The Air Pro 4+ are the latest true wireless earbuds from EarFun, and the flagship model in the company’s lineup. The Air Pro 4+ come packed with features, such as a dual-driver layout with a hybrid DD+BA arrangement, wide codec support, including LDAC, aptX Lossless, and LC3 with Auracast, a six-microphone layout, 50ms low-latency mode, wireless charging, and active noise cancellation.
All of this is available for under $100, with the latest price at the time of writing being just $76. Let’s see how they perform.
Design
The design of the Air Pro 4+ is very similar to the previous Air Pro 4 model, with a glossy dual-tone exterior and long stalks. The earbuds are slightly on the chunkier side, but this isn’t a problem, and it makes handling them easier.
The case has been completely redesigned and now features a cool vertically opening hatch that reveals a sizable portion of the interior. It reminded me of the hatch on mid-engine cars like the Ford GT40 that takes half the bodywork with it when opened. Inside, the earbuds are placed vertically, which also looks more interesting than typical case designs.
The overall build quality, fit, and finish on the earbuds and the case are good. The earbuds also have an IP55 rating for dust and water resistance.
In terms of comfort, the Air Pro 4+ once again score well. The ear tips are soft and don’t cause any discomfort while inserting or removing the earbuds. You can wear these for long durations without experiencing any aches or pains.
Software
The EarFun Air Pro 4+ work with the EarFun Audio app, available on Android and iOS. As pointed out in our previous EarFun reviews, this app is very straightforward and works really well, with all the relevant options present and accounted for.
A new addition to the app for these earbuds is AI Translation. In theory, it’s meant to work similarly to the feature on the new AirPods Pro 3, where the app will translate the foreign language you are hearing and translate it for you in real-time. You can also speak into the earbuds, and the app will translate the text so you can show it to others.
EarFun Audio app
In reality, it rarely works that well. While the translation on the AirPods Pro 3 was of passable speed, it’s quite slow on the Air Pro 4+. Unless you plan on waiting several seconds after the person in front of you is done speaking to understand what was said, that too in a somewhat unreliable manner, then you can give this a try. Otherwise, you may have to look into other ways of communicating in a foreign language. I’m sure this feature will get faster and more usable in the future, but right now it’s far from ready to be used in real-world scenarios.
Performance
Audio quality
The Air Pro 4+ have a hybrid dual-driver design, consisting of a 10mm dynamic driver and a balanced armature unit. They support Bluetooth 6.0 and feature a wide range of codecs. Starting with the basic SBC and AAC, you also get LDAC, along with aptX, aptX Adaptive, and aptX Lossless. There is also support for LC3 when using Bluetooth LE, along with Auracast.
The headlining codec here is most definitely aptX Lossless, which is still quite rare on devices these days. Unfortunately, it’s so rare that I did not have a compatible smartphone to pair with at the time of testing, so the best aptX version available for testing was aptX Adaptive. So I opted to use the next best thing, which is LDAC, although all codecs were checked as part of routine testing.
The Air Pro 4+ have very impressive audio quality. EarFun has shown over the years to have a good ear and taste when it comes to tuning their audio products, and the Air Pro 4+ is the best I’ve tried from the company so far.
The company has more or less perfected the ubiquitous Harman target curve, where you get just the right amount of bass boost over reference values, a slight dip in the mids, and good treble extension. The bass has good body and weight to it without being bloated or mid-bass heavy. The mids remain clear for the most part with good vocal clarity and instrument separation. The treble from the balanced armature unit is sharp and clear without sounding disjointed from the dynamic driver or being too shrill. The overall sound is balanced, clean, and works well across genres and content.
The only aspect of the sound I feel EarFun can improve upon is the timbre. It’s not easy to get a natural sound even if you have a good tuning. You can see all the right numbers on the screen, and the sound can still be a bit off, which is especially the case with balanced armature units that tend to sound a bit metallic. This is also the case with the Air Pro 4+ sound, and the sound can be slightly nasal at times.
This is very much nitpicking that normally wouldn’t happen if the rest of the sound wasn’t so good. But it’s also the complaint that I’ve had with Chinese audio products in the past, where the technical performance is impressive, but that last bit of nuance and musicality is missing, which will result in both an objectively and a subjectively pleasing listening experience. Once you factor in that last bit that allows the listener to fully connect with their music, that’s when you achieve true audio greatness that transcends numbers and spec sheets.
Microphone
The Air Pro 4+ have decent microphone performance. In a quiet environment, voices sound clear and reasonably loud to be heard properly on the other end. In a noisy environment, the earbuds do a decent job of suppressing the background noise. The voice quality suffers a fair bit here, but remains audible.
Noise cancellation
The Air Pro 4+ have active noise cancellation. You can choose between two different auto modes or manually adjust the level of ANC you desire. It wasn’t clear what the difference between the first two AI modes was, as they both sounded the same and had roughly the same descriptions. There is also a wind mode that turns down the ANC effect to reduce the buffeting noise in windy environments. Unfortunately, you have to enable this manually, as other manufacturers have figured out how to just enable it automatically when they detect noise from strong winds.
The ANC performance on the Air Pro 4+ isn’t very good. There is decent isolation in lower frequency ranges, but it seems the higher ranges are more or less untouched. This does not create a very effective ANC effect, as you feel like you can still hear a fair bit of your surroundings. I’ve definitely experienced better quality ANC, even at this price range.
The earbuds also have a transparency mode, which works well enough. The Default mode boosts the sound around you in all frequency ranges, and sounds the best overall in terms of overall clarity, even if the sound is unnatural. The Natural mode is supposed to fix this, but the sound was quite muted, and felt a bit stuffy.
One annoyance with these earbuds is that if you pull just one earbud out of your ear while using ANC, the other one in your ear doesn’t immediately switch to transparency mode. This is something most earbuds do these days, and even if it’s not enabled by default, you can always pull one earbud out and manually switch to transparency mode, and when you put that earbud back in, both will go back to the ANC mode. On the Air Pro 4+, switching manually to transparency mode with one earbud out causes both earbuds to stay in that mode even if you put the earbud back in.
Battery life
The Air Pro 4+ have a claimed 12 hours of battery life with ANC disabled. It’s not clear what codec was used for this testing, as the earbuds returned only 6.5 hours in my testing while using LDAC in the Balanced bitrate preset, and 8.25 hours while using aptX Adaptive.
Conclusion
The Air Pro 4+ are an overall great-sounding set of earbuds, as we have largely come to expect from EarFun. It’s also cool that you get a wide variety of codecs, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter which one you pick, as you get the same great quality everywhere.
Other aspects of performance are more in line with the price you pay. Microphone quality and battery life are decent, but the ANC performance isn’t anything to write home about.
I would not recommend the Air Pro 4+ if those things are important to you. For me, this is a very straightforward audio quality-focused product, much like another we reviewed recently. You buy these because you care about the sound, and everything else is secondary. You probably got into the budget IEM hobby recently and are realizing how annoying it is to use them with your phone on a daily basis. The Air Pro 4+ will scratch that itch for you, but without any of the hassles of a cable.