EarFun Free Pro Earphones Review: Surprisingly Good

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True wireless earphones have transformed, in just a few years, from an expensive and unreliable device – to a popular category full of models from a variety of manufacturers, and in a wide range of prices.

The “EarFun Free Pro” true wireless earphones belong somewhere in the middle of this busy market, at least when you look at their price. With active noise cancellation, touch controls, 32-hour playtime and more features, they promise a lot for such inexpensive buds.

So I wasn’t expecting much… and boy, was I surprised when I listened to them for the first time. The sound is powerful and clean, the bass is decent, and mostly – they sound a lot better than what I expected at this price point. But are they the right ones for you? Find out in this full review.

EarFun Free Pro - Official

Quick Look – EarFun Free Pro

What are they:  Very affordable True Wireless earphones that connect to your phone/laptop/streaming device via Bluetooth.

Features

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Audio Quality

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Value for Money

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Overall

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Cord Busters Editor's Choice

Pros

  • Excellent battery time (32 hours total with case)
  • Excellent audio quality (at this price range – and in general)
  • They fit very comfortably in the ear
  • Built-in mics (4 in total) work well for phone calls
  • Bluetooth 5.2 support

Cons

  • Active Noise Cancelling doesn’t do much
  • Touch controls are a bit too sensitive
  • Water-resistance up to IPX5
  • No aptX support

Features and Specs

  • Driver unit:  6.1mm
  • Battery Playing Time: 7 hours (6 with ANC on)
  • Additional Battery Time on Case: 25 Hours (32 in total)
  • Full charging time: 1 hour (2 hours for the case), 10 Minute Quick Charge (for 2 hours of use)
  • Case charging port: USB-C and Wireless
  • Bluetooth Version: 5.2
  • Extra Features: Can be used to control voice assistants / Special low-latency mode for watching videos / Very lightweight (4.1g each)

Summary

Truly excellent true wireless earphones, not just “for their price”, but for everyone (but you still can’t compare the sound quality to £200+ earphones). They have most of the important features, their Bluetooth pairing is a treat, and they’re cheap – just don’t expect the ANC to do any wonders.


Who Are The EarFun Free Pro For?

First, a confession: when I first heard these earphones were called “EarFun Free Pro”, I was sceptical. Turns out it’s a company that’s been around since 2018, and has even won awards for some of their earphones, but… EarFun? Really?

Then I saw the price of the “Free Pro” model (£59.99 suggested retail price, as of this writing), and I was even more ready to be underwhelmed.

And then they arrived, and… I was totally wrong.

These are some of the best earphones I’ve had the pleasure of testing in recent months, with excellent sound quality (more on that later), most of the important features one would expect from true wireless earphones these days, surprisingly good Bluetooth pairing, and excellent battery time.

Obviously, it won’t be fair to compare them to earphones that cost £200 and £300+ – but they more than hold their own, even against £120+ earphones.

You do see the low-cost compromises in a few places. The carrying case is flimsy and plasticky and not water-resistant, for example. The Active Noise Cancelling does very little (which seems to always be the case in earphones that cost less than, say, £200), there’s no aptX support, and a few more small tidbits.

But if you want excellent every-day wireless earphones at a very affordable price, these are an excellent choice (and also take a look at EarFun’s Air Pro model which I reviewed here). Now let’s dig in deeper…

Using The EarFun Free Pro

Size And Comfort

So many earphones these days try to imitate Apple’s Airpods (at least in form-factor) – so it’s refreshing to see earphones that don’t.

Their design isn’t very exciting, but it’s functional, and it sits well in the ear.

In the box, you will also find a generous number of additional ear tips and ear-hooks in a variety of sizes. For me, the default size was perfect – but it’s good to have choices for different ear shapes and sizes.

The box also comes with a USB-C cable for charging, and an instruction manual.

The charging case is quite small, so it will easily fit in your pocket – but is quite plasticky and will impress no one (compared to some posh-looking charging cases I’ve seen before) – but it does the job.

Another point in favour, is the earphone’s weight – they weigh just 4.1 grams each, and I hardly ever felt them inside my ears (in comparison, Apple’s Airpods Pro weigh 5.4 grams).

The EarFun Free Pro are touch-controlled, and the whole outer-face is one “giant” touch-control surface. It’s a bit too big, and it’s hard to take them in and out of your ear without accidentally touching that button. Even just scratching your ear might lead to an accidental button-press…

But on the plus side, with the touch surface being so sensitive, you don’t have to ram them into your ear when you try to press the button, as is the case with some other in-ear earphones.

Also, note that the earphones have an IPX5 water resistance rating – which means they’re going to be OK in the rain or if you get splashed by a naughty car, but you can’t submerge them in water – so please don’t drop them into a full sink.

The charging case, however, is NOT water resistant, so be careful when you pull it out of your bag or pocket.

Pairing And Controlling The EarFun Free Pro

Many of the earphones I tested in recent years have had bad Bluetooth connections. Yes, I’ll say it outright – Bluetooth in general is awful.

However, the EarFun Free Pro support Bluetooth 5.2 – the most recent version, which was released in January 2020 (so many of the earphones in the market today don’t support it yet).

And whether it’s the 5.2 version, or some magic trick inside the EarFuns – pairing was surprisingly quick. And more importantly – they stayed connected, without any disruptions or crackling sounds, even when stepping away from my phone.

Plus, whenever I took them out of their case, they re-paired with my phone instantly. So many other earphones take a good few seconds to “re-acquaint” themselves with my devices – it was refreshing to just put earphones in my ear and instantly start listening.

EarFun promises a maximum working range of 15 meters, though it’s often more about the obstacles – and the number of people and devices around you – than just the distance itself.

EarFun Free Pro in ear

So while I couldn’t test them inside a busy tube (lockdown and all…), they worked well in the train, and when walking outside next to other people. At home, I was able to move between floors, with the music still playing.

As for controlling the earphones – as mentioned, they use touch buttons, and as with any tiny earphones, you need to memorise a set of taps.

There’s nothing too complicated here, though – a tap on the left lowers the volume, a tap on the right raises the volume. Two taps start and stop the music, or answer a phone call.

Three taps on the left alternate between ANC / Ambient Mode / Normal Mode, and three taps on the right skip to the next track. And finally, tapping and holding on the right activates your chosen voice assistant.

It’s all pretty intuitive and easy to learn, and while it did miss my taps occasionally (or think I tapped twice when I tapped three times, for example) – it usually worked well.

EarFun Free Pro Audio Quality

Features are important, but obviously earphones are all about the sound quality – and the EarFuns certainly deliver – for the most part.

Overall, the sound is pleasant and easy on the ears – it isn’t harsh, even on higher volume settings.

The Mid to High frequencies are where cheaper earphones usually struggle, but here they’re quite good (for the price) – there’s no distortion even when playing louder, and when the volume is set to low you can still get a clear sound image.

The bass is a bit of a mixed bag – it is surprisingly powerful, and I could really feel the thumps in my head – but it wasn’t always perfect, and worked better in some songs than others.

It struggled with Queen’s We Will Rock You, for example, where the famous drum beats felt too thin. Yet it excels with bass guitars where the sound really feels rich.

Listening to Dancing Queen by Abba, the lush vocals sound lovely, with clear hi-hat cymbals. And again, the mid to high ranges were surprisingly good.

Then there’s the Active Noise Cancelling – you can turn it on and off, but unfortunately I never heard much of a difference whether it was activated or not.

It does manage to do… something with ongoing, constant sounds – such as the water stream when I was doing the washing up. But when you’re walking outside, don’t expect it to block screaming children or barking dogs.

There’s also an “Ambient/Transparent” mode that lets you hear outside noises better, which is useful when you’re walking or cycling outside.

But all in all, the three modes do very little. The best noise cancellation, in this case, is the passive one – the earphones fit very well in my ear, which helped a lot with sound isolation.

As for phone calls, the EarFun Free Pro worked very well. They use two microphones on each side to help “cancel environmental sounds” for the person on the other side.

As with the ANC, I can’t say it made much of a difference – but the bottom line is that phone calls sounded good, with both sides hearing each other perfectly well. The stable Bluetooth connection also helped, so there weren’t any sound hiccups during my calls.

EarFun Free Pro with case closeup

Watching Movies with The EarFun Free Pro

Since we’re all about streaming video and TV here on Cord Busters, I always make a point of testing earphones with movies and streaming TV shows.

With the Bluetooth support, you can connect the earphones to any device that supports the format – so phones and a computer, of course, but also streaming devices like the Amazon Fire TV sticks.

However, when using wireless earphones to watch videos, one possible issue is the lip-syncing, since Bluetooth is notoriously laggy.

Which is why the EarFun Free Pro also have a special “Low Latency Mode” that you can turn on and off. It then lowers the latency from 200ms to 100ms, but also shortens the distance you can have between the earphones and your device.

This should improve possible lip-synching issues, but in my testing, I didn’t even need it – when watching a Netflix movie via my mobile phone, there were no sound lag issues at all, even at the normal 200ms latency setting.

As for the sound quality, when I watched the Captain America: Civil War big fight scene, for example, the sounds were very powerful, and I was sucked right into the action.

When moving to quiet talking scenes, the sound felt a bit TOO quiet and flat – so you could say these excel with loud blockbusters, and less so with quiet dramas – but they were fine in either case.

EarFun Free Pro Battery Times

When fully charged, you can use the earphones for up to 7 hours (or 6 hours with the Active Noise Cancelling activated).

The case holds additional 25 hours of power, so all in all you have 32 hours of using the earphones without looking for a power socket.

The case is charged via USB-C, and even supports wireless charging (though the charging time then jumps from 1 hours to 2 hours).

There’s no way of knowing the charge level of the earphones themselves, and the case has a somewhat confusing battery alert system, because it only has one LED light.

So you need to remember a set of colours (Green for more than 30% full, Blue for less than 30%, red for 10% and a blinking red for ‘Charge Me Now!!!’). It’s not as clear as having a set of lights (like most earphone cases), but that’s just nitpicking.

Bottom Line: Are The EarFun Free Pro Worth It?

With true wireless earphones available in so many price-ranges these days, they’re becoming harder and harder to compare.

I was quite impressed with how these earphone performed. Have I heard better in the past? Sure, at much higher price points.

But I would be doing the EarFun Free Pros a disservice by saying they’re just “good for the price” – they’re really good, period, and most people won’t be disappointed – yes, especially when you consider the price.

With excellent battery times and truly impressive Bluetooth pairing, and very adequate sound quality (albeit with questionable bass), there’s not much more you could ask for – except for the active noise cancellation, which doesn’t do much.

If ANC is really important to you (because you work in a very noisy environment, for example) – you should probably look elsewhere (and expect to pay much more).

All in all, if you’re looking for a true bargain – excellent earphones that cost way less than they deserve – this is a a great option.

Note: The earphones were supplied by the manufacturer for this review. As always, this did not influence my unbiased opinion of the product.

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