EarFun Air Pro 3 review
What do you look for in earbuds? For me, I value active noise cancelation (ANC), a solid build, and a pair that can deliver good sound quality without breaking the bank. So if you’re looking for a pair of the best cheap wireless earbuds, the EarFun Air Pro 3 tick all the boxes.
They’ve got ANC, customizable sound settings via a user-friendly app, and smart controls — all for just $79 / £79 / AU$99. Good deal? Indeed. If you keep an eye out for discounts, you can get them for an even lower price (for under £50 in the UK!), and for what they offer at the price, they rank well amongst their competitors.
For the complete breakdown, read our full EarFun Air Pro 3 review.
EARFUN AIR PRO 3 REVIEW: CHEAT SHEET
- Budget-friendly option for engaged listeners costing $79.
- Long stem design that sits snugly in your ears.
- Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX adaptive, AAC, SBC codec support.
- Great battery life with 7-hour playtime, 30 hours with charging case, and wireless charging available. 10 minutes of charging time gives you 2 hours of listening time.
- No wear detection for automatic pausing and resuming.
- Inconsistent sound quality across songs.
EARFUN AIR PRO 3 REVIEW: PRICE & AVAILABILITY
EarFun has a reputation for making budget friendly earbuds and headphones and the manufacturer delivers on what you would usually expect from the respective price tags. The EarFun Air Pro 3 have a retail price of $79 if you’re buying through the official website, and, in the past, have been advertised for $59.
The price tag means that these earbuds find themselves competing against the likes of the OnePlus Buds 3 and the 1More PistonBuds Pro — both these models feature ANC too. You also get a variety of colors, so you can choose from blue, pink, black and white.
EARFUN AIR PRO 3 REVIEW: DESIGN & COMFORT
EarFun’s ethos seems to be ”if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when it comes to the long stem design of their earbuds. While not all its earbuds feature the long stem style, the EarFun Air Pro 3 do. This design debuted on the first Air Pro earbuds in 2020, and there really isn’t much to fault. The earbuds are glossy and feel a little plasticky — fair enough considering how much you’re paying from them — but this also means they’re really light, weighing only 1.83 ounces (52g). They’re accompanied by a compact plastic case to hold them.
You get four different earbud sizes in the box so you can wear these earphones snugly. And boy are they snug. I wore them for 3 hours straight and can confidently say that my ears didn’t hurt one bit. However, bear in mind that these are not made specifically for working out. I wore them to the gym and they fell out once, which isn’t too bad, but undesirable if you work out often. Another point to note is that the EarFun Air Pro 3 earbuds are IPX5 rated, making them sweatproof and waterproof. I live in the UK and you never know when it might rain, so I could rest easy knowing these earbuds would be safe even in the pouring rain.
The touch controls on both earbuds are also intuitive and I got used to them quickly. These are easily customizable via the app EarFun Audio, available on both Android and iOS devices.
EARFUN AIR PRO 3 REVIEW: SOUND & PERFORMANCE
Speaking of the app, did I mention EarFun Audio is straightforward and user-friendly? You don’t have to navigate through several different tabs to customize earbud controls or equalizer presets. Under the EarFun Equalizer settings, you can choose an ‘EarFun Style’ — if you want to boost a song’s characteristics to make it sound like a particular genre, such as rock, pop, country, etc. You can also reduce or boost both the bass and the treble. This doesn’t work all the time though, and it didn’t really make a difference to my listening experience.
For the purpose of this review, I used the app to switch to Normal listening mode, with the default EQ and the ANC off (I tested that at a later point), and listening to a playlist on Spotify Premium which is one of the best music streaming services. I was listening on my Google Pixel 7 Pro with the audio codec set to Qualcomm® aptX™ audio, which is supported by the earbuds.
As I listened to a range of songs, I realized that the EarFun Air Pro 3 provide quite an immersive sound. I value the bass a lot, so I was pleased with how well the earbuds amplified the prominent bass lines in ‘Overcompensate’ by Twenty One Pilots and ‘Money’ by Pink Floyd. But your listening experience may vary depending on what you value in a song. If you love powerful sounds, these are the earbuds for you, but if you’re a fan of subtler notes, you might want to reconsider. For instance, I didn’t like how ‘Dawn’ by Poets of the Fall sounded on these. The vocals sounded a bit echoey — the singer’s voice sounding like it was far away — against the piano. Similarly, Alt J’s ‘Every Other Freckle’ sounded tinny.
One of my gripes with these earbuds is that there’s no wear detection. It’s a popular feature where the audio pauses if you remove either earbud, but it’s sadly missing from the EarFun Air Pro 3. If someone asks me for directions or I need to speak to a cashier at a grocery store, I have to go through the effort of pausing the music. This feature is present in other similarly priced earbuds such as the Soundcore by Anker Liberty 4 NC, and the JLab JBuds Air Pro.
EARFUN AIR PRO 3 REVIEW: ACTIVE NOISE-CANCELING
One of the most attractive features of the EarFun Air Pro 3 is the active noise cancelation. I didn’t expect it to be effective at this price. EarFun has used Qualcomm’s® QuietSmart 2.0 hybrid ANC for these earbuds, and it works well. While walking down a busy road, I could barely hear the cars, and I experienced a decent level of silence on a train. Indoors, the earbuds canceled out all sounds from the kettle boiling and the TV on loud.
When I used these earbuds on a phone call, I had to check myself to make sure I wasn’t talking too loudly as I couldn’t hear my voice very well, which is great. EarFun notes that these earbuds use an enhanced 6-mic array with cVc™ 8.0 tech which it claims provides superior call quality, so I tested it, and when I asked my brother how I sounded on his end, he said my voice was crystal clear.
Depending on what the default control is, you can simply tap on your earbuds to change the ANC settings, and you can do this via the EarFun Audio app too. Cycle between three modes: normal, ambient sound, and noise canceling. I used the ambient sound mode quite frequently when I was around other people because the earbuds succeed at letting background noise flow in, so I could hear them talking to me.
EARFUN AIR PRO 3 REVIEW: BATTERY LIFE
You get plenty of battery life in the EarFun Air Pro 3 earbuds. EarFun claims a total of 45 hours (9 hours + 36 hours with charging case), a big leap from the preceding EarFun Air Pro 2’s 34-hour playtime. But I found that you get around 7 hours of listening and 30 hours with the charging case, much like the JLab JBuds Air Pro.
With just 10 minutes of charging time, you can get 2 hours of playback. When I charged the earbuds using a 30W USB-A to USB-C charger along with the cable that came in the box, they went from zero to full battery within 2 hours. The case can also be charged wirelessly, so my Pixel 7 Pro’s battery share feature worked well here.
EARFUN AIR PRO 3 REVIEW: VERDICT
The EarFun Air Pro 3 are probably the best sub-$100 earbuds I’ve tried. While the sound may not always be perfect, the ANC, battery life, companion app, and comfort levels make up for it. For $79, these earbuds would be the ideal choice for an engaged listener on a budget because of the different settings you can customize via the app, including creating a personalized sound thanks to the custom equalizer. If you're an audiophile, however, you may want to consider another option because of the inconsistency in the sound quality.
When compared to similar earbuds such as the Edifier W240TN (also priced at $79), the EarFun Air Pro 3 come out on top for me because of the good call quality and wireless charging. Having tested these for a couple of weeks, I’m satisfied with what was offered at the low price tag. These earbuds won’t best higher-end ones and neither should we expect them to. They are totally worth the price.
