Honor new ANC earbuds claim to cancel noise as good as the AirPods Pro

During Honor’s global event, they had announced its new Magic EarBuds that looks like yet another AirPods clone. Although it looks similar to its Honor FlyPods Lite, the new version is offered with hybrid active noise cancelling technology.

Available in either white or teal, the Honor Magic EarBuds come in an in-ear design that has an extended stem. Instead of a “tooth floss” inspired case, the charging case for the Magic EarBuds looks like an extended Galaxy Buds and each earpiece is stowed horizontally. For a better fit, the silicon ear tips are also replaceable.

According to Honor, it uses a 10mm driver unit for its speakers and three dedicated microphones for clearer voice conversations. To cancel out noise effectively, the Magic EarBuds has feedforward mic on the outside and a feedback mic on the inside to catch remaining unwanted noise.

Honor has claimed that its effective noise cancellation is on par if not better than the competition. Based on their internal comparison, the Magic EarBuds appears to be just as good as the Apple AirPods Pro in selected scenarios and it even beats our favourite Sony WF-1000XM3 which is now going for less than RM700 online. It is a bold claim and we can’t wait to put it to the test once it is released in Malaysia.

The Magic EarBuds charges via USB-C and it takes 1.5 hours to get a full charge. Its 37mAh battery offers a rated music playback of 3.5 hours or 3 hours for voice calls. With the charging case that has a 410mAh battery, you’ll get up to 13 hours of total music playback. As a comparison, the FlyPods Lite has a rated 3-hour battery life and you can get up to 12 hours with the provided charging case.

The Honor Magic EarBuds are priced at EUR 129 (about RM591) and it will be available starting in April 2020. Malaysia is among the first wave countries to get it and we are guessing that it could be slightly cheaper than the Huawei FreeBuds 3.

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