1. How is the overall sound quality on the Realme Buds Air?
Keeping the price tag in mind, the Realme Buds Air produces good quality sound with emphasis on vocals. The bass levels, as with most earphones with this design aren’t too high. For casual listening, you will be more than satisfied with the sound quality but if you’re an audiophile, there surely are better sounding pairs of earphones out there for the same price, but they may not offer the same set of features or come in a similar form factor.
Also, due to the design, there is some amount of sound leakage at high volume levels, and there isn’t any sort of sound isolation so you can hear your surroundings. One thing we observed is that at high volume levels, above the 80% mark especially, the sound gets a little piercing to the ear. This isn’t something we can describe too well through text, but the frequency is rather sharp and the experience of listening to music isn’t too pleasant. This shouldn’t be an issue if you don’t crank up the volume to max all the time.
2. Is there any static noise when there is no music playing?
Yes, when you have the Realme Buds Air on and there’s nothing playing through them, there’s often a static noise that you can hear. It isn’t too loud, but it can be annoying at times.
3. Can I use the Realme Buds Air to watch videos/movies?
Absolutely. The Realme Buds Air can be used even while watching videos/movies, but you will experience slight latency. You can use the low latency mode to improve the experience, but it still isn’t perfect. You won’t notice it after a while, but if you pay attention, you will observe a delay in the audio. There is also this glitch that we encountered, wherein the audio gets cut-off for a second or two during video playback. Happens rarely though.
4. How is the build quality of the Realme Buds Air?
Both the case and the buds themselves are constructed out of solid plastic and feel quite good in the hand. Even when compared to more premium competitors like the AirPods, the Realme Buds Air feel similar, albeit slightly chunkier. We have the white color variant which tends to get dirty often and picks up a lot of scratches so handle it with care.
5. Are the Realme Buds Air comfortable when worn?
The Realme Buds Air has a rest-on-the-canal design instead of an in-ear design and this something we prefer, but it’s subjective and you may have a different opinion. The Realme Buds Air feels comfortable even when worn for long durations due to the fact that they don’t go deep into your ear and only rest on it, and they’re also lightweight which helps the cause. They are, however, slightly on the chunky side so if you have tiny ears, you might have a hard time to get these to fit in your ears.
6. Can I use the Realme Buds Air while exercising/gymming?
Since the fit of the earbuds isn’t tight, they can easily fall off when subjected to rapid motion so we wouldn’t recommend the Realme Buds Air if your primary use case is running/exercising. While there is an IP52 rating, we still wouldn’t trust them near sweat/water, so this is another reason to be cautious while using the Realme Buds Air while exercising or at the gym.
7. How does the Realme Buds Air perform while taking calls?
If your primary use case is to make calls, the Realme Buds Air is a great option. The quality of the microphone is great, and the other party too can be heard very well. However, while the mic is good, it also ends up capturing a lot of ambient noise which can be disturbing to the other party. If you’re indoors though, this shouldn’t be an issue.
8. What are some features of the Realme Buds Air?
The Realme Buds Air offers some convenient features like fast pair, meaning your smartphone will pair with the earbuds as soon as you open the case. Then there are touch controls, wear detection, and low-latency mode for gaming.
9. How well does wear detection work on the Realme Buds Air?
The Realme Buds Air has the ability to play/pause music each time you put the earbuds on or remove them from your ears which is a really handy feature. In our testing, the wear detection seemed to work 90-95% of the time, which is much better than the touch controls.
10. How well do touch controls work on the Realme Buds Air?
The Realme buds Air has touch-sensitive controls that let you play/pause, skip tracks and trigger voice assistants with the help of multiple taps on the earbuds themselves. However, this feature is a hit or a miss depending on how and where you tap the buds. It does work, but it’s not very reliable.
11. Can I use the Realme Buds Air while playing PUBG?
Well, technically you can, given that the low-latency mode does help with gaming, but the experience isn’t the best as some minute sound details like footsteps of enemies cannot be heard too well on the Realme Buds Air. For gaming, we would always recommend a good pair of wired headphones.
12. Can I use just one earbud at a time?
Yes, you can use just one earbud at a time in case you don’t want to use both. You first have to remove both earbuds from the case and once they’re connected to your phone, you can put one earbud back into the case.
13. Can I use the Realme Buds Air with iOS/iPhone?
Yes, the Realme Buds Air works seamlessly with iOS too. All the features including fast pair work as advertised and there is no glitch/issue whatsoever. These are in fact, a great alternative to the AirPods for your iPhone.
14. How is the battery life of the Realme Buds Air?
Realme claims a playback time of 3 hours on a single charge and an additional 17 hours using the case. While we cannot vouch for the exact numbers, we used the earbuds to binge-watch a few episodes of a show and they did not die even after 2.5 hours of use so it’s safe to say that you will indeed get results close to the claimed battery life. You can go up to 3-4 days of moderate use without having to charge them up.
15. How long does it take to charge the Realme Buds Air?
The charging case can be topped up completely in about two hours through the USB Type-C port. We do not have any metric on how long the earbuds take to charge within the case, but a half an hour charge should give you a good 2 hours of usage. If you’re charging it wirelessly, it takes an additional 30-40 minutes.
16. Can I pair the Realme Buds Air with two devices simultaneously?
The answer to his question is slightly tricky. While you can pair the Realme Buds Air to two devices at the same time, you cannot be connected to both devices at once. To give you an example, we paired the Realme Buds Air to the iPhone 11 Pro as well as a MacBook Pro and each time we wanted to switch the connection from the phone to the laptop, we had to turn the Bluetooth off on the phone and manually go to settings and connect the earbuds. While switching back, we had to turn Bluetooth off on the laptop and manually connect it to the phone. While this may not seem like the best implementation, it isn’t that big of a hassle and takes hardly a minute.
17. How well do the Realme Buds Air compare to the AirPods?
The Realme Buds Air costs a fraction of what the AirPods cost but offers a similar feature-set. The sound quality isn’t as good, but it surely comes close. The fact that the design is similar too makes it a perfect AirPods alternative on a budget.
18. Where to Buy Realme Buds Air from?
Realme Buds Air costs Rs 3,999 and comes in three colors – White, Black and Yellow. They can be purchased from Flipkart or Realme’s own website. We hope to have answered all the questions that you had regarding the Realme Buds Air. If you think we’ve missed something or if there’s something specific you want to know, tweet to us @techpp and we’ll be glad to help you out.
