seems to falter and video-audio sync is perfect without the need to change modes or do anything.
Assessing the real.me Buds Air actually isn't as easy as it would first appear. Given they mostly match or exceed the Apple AirPod's design, build and features for half the price, it should be easy to forgive somewhat lesser battery performance and a little less refinement in audio quality and general use. However the more I used them, the more the seemingly small differences bothered me... and the more that $100 gap between the real.me's and the Apple's seemed justified.Ultimately any sort of headphones or earbuds need to sound good and play reliably above all else, and unfortunately this is where the otherwise solid-scoring Buds Airs fall a bit short.
AirPods comparisons aside, the real.me Buds Air are a genuine good-quality option, and certainly much, much better all around than any cheap knock off... the Digitechs I bought purely for comparison sound atrocious, feel clunky and are every bit as cheap and nasty as their $25 price tag suggests(despite having the tactile push button I like). With certain online sellers offering the Buds Air currently for AU$129, they are definitely an option if hose are the features you want and your budget won't stretch any further.
Something fits ..... !!! – Was provided a set of these for review, and since I’d given up many years ago trying to get things that are designed to sit in ear canals to actually sit in mine ... was VERY keen to check them out. From the early basic straight sided affairs from the 70’s, to the foam tipped flat things that came to us with walkmans and mobile phones in the… Read more
80-90’s to the more nouveau anatomically shaped things of more modern times ... all would just sit in my ear for a minute or two ... then drop out.
SO ... my context with contemporary ear buds would be total noob at best. Perfect for testing with what we may call zero context to prejudice the methodology.
I won’t go into all the technical details of this product. Earlier reviewer Mike from Perth has covered this exceptionally well. So I’ll just give my thoughts ....
The product is well packed, and came with a sparse information sheet, which nevertheless gave enough basics to get the buds running quickly. Found that the battery was fairly well charged out of the box. Battery charging was easily managed via the short USB cable provided. Linking procedure was completely seamless, with no problems encountered from several phones, Apple iPad, Samsung tablet, and one of our car’s entertainment systems.
The very first thing I wanted to try was fitment ... for the above reasons. In utter disbelief I can report that they fit snugly ... lightly ... deceptively lightly, leaving a sensation that they would fall out as soon as I tilted my head. Nope ... they somehow clung tenaciously to my ear no matter what I tried to intentionally dislodge them ... from violently shaking my head, to tilting my head and angling the ear downwards and jolting as if trying to dislodge water after swimming. Miraculously the buds held on ... who knows how, because the whole time they managed to feel light and hardly noticeable.
First test then was a high 5/5 for me. With a joyful acknowledgement that I had FINALLY found something that actually fit, and stayed in place. These are keepers if for no other reason!
The next thing I wanted to test was range of reception. Shown as 10 metres in the product info. Placing the source device at one end, and moving from room to room I can report that the signal remained clear and strong in very nearly every room of our massive multi level house .... and that I was able to still pull a serviceable signal over close to 40 metres in line of sight at our property. Not that one should ever need range like this with a Bluetooth device. 5/5 again.
I did not test battery run time in our application. I tend to have a lot on the go at any one time, and am lucky to be able to sit and listen to music for 30 minutes at a time. I can say that the buds were still going after this time frame. When finished with the buds, they’re replaced into the base station box and are trickle charged from there.
Clarity was fine, and after messing with equaliser settings on iTunes, I was able to get a good in-depth stereo sound. Interestingly I was able to discern lyrics in songs I’ve listened to for 40 years that I’d not been able to work out prior to this. And hear background instruments and vocals I’d never picked up on before. On phone calls clarity of both speakers and microphone are fine. Another 5/5.
The touch operations - where one controls features according to touch instructions passed through the exterior casing of the buds - were a little hit and miss. They seemed to work fine on phone calls, but haphazardly on music and game platforms .... however whether this is due to constraints within the source programmes I can’t say. In realtime usage I doubt that I’d ever be that far from the source device, so I probably wouldn’t be using this feature all that much.
Downsides .... the exterior of the base station that houses the buds has very well rounded corners. This means that the unit struggles to stand upright, resulting in it toppling over many times before I finally got sick of it and got into the habit of storing it laying on its back. 3/5.
As reviewer Mike lamented .... why, why .... oh why can one not alter volume with these buds?? I can envisage situations where for example you may want to use these with a smart TV and want to turn down the volume quickly when those ads come on which are at about 3 times the sound level of the show you’d been watching. Not possible. If you’re on the phone to a person with a quiet voice, if there’s some songs played at different sound levels, etc etc. The whole objective with stand alone devices like these is that you have the convenience of being a little way from your source device, and they can be hands free. RealMe has taken a good platform and let it down badly with this oversight. 2/5.
So overall I’m happy ... more so because they fit .... well ... at last!!!. They have good clear sound .... but they’re let down just a little by factors which, admittedly, aren’t that crucial in my application.
Pretty average sound with poor battery life and controls – realme and ProductReview recently offered me the opportunity to review a pair of realme Buds Air - wireless (Bluetooth) earphones. As a reference point for the review, I should point out that I normally wear a pair of Backbeat Pro, noise cancelling, over the ear headphones when coding and when travelling to and from work on public transport. The… Read more
little realme box which arrived contained a simple printed user guide, a short USB-C cable and the white, rounded 50x45x25mm ear bud case which contained the buds themselves. The case has a flip top lid, a small (almost invisible) pairing button in the front and a USB-C socket at the bottom. For those who are unfamiliar with these devices (as I was) - the box contains the main battery and provides most of the power storage, the buds have only limited power and recharge from the box when stored in it.
Opening the flip lid of the case caused a green led in the front to illuminate momentarily, the two earphones were nestled inside in left and right sockets. The led would change colour to orange when the case only held about 2/3 charge and red when it was getting close to empty.
The user guide stated that the buds should be paired with the phone by opening the lid and pressing the button on the front of the case for 3 seconds, this simple operation happened easily and flawlessly with my Android phone. I then removed the buds to examine them.
I should add that the user guide had the usual mix of English and Pigeon-English; whilst mostly understandable there were a few dubious statements. I have to wonder why foreign companies cannot take the trouble to find a genuine English speaking person to verify the grammar in their guides rather than rely on Google, which comes up with gems like "The touch function can be effective only when it be wear, and the function will be closed after being take off". Priceless.
The in-ear part of each bud has a forward facing main speaker, an in-ear (IR?) detector and another small aperture (don't know what for). The main shaft (which has L and R accordingly) has a microphone plus two charging contacts at the bottom and an auxiliary microphone on the outside. The upper part of the outer face of each bud is the control touch area.
I don't have particularly small ears so the first thing I noticed was that the buds, while fairly secure in situ., did not occupy the entire aperture of my ear. When I played music this resulted in a poor bass response and very "treble-y" sound. This is not a specific fault of these buds in particular, all in-ear headphones (wired or otherwise) which do not fit into the ear-canal result in poor bass sound for me. Pressing the buds deeper into my ears gave a better sound but was not a realistic solution - I downloaded an equaliser app to my phone to partially compensate. My daughter, who has smaller ears, found the buds fitted better and gave a better sound for her.
The user guide detailed the various operations which could be performed via the buds themselves:
* Automatically Stop/Start music on removing one/inserting both bud(s). * Two touch - answer phone and play/pause audio. * Three touch - skip to next track. * Press for 2 seconds during phone call to hang up. * Press for 2 seconds during incoming call to reject call. * Press for 2 seconds in standby or playback mode to start the voice assistant. * There is also a game mode (apparently less BT lag with lower sound quality) but I didn't bother to try that as I don't play games on my phone and wouldn't see the difference.
While these functions seemed to work reasonably well, I do feel that there has been a huge opportunity missed in this design.
I found it very annoying that both buds could skip to the next track, but neither could go back - why not have one skip forward and one skip back? I also found it most annoying that the buds could not adjust the volume - I don't use or care about the voice assistant on my phone and would have happily replaced that function with volume control. What is the point of having wireless headphones if you have to fish in your pocket for your phone to adjust the volume?
So how were they in general use? Music sound quality aside (due to ear size issues detailed above) they were simply satisfactory. I used them on a number of phone calls and the other person reported that the sound was clear and adequate - I also heard the other party with no real issues.
The buds are not noise cancelling so listening to music while out and about was satisfactory though not great and I did not have any issues with the buds falling out during various activities.
And so to the one major consideration with this type of device - battery life.
I was very disappointed to discover that the buds do not appear contain a capacitor which would charge quickly and be less inclined to suffer usual battery life issues, but seem to include micro-batteries (according to on-line doco. about these devices), these take longer to charge and will have a shorter overall life.
The guide indicates these should last about 3 hours music at 50% volume, but I rarely got more than 2.5 hours, even after I had "conditioned" them with a number of charging cycles. What is more, the right bud always stopped working about 20 minutes before the left, so the best stereo experience I got would last about 2:20 or thereabouts. The transmission range was quite reasonable for BT and the build quality of the buds and case appeared good. I also had very few problems re-pairing between a number of devices after the buds kept getting "aquired" by my daughter.
According to the guide, "you can know the earbuds battery quantity by the App or the status bar from the phone". True it is possible to see an approximate battery level from the status bar, but what App they speak of I do not know - I could find no compatible app on the Play Store, neither by realme nor anyone else.
Once the buds were fully discharged, it would take about 15 minutes for them to recharge from the case, this became quite frustrating as it meant I could only listen to music for about 90% of my coding time - my Backbeat Pro headphones can last for up to 10 hours on BT and even have a cable for when the battery goes. The case appeared to provide about 15 hours of charging before the led blinked red (17 hours according to the manual), though calculating this was quite difficult, having to remember if there were two buds fully discharged or just one and keeping track of them.
The other major issue around the batteries for me is that none of them are removable/replaceable. Once the batteries can no longer store adequate charge the user guide indicates the devices "should be disposed of as household garbage". Oh yeah, way to go, really ecologically responsible there! If they had provided a cable of some sort at least they could be converted to wired headphone towards end of life. Given that Li-on batteries (which I assume they are) start to degrade faster if you fully discharge, I estimate these things starting to show shortened life in about a year and being unusable within two years, ready for the bin without the ability to recycle the batteries easily. Not good!
In conclusion therefore, I would not choose to buy these realme Buds Air (nor any other brand of this type of ear phones). The battery life was, in my opinion, pretty woeful and the sound quality for music was average at best. Yes, they were convenient, not having an annoying cable and being able to just slip in the pocket, but the controls are poorly thought out and of limited use without the phone being near.
I thank ProductReview.com.au and realme for the opportunity to review these devices.
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