Realme Buds Air 5 Pro review: good sound quality, ANC, and more under Rs 5,000

Best TWS earbuds under Rs 5,000?

• By Sanket Vijayasarathy -
Published On: October 9, 2023

Gone are the days when one had to look above the Rs 10,000 mark for good truly wireless earbuds. We are seeing brands like OnePlus, Realme, OPPO, CMF and others come out with good-sounding TWS earbuds under Rs 5,000. Not only do these affordable earbuds sound good, but they also come with respectable design language, active noise cancellation, and other impressive features. The Realme Buds Air 5 Pro is one such pair of TWS earbuds from the house of Realme. The earbuds are just shy of Rs 5,000 and we take a look at how they fare in today's competitive landscape.

The lowdown

• The Realme Buds Air 5 Pro's case comes with a familiar oval design. It features a glossy finish that comes in Sunrise Beige and Astral Black. I received the Sunrise Beige colour option for review, which is essentially all white with an orange accent on the inner part of the earbuds' rubber ear tips. The Astral Black option is pure black without any accent, at least from the images. I assume the Black variant will attract a lot more visible smudges.

• The case features a small silver matte-finished button on the right side for Bluetooth pairing and a USB-C port at the bottom. The surface of the lid has a transparent accent to show off the Realme branding.
• The charging case is quite lightweight and largely sturdy. The lid is easy enough to open even without a slit due to the glossy nature of the case. Don't expect a premium look and feel here; the design is adequate for the price range, nothing more. The glossy nature of the case means you will notice scratches and scruffs over time unless you put a cover or skin around it.

• The earbuds have a protruding stem design with a polished finish. The angular earbuds sit comfortably inside the ears and you get three pairs of earbud tips in the box for you to choose from. The medium-sized ear tips are attached by default, and you can perform an Earbud fit test through the Realme Link app to see if the tips are right for your ears.
• The earbuds fit well in the ear and stay fixed even during running. They don't feel heavy and I was able to use them for a few hours at a stretch without feeling uncomfortable. The earbuds are IPX5 rated to withstand minor splashes but likely won't survive a dunk in water.

• The Realme Buds Air 5 Pro comes equipped with 50dB active noise cancellation support, which is a solid feature in this price segment. The earbuds can reduce loud chattering and ambient noises while travelling by train or flight to a decent extent. Some external sounds will still seep through like the announcer calling out the next stop or the screeching of the train, even while playing music at around 50 per cent volume levels. The Buds Air 5 Pro won't completely block out environmental sounds, but the ANC performance is quite good for its price.

• Realme has added some nice features here such as LDAC codec support, Hi-Res Audio Certification, and Spatial Audio. The latter delivers a more immersive, 360-degree experience where sounds come from all angles. Spatial Audio can be enabled through the Realme Link app. In fact, the Realme Link app is important if you want to tweak the buds to suit your personal sound preference. It's easily one of the better companion apps out there and Realme has done well to improve the app's UI and features year after year. The app allows you to switch to different sound presets or tweak the equaliser as per your taste, enable high-definition sound (LDAC), perform earbud fit tests, customise gesture actions, enable dual-device connection and more.

• Wear detection is a neat feature too with the earbuds being able to automatically play and pause music depending on whether they are in your ears or not.
• Talking about sound quality, the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro earbuds are tuned to deliver bass-heavy sounds by default, which bass lovers will be happy with. The TWS earbuds are equipped with a coaxial dual driver acoustic architecture that consists of an 11mm bass driver and a 6mm micro-planar tweeter. The 11mm bass driver is what delivers that punchy bass from drums in Rock songs and lower-end beats in Pop music. This, however, comes at the cost of overpowering the vocals. In its default bass-forward profile, the earbuds are best suited for Hip-Hop and Pop songs.
• A quick switch to the Natural Balance preset via the Realme Links app is advisable for those looking for just the right amount of bass without drowning out the mids and highs. With this balanced sound signature, the mids and highs will sound clearer, which makes listening to busy Rock and Pop songs better. 
• Connectivity is seamless with the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro. I had no trouble pairing the earbuds to an Android phone or my personal iPhone 14 Plus. I also didn't encounter drops in connectivity during the review period. I was able to seamlessly switch between my MacBook Air and iPhone 14 Plus after enabling dual-device connection.
• I found the touch controls to be slightly iffy to use at times. You'll have to either double tap, triple or touch and hold the upper part of the left or right stem to perform certain actions, such as playing or pausing media, jumping to the next track, switching between ANC and transparency, etc. You can customise these actions through the Realme Link app. During my time with the earbuds, I would often miss tapping the upper area of the stem.

• The case takes under an hour to charge from zero to 100 per cent. Realme claims that the earbuds can deliver 7 hours of music on just 10 minutes of charge and up to 40 hours of playback in total. This is more or less on point as I used the earbuds for a couple of hours every day and didn't find the need to charge the case until after a week.

Verdict

Priced at Rs 4,999, the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro are value-for-money TWS earbuds that come with plenty of useful features. They deliver good noise cancellation that can match some higher-end TWS earbuds. Features like LDAC and High-Res Audio support and Spatial Audio are great to see in a sub-Rs 5,000 earbuds. On top of all this, the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro delivers excellent battery life.

As far as sound quality goes, the Realme Buds Air 5 Pro are clearly tuned for bass lovers but the Realme Link app allows you to tweak the sound profile if you're someone who prefers a balanced sound. Some downsides include a rather cheap-looking glossy case and iffy touch controls, but none of these are deal-breakers. If you can do without LDAC support and dual drivers, the vanilla Realme Buds Air 5 (review) at Rs 2,999 with the same 50dB aNC should suffice.

Editor's rating: 8 / 10

Pros:

• Excellent battery life
• Good audio quality for bass lovers
• Impressive ANC and Spatial Audio

Cons:

• Case feels flimsy
• Touch controls can feel iffy at times