Ever since I reviewed the Realme Buds Air 8, I have been waiting for the Pro model. I was very impressed with the standard model and was curious to see how Realme ups the ante. The newcomer carries a price tag of Rs 6999 in India and brings dual drivers, 55dB active noise cancellation, LHDC 5.0 audio support, long battery life, and a dedicated bone-conduction microphone for calls (I’ll tell you all about it in a bit). On paper, it looks like a very interesting TWS earphone for the price, but is it really good in everyday use? Let’s find out.
Here’s my experience after spending time with the Realme Buds Air 8 Pro for several weeks now in my home, office, metro and rikshaw commutes, watching movies, listening to music and taking calls, and sometimes just wearing them to avoid people and noise. It wasn’t perfect, but very close. Let’s dive in.
The Realme Buds Air 8 Pro is one of the most complete TWS earphones you can buy under Rs 7,000. It offers expressive sound, effective ANC, reliable call quality, long battery life, and a comfortable fit. Granted, the Realme Link app still needs some refinement, and the glossy design won’t be for everyone, but these are minor qualms in an otherwise well-rounded package that is easy to recommend.
The Realme Buds Air 8 Pro come in Master Black and Master White colour options. Our review unit came in the white finish, which combines a matte body with a glossy metallic top. This is very reflective, and you can even see your face in it. The lustrous surface attracts a lot of smudges, too, especially on the case. The earbuds also have a glossy, steel-like finish on the stems, which gives them a distinct look. However, if I had to pick this or the more sober and sophisticated finish of the black one, I would go with the latter.
The Realme Buds Air 8 Pro case is compact and pocket-friendly. Both its and the buds’ build quality is reassuring. The buds sit securely inside the ears without much pressure. One day, it started drizzling during my commute back home, but I confidently kept wearing them thanks to the IP55 ingress protection rating.
Overall, the design is practical and comfortable. The glossy case element may be slightly divisive, but that hardly comes in the way of your actual wearability and usage.
You get a quick and straightforward pairing experience on Android thanks to Fast Pair, and I had no issue connecting it with my MacBook. It should work fine with iPhone and Windows, too. Pairing was followed by a no-fuss connectivity experience. It runs on Bluetooth 6.1 and supports simultaneous connection with three devices, and allows seamless taking calls or switching music playback between these devices. The only catch is that if you are listening to Spotify on your phone and trying to watch a YouTube video on your laptop, you’ll have to pause one to start listening on the other.
The Realme Link app is one of the better companion apps in this segment. It needs logging in, and once you do that, you can see all your Realme audio, smart home and fitness-oriented products. Tap the Buds Air 8 Pro from the list, and you can see the earbuds’ battery percentage and various settings like ANC controls, EQ presets, firmware updates, wear detection settings, Game mode (low latency), and audio personalisation settings.
On one hand, features like tap-based controls are fairly customisable and quite responsive too. The swipe up/down gesture on the buds’ stems to control volume is particularly useful. But the app needs some polishing. You see, I used the hearing test feature called Golden Sound to generate a profile. I applied it and was pleased by the result, but later, one day when the app prompted me to re-log in, after logging in, the saved profile was missing.
Other rough edges include the Ask AI feature (which uses Gemini), wasn’t working because of a busy server. Similarly, Mindflow mode wasn’t working. Face to Face Translate feature also wasn’t working as seamlessly as I would have wanted it to, even though I had given it the microphone permissions.
All these things don’t necessarily impact the audio experience of the earbuds, so I can give them a pass. It’s just that if the brand aims to compete in a higher segment, the software experience needs to be more refined.
The driver setup is similar to the standard Realme Buds Air 8: 11mm + 6mm duo, and you also get support for high-res LHDC 5.0 codec. The tuning has familiar attributes like good, strong bass, clear vocals and safe highs, but all of these aspects are enhanced for an even more expressive sound.
Take the ‘Vallah’ song from Cocktail 2, for instance, the sub-bass, dhol beats and other instruments sound tighter and tastier. Nick Hakim’s I Don’t Know has a very atmospheric presence on the Buds Air 8 Pro. The voice of the lead vocalist from Alabama Shakes’ Don’t Wanna Fight and the guitar riff both reach the corners of my mind on this pair. In The Temptations’ My Girl, the high vocals and instruments in the high frequencies sound clear and not-so-harsh. So much is happening on the Buds Air 8 Pro compared to the Buds Air 8, and due to this, the 8 Pro could seem more fatiguing to some. But, I am sure, most would find the Pro’s tuning more interesting than the standard model.
You can tweak the sound to some extent using EQ mode, Spatial Audio, High-definition sound, Dynamic audio, and Golden sound settings in the Realme Link app. The Golden sound option is not available on the standard Buds Air 8 model.
All in all, it is one of the best-sounding earphones in the range and easily recommendable to the mainstream audience.
Also Read: Amazon Echo Dot Max review: A good-sounding smart home hub, still waiting for Alexa+
Realme claims up to 55dB active noise cancellation, and the ANC performance is genuinely impressive. There is wind-noise reduction, also. I was choosing the Max mode from the different EQ modes in the Realme Link app. Even in this, you will hear sudden, random sounds occasionally, and I didn’t mind that at all. On the other end of the spectrum, the Transparency mode also sounded reasonably natural.
Compared to a budget pair of earbuds I reviewed recently, this one offered a clear improvement in call quality. I preferred using the Buds Air 8 Pro while calling my wife from the office. The combination of six microphones and the dedicated bone-conduction sensor isolates your voice well. Both of us could hear each other properly without any noticeable background noise.
So good sound for entertainment and calls, and a good shield against outside noise are ample reasons to like this Realme offering.
With ANC disabled, at 80% volume level, and AAC codec, playing a FLAC file, the earbuds ran for 10 hours 40 minutes. With the case, the brand claims up to 50 hours of battery life. This is lower than the Buds Air 8’s claimed runtime, but it is still plenty long. Just with the buds, you can easily get through a workday and say you are going on a 4-day vacay, the Buds Air 8 Pro should last the entire trip.
Turning ANC on naturally reduces endurance, but the overall battery life remains competitive.
This is backed by fast charging support. Realme gives an estimate of 11 hours worth of playback from just 10 minutes of charging. Good figures.
Well, the review period is over, and I will still be keeping these as my default earbuds for daily metro rides, office work, movie sessions, and phone calls. That, more than any specification, says a lot about how good they are.
The Realme Buds Air 8 Pro improves upon the standard Buds Air 8 in meaningful ways. The sound is more expressive and engaging, ANC is stronger, call quality is excellent, and features like triple-device connectivity, swipe volume controls, and Golden Sound add genuine value to the overall experience.
The only area that sees a slight downgrade from the Buds Air 8 is battery life. Even then, it has more than the required juice for daily use and can comfortably last through a long weekend trip. During everyday use, the Realme Link app has a lot of useful features, but the AI-powered ones didn’t feel particularly polished in my experience.
The glossy elements of the design are also not to my personal taste because of their reflective, smudge-prone finish. That said, they do help the earbuds stand out, and these are more personal preferences than actual drawbacks. They don’t meaningfully affect what is otherwise an excellent pair of earbuds.
So yes, I can comfortably recommend the Realme Buds Air 8 Pro at its asking price of Rs 6,999. It is one of the most complete TWS earphones you can buy in this segment today.
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Also Read: Oppo Enco Air 5 Pro review: Easy to recommend TWS earbuds under Rs 5,000