They're all marketing, no substance.
In the crowded market for wireless earbuds, where promises of silence often outpace reality, Huawei's Freebuds Pro arrive as a study in genuine strengths shadowed by genuine frustrations. Priced at €179 and launched in late 2020, they offer audio richness and call clarity that few competitors match — yet stumble on the small, tactile details that shape daily experience. They remind us that a product's soul can be sound even when its surface is rough.
- The noise cancellation arms race has produced more disappointment than silence, but the Freebuds Pro carve out modest, honest ground — softening the world's irritants without pretending to erase them.
- Powerful 11mm drivers and bone conduction microphone technology give these earbuds a genuine edge in both audio richness and call clarity, particularly valuable as remote work keeps millions tethered to video calls.
- Setup becomes a small ordeal: a near-invisible button on a slippery pill-shaped case, earbuds that resist extraction, and a companion app that hadn't even been updated to support the product at launch.
- Touch controls perform reliably for roughly ten minutes before going silent themselves — a malfunction that protects music from accidental pauses but leaves users without meaningful control.
- Firmware updates and app improvements could smooth the roughest edges, but as launched, the Freebuds Pro ask users to trade ergonomic patience for genuinely impressive sound.
There's a question that haunts anyone shopping for noise-cancelling earbuds: does the feature actually work, or are you just telling yourself a story? Huawei's Freebuds Pro, at €179, offer an honest answer — not silence, but relief. Persistent ambient irritants soften and recede, even if a nearby conversation remains audible. It's a modest promise, but a kept one.
The deeper strength is in the audio itself. Eleven-millimetre drivers produce rich, detailed sound that rewards the patience required to fit the earbuds properly. The long-stemmed design with silicon tips needs careful adjustment to seat correctly — rush the process and the sound seems thin; take thirty seconds more and the full quality emerges.
Setup, however, tests that patience further. The charging case is a small, featureless pill with a function button nearly impossible to locate by touch, and extracting the earbuds requires awkward squeezing and coaxing. The Huawei AI Life app needed to configure the earbuds hadn't been updated to support the Freebuds Pro at launch — a notable oversight.
Touch controls on the stems promise volume, playback, and noise-cancellation management through taps and strokes. They deliver on that promise for about ten minutes before becoming unresponsive. The one consolation is immunity to accidental pauses — a thin reward.
Where the Freebuds Pro genuinely excel is call quality. Multiple microphones combined with bone conduction technology produce clarity that outperforms most wireless competitors — a meaningful advantage for anyone spending long hours on video calls. Battery life is unremarkable but adequate, offering four to five hours per charge.
These earbuds occupy an honest middle ground: audio and call performance that justifies the price, wrapped in ergonomic and software friction that shouldn't exist at this level. Whether the strengths outweigh the irritations depends entirely on what you need most from what you put in your ears.
There's a question that haunts anyone shopping for wireless earbuds with noise cancellation: does the feature actually work, or are you just telling yourself a story? The skepticism is earned. Over the past few years, as manufacturers have rushed to add active noise cancellation to in-ear designs, the results have been wildly uneven. Some earbuds promise silence and deliver almost nothing—they're all marketing, no substance.
Huawei's Freebuds line has generally performed better than most in this regard. The company's new Freebuds Pro, priced at €179, continue that trend. They won't let you disappear into a bubble of complete quiet. You'll still hear someone talking at the next café table. But they do something useful: they soften the edges of ambient noise. That persistent drip from a leaky faucet becomes ignorable. A distant creaking sound fades into the background. For the kind of noise that genuinely annoys rather than the kind that demands attention, these earbuds work.
The real strength lies elsewhere. Huawei has packed 11mm drivers into these buds, and the audio quality is genuinely impressive. The sound is rich and detailed in a way that justifies the price. The earbuds themselves are long-stemmed with silicon tips in three sizes, designed to seal snugly in your ear. Getting them to sit right requires a bit of patience—you have to work them around until they settle properly—but once they do, the audio depth is worth the effort. Many people make the mistake of inserting them once, hearing something that sounds thin or tinny, and assuming that's the final word. It isn't. Spend thirty seconds adjusting them and the true quality emerges.
Setup is where things get frustrating. The charging case is a small pill-shaped box with a function button that's almost impossible to find without consulting the manual. Huawei requires you to download an app called Huawei AI Life to fully configure the earbuds and adjust settings. At the time of testing, that app hadn't been updated to support the Freebuds Pro yet, which is a significant oversight for a product launch. The charging case itself presents another annoyance: there's nothing to grip when you're trying to extract the earbuds. You end up squeezing and teasing them out, often needing multiple attempts.
Once they're working, the touch controls are supposed to let you manage volume, pause playback, and switch noise-cancellation modes by tapping, stroking, or squeezing the stems. For about ten minutes, they do exactly that. Then they stop responding entirely. The silver lining is that you can't accidentally pause your music by brushing the buds, but that's a thin consolation for controls that simply quit.
Call quality is where the Freebuds Pro genuinely excel. Multiple microphones and bone conduction technology combine to deliver clarity that outperforms most competing wireless earbuds. In an era when many people are working from home and spending hours on video calls, this is a meaningful advantage. The person on the other end will hear you clearly.
Battery life is standard for the category: four to five hours between charges from the case, with the case itself needing a recharge after every two or three full cycles of the earbuds. Nothing remarkable, but nothing disappointing either.
The Freebuds Pro occupy an interesting middle ground. The audio quality is genuinely good. The call quality is excellent. The noise cancellation works well enough for real-world use. But the touch controls are unreliable, the charging case is awkward to use, and the app support was incomplete at launch. They're better than average wireless earbuds at a reasonable price, but they're not without friction. Whether that friction is worth tolerating depends on how much you value that call quality and audio performance.
Notable Quotes
The noise cancellation works well enough to muffle ambient noise like drips and distant creaking, but won't block conversations at a nearby café table.— Product testing
Call quality is very good, using multiple microphones and bone conduction to deliver better sound than most competing wireless earbuds.— Product testing
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
So the noise cancellation doesn't really work?
It works, but not the way marketing suggests. It's not a wall of silence. It's more like turning down the volume on the world around you. Enough to make a difference, not enough to isolate you completely.
And you're saying the touch controls just... stopped working?
Yes. They functioned perfectly for about ten minutes, then became completely unresponsive. It's as if something in the firmware just gave up. The irony is that once they stopped working, I couldn't accidentally pause my music anymore.
That's a strange silver lining.
It is. But it points to a real problem—these controls feel half-baked. Like the feature was rushed to market before it was ready.
What about the sound itself? Is it actually good?
Genuinely impressive. The 11mm drivers deliver real depth and clarity. But you have to fit them properly first, which takes patience. Most people won't bother and will think they're tinny.
And the call quality?
That's the standout. Multiple microphones and bone conduction make a real difference. If you're on calls all day, this matters more than perfect noise cancellation.
So who should buy these?
Someone who values call quality and audio fidelity more than seamless controls and convenience. Someone willing to work around the friction.