Edifier NeoBuds Pro
Pros
- High Res Audio
- Attractive Earbud and Case Design
- Great App Control
Cons
- Less availability of LHDC Devices
So high-res audio is a super exciting genre. Still, especially when it comes to wireless earbuds there are usually not what it seems. Edifier has been upping their game with audio quality with high-res audio.
We’re taking a look at the third high-res audio Product from Edifier and one to highlight.
One critical point before you jump into buying these earbuds so will they be any good? Let’s get on with the review of the Edifier NeoBuds Pro.
Discussed Topics
Edifier NeoBuds Pro : Design and Build
The design of the Neobuds Pro is fantastic and i’m loving it so much. It’s got the form factor of the NB2 Pro but Edifier gave it quite a unique design to make sure that it stands out.
At the top of the case you get a nice brushed aluminium plate with the Edifier logo at the top. Most of the case is made of a hard plastic which feels very high quality and doesn’t seem to easily scratch at the back of the case.
You also get a nice Edifier logo at the hinge and below that you get a Type-c charging port.
Plugging that in and you get the coolest part of these earbuds which is the LED lights. It’s an array of led lights that dances around to give you information about your charging, your connection and which earbuds are currently charging inside the super cool case.
The hinge on the Neobuds Pro is very nice and smooth. When you’re holding it flat it will snap into place at the end of the stroke but when you tilt it around it doesn’t have a strong enough friction to keep itself in place so it will slam shut on its own.
Inside the case, you also get a button to put the earbuds into pairing mode and the earbud sits inside the case just like the NB2 and the NB2 Pro.
In terms of the robust design the earbuds are shaped almost exactly like the NB2 line of earbuds but the major difference here that i see with the NeoBuds Pro surprisingly is that it doesn’t come with an in-ear sensor. In contrast, the NB2 as well as the NB2 Pro both comes with smart in-ear sensor.
At the front of the stem you get a nice dark gun metal gray color that looks super premium and it reminds me a little bit of the color for the Earfun Air Pro.
The bottom of the stem there’s an Edifier logo there and a large mic grill at the top of the earbuds which is also where the touch sensor located.
The ear tips are also Airpods Pro style ear tips so they are extremely comfortable.
Edifier’s biggest selling point here is that the ear tips are made of antibacterial material. Edifier claims has a 99.8% of ability to kill microbes.
Edifier NeoBuds Pro Features
So this earbuds is Properly spec and since it’s high-res wireless it does come with a Bluetooth 5.0 with high-res codecs.
In this case it comes with LHDC codec AAC and SBC audio codec.
There’s no LDAC like the ones that you get from Sony’s but what you get here is LHDC just to give you an idea.
LHDC is similar to Sony’s LDAC which transmits about 900 kilobits per second and comparing to popular codecs that we’re familiar with aptX hd transmits at only 576 kilobits per second, AAC at about 320 kilobits and SBC has a variable of about 192 to 320 kilobits per second
To really enjoy high-res audio you definitely need a source that plays music at high-res quality. Your source should also support LHDC.
The earbuds also come supported with ip54 dust and water resistant where 5 is the dust rating and 4 is the water-resistant rating.
This one is good for sweat and water splashes but it’s not suited for running in the rain.
The earbuds also come with a super seamless mono and stereo mode so you get to use both earbuds at any time.
Taking it out from your ears and putting it back into the case also doesn’t pause the media which is really nice.
Lastly there’s no multi-point connectivity on these earbuds.
Edifier NeoBuds Pro Battery
In terms of the battery life the NeoBuds Pro took a hit compared to the NB2 and the NB2 Pro.
With ANC on the earbuds only gives you 5 hours of juice and the case gives you additional 15 hours, without ANC you get 6 hours plus 18 hours with the case.
The specs here you can see that the NeoBuds Pro did have quite a significant drop in battery life however it does come with a super quick charging where 10 minutes will give you about 1 hour of juice.
And charging the earbuds up from empty only takes 1 hour.
Edifier NeoBuds Pro Controls
The original controls the right side double tap will pause your media and triple tap will go to the next track.
Double tapping on the left side will help you choose between the different ANC modes and
Triple tap on the left side will activate gaming mode so honestly if you don’t often toggle gaming mode you can always change these to skip tracks backwards.
It depends on your use case, but i do wish Edifier would expand this to include single tapping and long tap. That would really give this earbuds a lot more flexibility in terms of control mapping.
You get to adjust the tap sensitivity of the earbuds and the rest are basically connectivity controls.
that’s about all of the controls you get with the Neobuds Pro.
App
The NeoBuds Pro uses an enhanced version of the same Edifier connect app and comes in a more premium black look than the typical white background.
Once you’re connected, the home screen here can see the battery percentage of the earbuds and the case.
And if you remove the earbuds from the case the case battery disappears but comes back on when you put the earbuds in which is pretty cool.
With ANC there’s a few options that you can choose from you have high noise cancelation, low noise cancellation as well as ambient sound and it is the same as most of the Edifier earbuds.
In Ambient mode, you can adjust about 6 levels of intensity for your ambient sound, so 3 will let in the most sound and -3 will sound pretty much like normal mode.
Swiping to the right, you will get to play around with the sound tuning and Edifier gives you two out of the box: your classic or your dynamic.
Swipe to the right you will go into a screen to toggle between gaming and normal mode so pressing on the settings button at the top right you get a couple more adjustments and bringing over from the TWS330NB.
You also get to remap some of the controls here and you mainly get to adjust the double tap and triple tap for the left and right earbuds.
ANC
ANC wise i think these are okay, but somehow, two aspects didn’t meet my expectations.
For my test these earbuds do very well with low humming noises with road noise and humming fans these are sounds that perform the best with these earbuds.
But the sound of people chatting talking or any high frequency sound that you will Probably hear outside or busy cafes will get about 50% of volume reduction from these earbuds. It doesn’t wipe everything out if you don’t have music playing.
But usually with music playing it does quite well.
Ambient mode on the Edifier Neobuds Pro is great with the same configurable ambient level.
You can adjust it to suit your needs inside the app at its maximum. You’re going to get quite a lot of environmental noise, which is very useful in some situations.
So all in all i’m giving these earbuds an 8 out of 10 for Active Noise Canceling performance.
Edifier NeoBuds Pro Sound Quality
Let’s be critical about the sound quality because this earbuds is designed to deliver high-res audio wirelessly. To start off let’s talk fully about Tidal. After all, with Spotify you’re not gonna get the best high-res experience and if you have flag files or you have ripped your own cds that would really work great too.
Second thing to look at is the device itself and are you running a device that supports the LHDC codec because not many devices there support it. All the devices that i have unfortunately the iPhone 11 Pro the Galaxy Note 20 and Sony Walkman NW-A105 Hi-Res all doesn’t support LHDC.
In that case it will automatically fall back to the next best option which is AAC and if that is the case with your device then high-res doesn’t really apply to you.
You really need to check your device whether it supports LHDC before splurging your hard earned cash.
Since i don’t have a device that supports the LHDC let’s come and speak at this with a typical AAC codec perspective and these earbuds are really impressive really no doubt.
edifier have proved us again that they can make great sounding earbuds at most affordable price.
Thanks to that dynamic driver that is inside and at louder volumes you’re definitely getting emphasis on that rumbling sub bass which is very good as well as very good emphasis on symbol crashes and high hats mids on these earbuds are pretty neutral with good presence without it feeling overly emphasized or hiding behind instruments.
which is pretty nice and remember you get to adjust all of those inside the app itself so that’s pretty cool.
All in all, these are great sounding earbuds even with AAC. If you have a device that supports LHDC, you definitely find that this thing sounds even more brilliant.
Latency
With 80 ms of latency you’re getting pretty decent performance with games like PUBG but you’ll still get a bit of lag when i slow the clip down in real time.
You’re not going to see a lot of difference a lot of noticeable lag but movies and videos in general sounds really good no lag at all.
However, with movies i do notice that every 10 to 15 minutes it has a few milliseconds of silence it will drop connection very very short period of time and then media will continue again i’m not too sure if this is just this unit.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this is a very good execution by Edifier, and applaud them for making something so amazing. It’s good to have more people be aware of the limitations of a hi-res wireless badge. Just because it’s certified doesn’t mean that you’re automatically getting high-res audio. That’s something to take note of
Overall is it something i would get over the NB2 Pro? Read the Full Edifier NB2 Pro Review here
Looking at the price Probably not because the NB2 Pro on its own is already super good however if you fancy the design and the super cool LED lights there and if you have a device that supports LHDC then i think that your experience definitely could justify you paying the premium for these earbuds.
Mpow MX3
Looking at the price Probably not because the NB2 Pro on its own is already super good however if you fancy the design and the super cool LED lights there and if you have a device that supports LHDC then i think that your experience definitely could justify you paying the premium for these earbuds.
