Xiaomi’s new wireless earbuds offer high-quality audio technology in a super cool marble design
Xiaomi has had a busy day full of announcements. In addition to launching five new phones, Xiaomi has also confirmed that its recently launched wireless earbuds – the Redmi Buds 5 Pro and the stripped-down Redmi Buds 5 – will be available globally.
What’s immediately noticeable about these AirPods lookalikes is that the black and white models of the Redmi Buds 5 Pro have a marble texture on the stems of the buttons themselves. The case also features an updated design compared to last year’s Redmi Buds Pro 4, now with a vegan leather texture.
Despite their high-quality appearance, the buds sell for a similar price as their predecessors. You can pick up a pair for €69.99 (about $76 / £60 / AU$115), depending Notebook control, which is a lot less than most of the best earbuds. Considering that many of the cheaper models don’t offer access to high-resolution codecs – even the mid-priced Sony WF-C700Ns don’t – the Redmi Buds Pro 5 potentially sounds like an incredible value.
What’s special about the Xiaomi Redmi Buds?
First released in November 2023, the Xiaomi Redmi Buds 5 Pro slipped under our radar mainly due to their limited limited availability in China. But that doesn’t mean we’re not impressed with their spec sheet.
Unlike the best AirPods, the Redmi Buds 5 Pro have support for lossless audio (although Apple has said it will make this available for the AirPods Pro 2 when used with the Vision Pro). Xiaomi says they will support LDAC – which is essentially CD quality – with a sampling rate of up to 24bit/96kHz, AAC, SBC Bluetooth and LHDC 5.0.
Like the Honor Earbuds 3 Pro and One Plus Buds Pro 2, they have a coaxial dual driver setup, which consists of a 10mm piezoelectric ceramic tweeter and an 11mm dynamic driver. Our experience is that these types of speaker systems can deliver particularly rich and full audio quality, so we’re curious to see if this is the same with the Redmi Buds 5 Pro.
In addition to these features, the earbuds have three transparency modes including Normal, Enhance Voice and Enhance Ambient Sounds. Xiaomi also promises that the active noise cancellation will be three times better than that of the Redmi Buds 4 Pro. Finally, with an incredibly strong battery life of 38 hours with the case (the earbuds last 10 hours on a single charge), the Redmi Buds 5 Pro last much longer than many of the best wireless earbuds – the AirPods Pro 2 tout 30 o’clock.
It’s not often you find earbuds that give you so many features and access to high-quality codecs for under $100 / £100 / AU$150, so needless to say Xiaomi has our attention. If the Redmi Buds 5 Pro sound as good as they look, then we might have a new contender for our best wireless earbuds guide.