EarFun Air Pro 4 review: "Gamers have been left a little short-changed"

When I reviewed the previous iteration of EarFun's Air Pro earbuds, I made a point of saying that while this brand's active noise cancelling was great, it wasn't quite strong enough to block out blustery Scottish winds while I was out on my walks. One of the first times I was out and about, testing my set of EarFun Air Pro 4 earbuds, the wind started to pick up. I opened the app, and to my delight, there was now an anti-wind level of noise cancelling.

I'm not trying to claim that this brand has implemented this change on my behalf. There are likely a fair few sets of ANC gaming earbuds that are trying to form a defence against windy weather, but regardless, this showed me that EarFun is a brand that's constantly trying to improve on what it's made before. You don't always get that attitude from the biggest brands, especially in audio. Sure, occasional bugs will be improved on, and feedback can be taken on board if it impacts a big company's bottom line, but EarFun feels like a scrappy underdog that wants to service its customers better than the big brands, and its products are better for it.

Granted, there aren't huge, sweeping physical changes to the EarFun Air Pro 4s compared to the 3s I reviewed previously. The buds themselves have a very similar design. But for a slightly increased price of $80 / £80, which still sees discounts down to ~$50, there are enough features and bumps to audio quality for me to recommend these as a next step.

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Design

Besides a slight change to the shape of the pillbox charging case, the physical design here isn't very dissimilar to the EarFun Air Pro 3. EarFun has opted for the same AirPods Pro-adjacent design of an inner earbud that secures with a rubberized tip, and an earring body that dangles down.

The testing pair I have has the same dark blueish hue as the Air Pro 3, despite being officially called the "Black" colorway, but you can choose a Glossy White or Royal Blue color if you prefer.

The pillbox has a slightly less bulky shape to it now, keeping itself to a more rounded rectangular body than the oval-square of the last generation. It's a bit darker as well, which helps it to look a bit tidier, but its matte surface is still prone to scuffs and markings if you keep it in a back pocket or in a backpack.

Features

While physical changes between the Air Pro 3 and 4 might be harder to spot, heading into the brand's updated mobile app is where you'll notice a lot more of a performance boost. It's there that you can control a lot of the features, as well as complete firmware upgrades, which EarFun frequently drops to give you bug fixes and quality of life improvements.

For starters, you'll get three central noise-canceling options. Normal, which doesn't do anything with the ambient sounds around you other than what the physical fit of the buds will drown out from being in your ears. Secondly, you have ambient sound, which will amplify the sounds around you so you can stay aware of your surroundings. This splits into two modes, Default, and Natural, with Default playing you those world sounds a little louder, at least to my ears.

Thirdly, you have noise-cancelling mode, which divides into a larger control menu. There's Strong ANC, Balance ANC, which EarFun says "provides the best balance between noise reduction depth and wearing comfort", then two AI-infused options.

AI Environment Adaptive ANC, "supports real-time detection of environmental noise and wearing status, intelligently adjusting noise cancellation depth." There's also AI Ear Adaptive ANC, which involves "Real-time detection of ambient noise and wearing status, intelligently adjusting noise cancellation depth according to ambient noise, providing different noise cancellation effects".

Finally, there's Wind Noise cancelling, which does pretty much what it says on the tin.

Like you, probably, I feel like the two AI options are a little niche and hard to distinguish from one another. In testing, I found it tricky to really tell the difference, but I do think it's good for you to have fine control over noise cancelling so you can find the best fit for your ears and environment. I mainly kept to Strong ANC and Wind mode, and I was very satisfied with the amount of background noise that was bleeding into my music, podcasts, or games.

EarFun has packed in the same Game Mode as it had with the Air Pro 3. This gives you low-latency audio, which is ideal for gaming on the go. Annoyingly, when you activate this, it doesn't carry over to other devices or set it as the default, so you do have to go into the app to activate it every time. Moreover, if you were hoping to use these earbuds for gaming across multiple devices, you're going to need to put up with latency. It's a real shame these buds don't have a low-latency mode beyond this one option in the app, because it'd make them a lot more viable as a gaming headset.

What's pretty clever here is in-ear detection, which means that if you take one of the earbuds off, any audio being fed to them will stop playing, which might be handy if you need to quickly talk to someone while you're listening to music. This can be kind of annoying if you leave it on at all times though, because it can result in audio cutting out if you're just wanting to listen through one earbud. Thankfully, it's easy enough to turn off. You can, of course, customize your touchpad controls, or even turn those off entirely to avoid accidental taps.

One feature I find particularly good value for money is dual device connection, since it lets you connect to two different Bluetooth devices at once. The Air Pro 4 is kitted out with Qualcomm's aptX, which will give you more efficient compression and a lossless quality - which is often a feature reserved for more expensive earbuds. Combined with Auracast, a feature that lets one Bluetooth device broadcast to multiple speakers simultaneously, you've got an advanced set of earbuds for the money.

Last, but certainly not least, is EarFun's Equalizer menu, which has seen a pretty substantial glow-up from when I tested the previous version of its wireless earbuds. This feels almost as rich as the SteelSeries Arctis Nova mobile app, used with the SteelSeries Arctis Game Buds, and while it might not give you individual profiles for video games, it feels just as deep to play around with.

There are loads of easy presets you can use to boost bass, vocals, or tailor your buds toward certain musical genres. While a lot of these can seem like a gimmick, I found that they genuinely make a difference to the audio quality.

You can also configure your own unique sound profile and EQ to get them exactly how you like them.

Performance

As you'll see from the length of the features section of this review, EarFun hasn't left much on the cutting room floor here. There's a silly amount to play with and configure - it really does make these feel like an overpowered set of earbuds for their cost. But I can't help but feel like, for all the allowance that's been given to music listening here, gamers have been left a little short-changed.

When I originally set out to test EarFun's Air Pro 4, I was hoping to use its excellent noise-canceling and reasonable price as a Meta Quest accessory, or an option for whatever VR headset you're using. As it stands, there's no way to activate low-latency mode without the mobile app, which is such a waste of potential for a set of earbuds this good. I understand that EarFun isn't necessarily aiming its earbuds at gamers, but if there were a Windows app or some on-board settings that allowed gaming mode to carry over to other devices, these would have been a nigh-on unstoppable force in the gaming audio market. Finding a set of gaming-aimed earbuds can cost a lot more than $100, so EarFun would have stood out as a budget alternative.

As it stands, I haven't been able to do many gaming-centric tests here because, although most audio from sources like YouTube and Spotify is passable when connected to the Asus ROG Ally X or the Meta Quest 3, there's too much of a latency stopgap when playing games.

It's a shame, because out and about, I couldn't ask for a more comfortable or better-sounding pair of buds for the money. This is ANC used to the best of its ability. I don't remember it making such a difference to audio quality since I first tried Bose's first-generation noise-cancellation headphones. It's not just about drowning out background audio; it's about the clarity that brings to enhance the audio you do want to hear. There feels like a great marriage between EQ, ANC settings, and hardware with these buds to make them an excellent choice.

Using the patented GameRadar+ testing playlist on Spotify, I don't feel like there's an area of weakness for the Air Pro 4s. I kept the EQ profile in default and played around with genre presets, and in either case, John Williams' Yoda and the Force felt as at home as Slipknot's Psychosocial or the 8BitBigBand's rendition of KK Moody.

From using them for voice calls, I'm told there's strong micropone quality too, which is always an added bonus since this can easily be an afterthought - yet another reason these would be great for gamers if there was more software allowance.

Battery life is really great. I've been using these earbuds twice a week in the afternoons while working in noisy cafes recently, and as I write up this review a month later, the case is only just reaching 10% with both earbuds at 90%. The box quotes about 52 hours of battery life overall, with 11 hours on a single charge of the buds. I'd say that's accurate, and although it's hard to keep track and accurately test battery life that's this long, I have to charge these so frequently that battery life isn't even close to an issue.

Should you buy the EarFun Air Pro 4?

If you're a gamer looking for your next set of ANC earbuds, I'd probably look elsewhere, and it pains me to say that. If you play on mobile, I can recommend these wholeheartedly because you'll get brilliant audio quality and a low-latency mode. For gamers on any other platform, I can't ignore the fact that latency is a bigger issue. It's a real shame, because for every other general use scenario, these are excellent earbuds that punch well above their price tag.

I do have to give the caveat, however, that I did get one failed pair of earbuds while testing these. I don't see many reports about this being a widespread issue, and from 5,017 user reviews on Amazon in the US, they have an overall score of 4.4 stars. I'd put my issue down to an early reviewer's sample, but it's something I'm duty-bound to tell you about either way.

Overall, this is a feature-rich and great value set of earbuds I can easily recommend to folks who need a new set for general use. If EarFun did happen to implement Wind ANC following my last review, I'm praying they'll find a way to implement low-latency modes for other devices next. If not, a guy can only ask.

How I tested the EarFun Air Pro 4

I used the EarFun Air Pro 4 as my daily use wireless earbuds for listening to any and all audio on the go. I compared my time with them closely to other earbuds I tested, like the last-gen EarFun options, the Razer Moray in-ear monitors, Denon's Noise Cancelling earbuds, and Samsung's Galaxy Buds. I made extensive use of the EarFun mobile app, and I tried my best to test them on other gaming devices like the ROG Ally X, gaming PCs, and the Meta Quest 3

For more on how we test gaming headsets, check out the full GamesRadar+ Hardware Policy.

For more on gaming audio, take a look at the best computer speakers, the best PS5 headset, and the best Xbox Series X headset.