For this review of the Earfun Air Pro 3 wireless earbuds, we’ll talk about sound, features… and privacy policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0qmQvLhKgU

Design & build quality

We’ll compare these with 4 other similarly priced buds at the end of this video, so stick around for that, but let’s kick this review off with the superficial. Let’s be honest guys, these buds ain’t gonna be turning any heads. But build-wise you’re certainly getting your 80 bucks worth and then some. The plastic case is in the ‘bulgy pocket’ category, but it doesn’t feel fragile.

The lid is easy to open, the buds are easy to take out and put back and there’s a colorblind friendly battery indicator using three LEDs. The roof of the lid also has a soft rubber finish, meaning your buds will be in safe hands inside the case. The stem shaped earbuds are also made from plastic and have the earfun logo on them.

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🎧 Buy the Earfun Air Pro 3 
Regular price: $79.99. Discounted price: $59.99.
(With a 10% off coupon on the page and a 15% off discount code: AP315OFF)
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🎧 Buy the Edifier W240TN 
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🎧 Buy the SoundCore Space A40
🎧 Buy the JBL Live Pro 2

Above it is a circular dimple which houses the touch sensor. And this is the part we like compared to the last iterations of the Earfun stem-shaped buds – way fewer false taps. The controls are easy to understand; you got a single, double, triple tap and a long press. You can even customize what each of them do in the app, for each earbud. We’ve set it up pretty much to default, and it’s pretty much perfect. Single tap on the right for volume up and on the left for volume down. Double tap for play-pause and triple tap is track control. Long pressing the left one is set to change between ANC modes, more on that later though. And finally long pressing the right one is to call up your voice assistant. The only control that’s missing which you can replace from the app is game control for low latency.

Although the Air Pro 3 supports single bud use, there’s unfortunately no smart pause. Yes, we feel you. Audio FOMO is definitely real! But you won’t be missing out too much, since Earfun has juiced these bad boys up to the gills! 7 hours of battery life with ANC on and 45 hours in total with the case. Solid numbers – good job Earfun! And of course – those numbers are probably with the new LC3 codec. When we actually ran a DHRME test on APTX Adaptive with ANC On at a comfortable listening volume, the battery depleted from 100% to 50% in about 3 and a half hours on APTX Adaptive. So the claims seem to be legit, but APTX Adaptive will give you worse battery than LC3. The cherry on top is that it supports fast charging getting you 2 hours of use from 10 mins of charge. AND there’s also support for wireless charging. Nice! 

Oh Earfun included a toothpick in the box? I’m offended. Ok, we’re going to sit further back from the camera or stop shooting in 4K. Ohh wait, this is an earbud toothpick. You know like all the chi fi brands give you. You can use it to get rid of all that earwax. Hope you’re not watching this while eating. If you are, eet smakelijk! Ok, let’s move on.

Comfort & fit

And can you have fun while having the Air Pro 3 in your ears? Wait what! They sure are comfortable and you get 4 sizes of silicone tips to choose from.

We had no issues wearing them for long periods of time. Until our smartwatch reminded us that it was time to stand up and move. We did have to make sure to adjust them every 30 minutes or so though, since they pop out rather easily. And the reasons is that the Air Pro 3 are a shallow insertion style earbuds. So while they’re comfortable in static positions, intense workouts aren’t something we would dare do. The buds are IPX5 rated though if you do intend to get active with them.

Phone calls

Alright guys – let’s go to the popsicles, icicles and testic…

–mic samples in the video above–

And? What did you think? Better than the SoundCore and Edifier?

We’ll tell you what we think at the end of this post.

A couple of other things we did experience though. What we noticed while on Teams calls, is if you’re on mute, then it would make a beep every 15 seconds. Apparently this is a feature of the earbuds. So if you appreciate being reminded 4 times a minute that you’re on mute, instead of your colleagues having to remind you, then you’ll be happy! We’re less happy and actually found it annoying. Unfortunately there’s no way to turn it off either. Come on Microsoft!

In terms of occlusion, we thought that these were – occlusion-y. There’s no system in place that helps with this like the Airpods Pro. So talking for a long time won’t be very comfortable. Interestingly – turning on noise canceling alleviated this the most. Ambient mode and normal weren’t great for occlusion. 

Ok, let’s talk controls de la vakman. There’s no muting straight from the buds, but the volume controls do work. On phone calls though, it didn’t work for a Teams call on a Windows laptop. Come on Microsoft! And finally, you can’t change the ANC mode using the buds when you’re on a call. You can luckily change it from the app though. 

Active Noise Canceling 

The one compromise with EarFun products has always been active noise cancelling. And that’s one thing that the EarFun Air Pro 3 clearly fixes. The ANC is pretty damn good. And while it does well with low end sounds – as most earbuds do in this day and age – it also does well with voices! It’s a considerable improvement over the Earfun Air S. And although it’s close to the SoundCore Space A40 in terms of absolute levels, the SoundCore lets in a lot more of the mids, which means that voices aren’t filtered out and seem to be even enhanced in the absence of the low end. 

The EarFun Air Pro 3 does way better in this regard and is a very capable set of buds for ANC. 

And what about letting in sounds – or transparency? Again – EarFun has knocked it OUT OF THE PARK! These are SO good – that we brought out the top dog – the Airpods Pro 2 for a comparison. I mean – it didn’t match up to it because the Airpods add a certain sparkle for clarity, but the EarFun actually went toe-to-toe for total volume. What’s really nice is also that transparency is transparency – they’re going for a ‘nothing in your ear’ kind of effect, and they come very close to achieving it. We see ourselves easily using these for a quick conversation or heck even a longer one. Of course – there is white noise that you can hear when it’s very quiet, but it’s actually pretty decent! It’s not much worse than something like the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 – and that’s saying something! So there’s really not much else to say here – if there’s one thing where these buds surpass the others in the EarFun range is their strength on ANC and transparency. Both are just short of S-tier, but very much Tier A!

Connectivity & app

So the Air Pro 3 supports multipoint, so you can stay connected to two devices at the same time. in theory. AND IT WORKED. most of the time. There were a few too many times that one of my devices would show it was connected to the buds but when playing something it wouldn’t play anything. And this happened with Teams calls as well – I would select the Earfun as the speaker and I would hear nothing. The issues didn’t end with multipoint though, but with connectivity in general. One of the buds stopped playing music after pausing and playing, and only after a good 30 seconds or so would it resume again. And to top off this rant – I’ve tried to put the buds into pairing mode only to never be able to find them in the device list. Super. freaking. annoying! We’re hoping these issues get resolved with firmware updates, but we have to tell you what we’ve faced. The buds don’t support pulling connection from a previous paired device, so you’ll need to put the buds into pairing mode by pressing the button in the case. There’s also no device list in the app.

And yes, the Earfun audio app works with the Air Pro 3, and you get what you’ll mostly need. You can toggle between ANC, Ambient and Normal mode, but there are no sliders to adjust levels. You get a game mode, like we mentioned before. And there’s also an equalizer, which we’ll talk more about in the sound section. Going deeper into settings you see the same settings again; ANC mode switching, game mode and the equalizer. Fun. Apart from that the most noteworthy is the ability to customize controls. That’s it. Unfortunately no device list, smart pause or an auto off timer to be found.

Privacy

Now – you may have probably seen quite a few reviews of this product, but we’re not sure how many will talk about the privacy policy on these earbuds. Let’s just take a look at the data Earfun is collecting in the app – your device type, signal strength, location, cookies, external hardware information – your IP address. All right big deal you say – maybe they need this data – like your gender and email address – for audio purposes. Let’s just check if they share – OH MY GOD WHO ARE THE THIRD PARTY SERVICES THEY’RE SHARING EVERYTHING WITH??

Enough with the drama though. If we’re being honest – we loved the days that EarFun was a brand which made solid earbuds without an app. This was one less thing to worry about. Now – just to be clear, EarFun is NOT the only company doing this. Far from it. Take a look at bigger companies like Jabra or Samsung’s privacy policies and it’ll be clear that this is an industry-wide practice. At least EarFun gives you the option to use the app without logging in. So – don’t log in! And if you don’t need the app – get rid of it!

Sound (Updated 8th Feb after firmware update)

First off let’s talk about some practical aspects of sound. As we said before – these seal really well, so you’re going to enjoy a nice passive seal. Are you on your bike a lot? Well – you will then hear wind in ambient mode. Luckily the normal & ANC modes don’t have that problem.

And the sound quality itself? Well first off – you get APTX Adaptive on board. How do they sound? Well pretty good! But let’s add some nuance to that.

The sound signature out of the box is very V shaped. The low-end bump is considerable. And we mean CONSIDERABLE. The bass has a major focus on the sub-bass. The mid-bass is also thumpy but overall, the whole thing can begin to sound like it has very little definition and things can get a bit lost at the low end. That’s probably the weakest part of these earbuds, because otherwise – these earbuds sound fine!

Update 08 Feb: The new stock tuning after the recent update is wayyy less bloated and the upper mids and higher bass are much very much where they need to be. There’s also a boost in the lower treble which gives a bit more air in the Air Pro 3.

Interestingly – using these with game mode opened up the sound quite a bit more, but it affected the mids a little bit. 

I really enjoyed distorted guitars here. The treble, as we said, can get sparkly, but dialling in the perfect setting might take time and will also often change depending on the genre you’re listening to. Don’t watch MKBHD videos with these. After EQing them, we found that they could produce more clarity. However, we couldn’t EQ out the harsh ‘s-es’ or tame that bass wooliness. But again – this is the nuance we’re adding – we think these buds sound good. For this price class, this is… good.

Conclusion

All right, let’s talk about that price class – $80 and after discount it’s $60 after the first couple of weeks. We’re just gonna say $80, because yeah we’re not in the business of selling stuff, but reviewing stuff. Oh yeah we’re selling our merch. But we won’t review it.

Anyway – let’s take 30 seconds to look at 5 competitors in this range. And then 30 seconds to do a wrap up.

The Earfun Air S

It sounds – a bit more open. And the new update has closed the gap. But that’s pretty much where the advantages end – the Air Pro 3 – has LC3, better touch controls and ANC and transparency.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 2

It’s also in the same price range and to our ears is the best sounding out of this group – not by very much, but still better. Especially when you’re talking about clarity and air. It has pretty much nothing else going for it except the fact that it’s made by Samsung – so you get that ecosystem and after sales advantage.

SoundCore Space A40

Soundwise, they’re a little more exciting – have a way more feature rich app, especially for sound customisation. Their multipoint isn’t perfect either – but they have a full fledged device list in the app. 

JBL Live Pro 2

Both have a similar design and comfort, but we think the ANC on the EarFun is on par with the Live Pro 2, but has better transparency. Controls are better on the EarFun and the JBL sounds a bit better, but has no high quality codecs.

And finally the Edifier W240TN

We’d rank these above the Air Pro 3 for sound and it has buttons instead of touch controls. But there’s no hi-res codec, so you lose a bit of resolution. And there are no bells and whistles – no multipoint, no wireless charging and the ANC isn’t better than the new Earfun.

Reasons to buy the EarFun Air Pro 3

• Excellent ANC/Transparency for the price
• A fairly well priced package overall
• Great microphones for calls in all conditions
• Responsive, accurate and customizable touch controls 
• Pretty good battery life and wireless charging
• Really comfortable for long periods of time
• Pretty good sound, especially after the latest update

Reasons NOT to buy the EarFun Air Pro 3:

• Case size is on the bulky size
• Comfortable, but not a secure fit
• Fairly generic design
• Connection reliability and pairing issues – hopefully this gets fixed with an update
• Support and after sales service – depending on the region you’re in

You’ve been having fun in the Ear. Like a Pro. 3. And we’ve been DHRME. Namaste!