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The Redmi Earbuds S, also known as the Redmi AirDots S, are a pair of affordable truly wireless earphones by Xiaomi. Despite the pricing, the company markets these as full-featured wireless earphones with an attractive, lightweight design, 12 hour battery life, splash-resistance, & a dedicated low-latency gaming mode. As for the price, the Redmi Earbuds S will set you back by a mere $24 or so in the Indian market.

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That"s not a lot of money even for wired earphones, so to lớn deliver a truly wireless earphone experience on such a tight budget was likely not easy. So the question is, does xiaomi have yet another cracking value proposition at its hands or is it yet another pair of forgettable bluetooth earphones clogging up Amazon? I picked up a pair to lớn find out.

Design

The Redmi Earbuds S have what has now become a very common thiết kế for truly wireless earphones. You get the classic in-ear style thiết kế along with a case that also charges the earbuds.

The Redmi Earbuds S come in a rather small and good-looking case. It"s tall, so it won"t fit inside the coin pocket in your jeans, but the overall volume of the case is quite low so it won"t take up a lot of space inside your main pocket or bag.

The case has a matte finish on the exterior with the Redmi hình ảnh embossed on the top and product information printed on the bottom. The matte finish looks decent but can get scuffed & my unit even had some scuffs out of the box.

Before moving inside, there are two more things on the outside. On the front, just below the lip for opening the lid, is a tiny red LED that shows the charging status for the case. The LED is behind the plastic that shines through it & isn"t visible when it isn"t lit. On the back of the case is the microUSB connector for charging. MicroUSB is still common in this price range, so that wasn"t a surprise. But with phones — even in the budget kết thúc of the market — increasingly getting USB-C ports, you might over up having khổng lồ carry a separate cable just khổng lồ charge these earphones with your phone"s charger.

The lid for the case opens quite easily with two hands but as is usual for cases this shape, opening with one hand is a bit of a challenge & may lead to the case being dropped. Inside, the two earbuds are in a standard layout with their speakers pointing down. The case uses two pogo pins for each earbud khổng lồ charge them. The receptacles for the earbuds are the only glossy bits on this case và the product in general.

The case is really light, especially with no earphones inside them. The overall build chất lượng is quite decent for the price. The lid opens and closes with a reasonably well-weighted mechanism and shuts tight with only a little bit of play.

The earbuds have the same matte finish as the case. They have a pill-shaped kiến thiết that fits the cavity of your outer ear quite nicely, although your mileage may vary. There"s also an LED on each that"s hidden away & glows lớn alert you of charging or pairing status.

Both earphones have a large multi-function button on the outside that spans nearly the entire width of the earbud. The problem with this design is that it is nigh on impossible khổng lồ place them in your ears without pushing at least one of the buttons. This could result in all sorts of things happening, from playing music before you are ready or launching the voice assistant on your phone.

I have mentioned this in previous review but having buttons on the earbud themselves isn"t a great idea. Lớn use these buttons, you are required khổng lồ push on them, which pushes the earphones deeper inside your ears every time và creates an uncomfortable sensation. The buttons on the Redmi Earbuds S are also very clicky và make a loud click in your ears every time you use them. Xiaomi mi has also tied a lot of functions khổng lồ these buttons; eight of them, to lớn be precise. This also includes the trò chơi mode (which we will talk about later) that requires three continuous presses of the button, which is more annoying than you can imagine.

The Redmi Earbuds S are rated IPX4 for sweat and water-resistance. This means you can use them for a workout but also in light rain without having khổng lồ worry about damaging them, although it"s not recommended khổng lồ shower or swim with them.

Overall, the Redmi Earbuds S kiến thiết gets a B- for the clumsy button design. Unfortunately, it"s more of an issue with the TWS form-factor in general, which leaves very little space to lớn put basic functionality, and not every hàng hóa can afford lớn have the AirPods" gesture-based design. So now we are stuck with stabbing our ears every time we have lớn play or pause our music.

Comfort

The Redmi Earbuds S are a reasonably comfortable pair of earphones. The earphones come with three different ear tip sizes, all of which are made out of rubber. The default size fits me perfectly and the earphones sit comfortably in my ears without feeling like they would fall out. This is important as they do not have any other appendage to lớn keep them in like some of the sporty models.

The rubber ear tips also afford some amount of passive noise isolation, which coupled with the sound of the music is usually enough to drown out the surroundings without needing active noise-cancellation. I wouldn"t even mind using them for short flights.

As mentioned earlier, the earphones fit my ears quite well despite having smaller than average ears. Having said that, the oblong shape might not necessarily fit everyone well.

Features & Software

The Redmi Earbuds S tư vấn Bluetooth 5.0, however, they cannot be used with two devices at the same time. The công nghệ bluetooth không dây 5.0 connection does mean, however, that both earphones are connected directly to lớn your phone rather than one serving as a master for the other. This means, you can use either of the earbuds individually for calls or music and you can remove one of them và put it in the case & the other one will continue playing without missing a beat. If you were already listening lớn one, then putting in the other one causes a small pause và then both start playing.

The Redmi Earbuds S only tư vấn the standard SBC codec. This is common for budget earphones although increasingly we are seeing more models adopt the AAC codec as well. There isn"t a big difference between the two so the lack of AAC here isn"t a huge deal. You might, however, miss out on more advanced codecs lượt thích aptX depending upon your chất lượng of music, although those codecs are rarely in truly wireless earphones.

The Redmi Earbuds S has no companion app. You just pair them directly và any sound adjustments you have lớn make will have lớn be done through the connected device or music player app. There"s also no way to update their software.

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Performance

The Redmi Earbuds S are mediocre sounding pair of earphones. The problem here is with the tuning, which has a reverse S-curve signature that creates a dark, muddy sound with overwhelming high-bass emphasis but very little presence in the higher frequencies.

The bass on the Redmi Earbuds S is elevated but more in the mid-bass & high-bass region. The low-bass is quite tame by comparison so you don"t get too much rumble in the low-end. On the other hand, there is plenty of boominess in the sound.

The mid inherit this boominess as the low-mids are also quite exaggerated. This causes the sound lớn also sound a bit honky. Male vocals are most affected by this & they just don"t sound natural, with a nasal & boomy quality to them. Most of the percussion instruments are also affected by this.

On the other hand, the entire treble range is quite anemic. While some may prefer the softer S and T sounds, there is no denying that the high-end has very little detail and energy. Without the high-end sparkle, the entire sound signature just comes across as dull and muddy, with all energy being focused in that lower mid-range.

The earbuds vì chưng have decent imaging & stereo separation but the soundstage is quite ordinary & typical for in-ear design.

Now, it"s possible khổng lồ improve the sound signature and I was able to dial in a custom EQ that fixed most of my complaints with the sound signature. It"s basically an S-curve that brigs down the mids and adds more energy to the high-end for a more balanced sound. I did this in the Spotify app but you could vì chưng it in any other ứng dụng or device that has an EQ function. The Redmi Earbuds S EQ reasonably well và I didn"t hear any additional distortion as a result of the EQ. However, we don"t test audio based on what it could be with EQ but rather how it ships out of the box, and here the Redmi Earbuds S perform rather poorly.

Custom EQ in Spotify for iOS

Unfortunately, the issue aren"t limited khổng lồ the sound quality. I also faced some connection issues with the Redmi Earbuds S over a variety of devices. Sometimes, the sound would pause briefly and cause the paired phone to briefly show its volume bar as if it just paired and unpaired quickly in the background. Another issue was more flummoxing, where the earphone would just drop sound every second at a constant cadence. This just went on until the earphones were put back in their case & reconnected.

By far the weirdest one is where the sound just goes mono & gets super compressed. It sounds lượt thích dunking my head underwater as the sound becomes a bit distant and monophonic. Restarting the earphones or just toggling the trò chơi mode would fix this until it just randomly happened again later.

This sort of behavior isn"t acceptable even for the most bargain-basement wireless sản phẩm as we are compromising on basic functionality. A wireless sản phẩm that cannot maintain a stable connection even under ideal conditions (paired phone two feet away with an unobstructed line of sight) is simply broken.

Now speaking of that game mode, mi claims that it reduces latency down khổng lồ 122ms, which sounds lượt thích a lot but not bad for công nghệ bluetooth không dây in general. In practice, the game mode on the Redmi Earbuds S is great. Trying these earbuds in Fortnite with a OnePlus 8 Pro resulted in a massive drop in latency from when a button was tapped on the screen and when the shot was fired. The game mode makes it seem near-instantaneous, which is about as good as you can hope from công nghệ bluetooth audio. I wouldn"t mind using these earphones for gaming as long as it doesn"t require voice chat.

Lastly, the microphone performance is adequate. Voices vì sound a bit nasal và tinny as there"s virtually no bass or highs being recorded but for voice calls this shouldn"t be a big issue.

Battery Life

The Redmi Earbuds S have a claimed battery life of 4 hours when used continuously and 12 hours when combined with all the juice inside the case. I phối the earphones lớn play my usual demo track on loop at a reasonable volume to lớn see how long they last before both the earbuds die.

In my usage, I consistently got just about 3.5 hours of usage from the earbuds. I would then allow them khổng lồ charge completely inside the case and repeat the process. Combined, I did manage to get just over 12 hours of cumulative battery life before the case was completely exhausted. The case then takes about a couple of hours khổng lồ charge on its own without the earbuds in it và the earbuds also take about the same amount of time to charge within a fully charged case.

The overall battery life is not good. Depending upon your use case, you might get by with 3.5 hours, especially if you only listen on short bursts like, say, during workouts or work commutes. However, for anyone wanting to lớn listen for longer periods, such as, while working or traveling, then it"s not going lớn be enough.

Conclusion

As mentioned in the beginning, the Redmi Earbuds S are a very affordable phối of truly wireless earphones. This does allow it some concessions, such as less than stellar sound quality, mediocre battery life, or imperfect design.

However, in my testing, the Redmi Earbuds S had some connectivity issues, which could not be ignored. These were over various connected devices with various apps, so the source was not lớn blame. The issue was entirely with the earphones & as stated before, connectivity issues with wireless products are not something we take lightly.

The Redmi Earbuds S are also underwhelming in every other aspect, which then begs the question, why should one buy these at all? Being inexpensive is a contributing factor khổng lồ a purchase but shouldn"t be the sole reason for it, and the only redeeming chất lượng of the Redmi Earbuds S is that they are inexpensive.

Overall, the Redmi Earbuds S get a pass from me. I know that the combination of truly wireless with affordable pricing can be tempting but it seems we are still some way off from getting a hàng hóa that does this well and the Redmi Earbuds S certainly don"t.