EarFun Free Pro 3 Noise Cancelling Earbuds, Snapdragon
EarFun Free Pro 3 Noise Cancelling Earbuds, Snapdragon Sound™ with Qualcomm aptX™ Adaptive, 6 Mics ENC, Multipoint Connection, Bluetooth 5.3 Wireless Earbuds, Cozy Fit, Upgraded App Customization,33H
From the brand
EarFun was established in 2018 by an experienced group of industrial designers, acoustic engineers, and music enthusiasts who shared the goal of creating next-generation wireless audio devices.
EarFun is dedicated to creating next-generation wireless audio experiences with superior-quality audio products that improve the lives of our customers.
Absolutely amazing earbuds. Sounds great. Plays FLAC files flawlessly. noise cancelling is shockingly good plus no buzz / white noise that other earbuds give!
apps a little slow and struggles to update which mode your in at times but does not affect anything sound or usage wise.
They do fit well. It’s hard to judge the audio quality as you would need to compare them to a high end set which I haven’t got because I’m a cheapskate and let’s face it if we could all spend silly money on a high end set we wouldn’t be reading this review as we wouldn’t even give these buds a look i
After buying the previous model, the Pro, I decided to buy the 3. which in principle should be better and is in terms of sound quality. But unfortunately it came with an anomaly and cuts the sound from time to time.
I emailed the manufacturer and received no response.
Now that I’ve had a chance to try them out, I’m impressed.
I own two pairs of Sony earbuds XM4’s and XM5’s, and two of Samsung’s Pro’s.
The EarFun Pro 3’s are a seriously much cheaper rival to either.
The app is good and easy to navigate.
The fit is comfortable and there is a choice of FIVE tips! (Samsung and Sony take note).
They are easy to pair (I’m on Samsung Android Fold 4 5G). They linked well with my Samsung telly too!
Two years guarantee when you register them!
The professional reviewers will probably tell you, that the loctec flange isn’t right or the picture valve isn’t 12.5 or something else that we can’t measure isn’t up to spec!
You’ll just have to have a good tinker to tune them into yourself.
Well, that’s it, in a nutshell. If you buy them and the three of you don’t get on, send’em back…
Love these ear buds but they’re very sensitive to touch if you need to adjust them and will skip a song or shut off.
Haven’t mastered what the touches do yet so still answer the phone on my phone.
The band’s also need to have the holes lined up perfectly for sound to come through. They do move sometimes when putting them in the ears.
I do like that they don’t connect unless you open the case. Which is great when they’re next to the phone but not needed. I love the sound and having noise cancelling and ambient sound too. There’s also settings to change sound to your own preference. (I got lost in that bit so went with presets.
Took a while to get them to feel comfortable but now they’re good. Has different size silicone ear pieces so plenty to choose from.
Battery life is max 3 hours without recharging.
Haven’t lost them outside yet, so as long as they’re fitted correctly I think they’ll be fine.
All in all I like them and would recommend as the sound is great.
Having previously owned a Samsung S21 Ultra phone and the Buds Pro 2 I was very happy with the sound quality.
However since changing to an Oppo Find X5 Pro the Samsung pro buds too sounded terrible.
This was down to the Samsung codec not being available on my new phone.
From the first listen of these new Earfun buds I was blown away.
Before I purchased I went into my developer settings to see what codecs were available before I made the purchase.
I found that not only did my phone have the relevant codecs it had the exact same one that this set of earbuds worked the best with.
My own lit gripe is that the earphones don’t turn off as soon as you take them from your ear.
That is the only thing that bothers me.
I am very impressed with the same quality and Bill quality of these earphones at this price point.
If you have a compatible phone don’t hesitate you won’t regret i
After replacing my earfun free pro with galaxy buds2 pro, I was disappointed with the fit of the galaxy buds, they constantly felt insecure which put me off using them, I’d say I have smaller ears and the galaxy buds didn’t sit very well inside my ears. The earfun free pro were always very comfortable, secure and I could wear them for hours so I decided to give the 3rd generation buds a go. So far, the fit seems similar with the first generation and I’m happy with the purchase. Only just unboxed them, sound quality seems good so far, will have more to review after some use.
Most importantly, NO HISSING!!! With other earbuds at this price range I’d get a constant “hissing” sound whenever the audio would be engaged and people would just blame it on me “having a high range of hearing” or something, but I’m happy to say that these have no hissing.
The app is fine. It asks for an “account” when you open it but it’s easy to skip. Touch controls again but I just disabled them since I don’t really like them on any earbuds. The audio passthrough and active noise cancellation seem to be completely useless for me though, but it shouldn’t be something at this price range anyway.
The fit is fine. I had some issues initially but they seem to stay in fine now. They have a nice shape to them that fills the ear. My old earbuds (galaxy buds) really jutted out but these are very snug.
I love the material on the case. The feel of it is just amazing.
The only problems I’ve had with these is that sometimes one side would randomly stop playing audio for a bit, but it seems to happen really rarely, and the app can be a bit slow sometimes. The ear tips that come with it are also of a noticeably low quality, as well as the box being hideous for some reason lol.
I was skeptical to buy a brand I didn’t know at this price range but it’s turned out to be great. I can’t say much to their durability yet but I’ll update my review if anything happens in the next few years.
Edit: After using for over a month the only problem is that very rarely the connection drops. We’re talking once or twice in a week, and it’s usually only one side and it’s easily fixed by just disabling and enabling Bluetooth on my phone. The app is okay; a bit slow but I basically never have to open it since all the settings are properly saved
I have a large selection of reasonably priced Bluetooth earbuds. I keep trying to find my ideal pair. I think these are the closest so far. I’m no audiophile so take what I say with that in mind.
I did have a problem using them with the PlayerPro audio player app I use, at first. It turned out to be an incompatibility between the EQ on the app and the EQ on the earbuds. There was a lot of distortion on some songs and lack of depth on others. Switching off the EQ on the PlayerPro app solved the problem. Even I’d you switch off the EQ on the earbuds the EQ on the PlayerPro app causes distortion, yet it works fine with all my other Bluetooth earbuds.
I tried all the preset EQ settings on the Earfun app and Pop seems the best for most of the music I listen to ( mostly pop, EDM, easy listening).
I was unimpressed with the noise cancelling when I tried it first with a fan running in the room I was in. I could still hear it quite clearly. On a train, the noise was only reduced slightly. I WAS impressed when I tried it on a plane and the engine noise dropped significantly. I then tried it when on a cruise ship but it didn’t seem to reduce the constant noise of the ships generator at all, all ANC settings sounded the same to me as did the other two modes ambient and normal. I’m guessing the ANC has been tuned for frequencies produced by plane engines.
Assessing sound quality is personal. I like the sound they produce but it is still lacking. Songs that give me chills when I listen to them on my Bluetooth speaker don’t do the same when I use the earbuds. As I said, I’m not an audiophile and I can’t say what is missing but something is. They are certainly better in sound quality some of my other earbuds and they are a comfortable and secure fit.
Maybe I need to change to over ear headphones to get the sound quality I want rather than keep using earbuds but they are convenient to carry and I these ones are certainly good value for all the built-in functionality.
I wasn’t too sure what to expect. It’s been a long time since I used earbuds as I prefer over ear headphones, but sometimes the headphones are too unwieldy, so I thought I’d give these a try.
I chose these purely based on online reviews. I didn’t want stem style buds as I don’t like the look of them, I have fairly small ears and an even smaller budget. These seemed to be the ones most recommended in my price range along with Soundcore A40 and a couple of others. The aptx support swung it for me.
Once I received them, I played around with different sized tips and wings to get the best fit. Then downloaded the app and played around with the equalizer – the Jazz preset was my preferred choice. I left the default controls alone.
Pairing to 2 devices is very easy, and when you don’t want to use them put them back in the charging case, close the lid and all devices will disconnect.
I liked that the chosen EQ not only worked on my phone, but also when connected to my laptop (I thought it would just EQ the sound played by the phone, but it must download the EQ to the buds). I could play around with the app on my phone whilst playing music via my laptop.
Sound quality is very good once you’ve achieved a snug fit. Plenty loud enough with good clarity and good bass. Can’t really detect any difference when using Aptx on my phone, but my hearing is definitely not what it used to be 30 years ago.
Looking forward to getting a lot of use out of these.
Good sound, nice extended bass without tiring your ear, especially nice low end for heavy metal tracks, mildly boosted bass, which was good for my 1-2 hours street walking and listening, i enjoy using these earbuds more than using Sennheiser’s CX True Wireless or Creative’s Outlier Air v3.
Fits snuggly in my ear, better than CX TW & OA V3, with memory foam earpieces i can shake my head more confidently and not keep losing them on the street pavement than when using rubber earpieces (with rubber pieces i lose 1 earbud of the 2 too often, quite a disturbing listening experience).
Battery is ok, what expected for this price point, didn’t have to charge the case for 2 days until it went down to 41% and earpieces 30% + 30%. With more features on in the app, i suspected battery went down much quicker.
If the audio recordings are of older release date (like 1991’s heavy metal) APTX Adaptive mode will result into an interrupted sound, don’t think this is because earbuds are failing just after 1 or 2 days and you want to return them and write a low score feedback, it’s better to turn off APTX Adaptive on your smartphone, then during listening to older recordings it will not give interrupted glitchy sound
I even tried to play some FPS game like CS2 on steam, it was obviously with some delay, i tried to turn on Game Mode on the smartphone in the EarFun app, apparently it had to reduce delay, it was acceptable experience, we won a competitive match, still had some kind of delay in transmission and i heard my teammates talking a tad later.
ANC function is better when the music is playing, otherwise: when music stops playing it’s just an ok ANC, you can still hear surroundings and keyboard taps.
Got it at the time when it was 59.99, well spent, felt like i should have bought these first, instead of trying to find that one cheap budget set of eardbuds (like i did with CX TW and OA v3). Probably would rebuy Earfun Free Pro 3 or Earfun 4 in the future, and not the budget Creative or Sennheise
The sound quality is so clean and clear. I’d tweaked the settings to my personal taste using the Graphic EQ built into the app. (which is also excellent and allows you to see battery levels of both the buds and the charging case. I wasn’t expecting such deep bass and clear highs. Being a semi pro musician I know what I like sound quality wise and these fit in alongside some pretty high end in-ear earbuds musicians use for monitoring.
I played the track Going Underground by The Jam and could clearly hear the tambourine playing in the middle section. (Many high end hi fi systems struggle with this). Switching to Rio by Duran Duran and the bass pumped through so clearly and the hi hat drumming was so sharp. I am impressed. Another Track, Jack of Speed by Steely Dan (Many sound engineers use this track to set up sound desks) was as clean as I’ve ever heard it, bass, vocals and drums were focused and all easy to hear. Sound staging is also an improvement on previous models being quite wide to give you lovely stereo separation.
The fit is very good and you get 5 sizes of buds and 3 sizes of bands so there will be something to fit all ear types. I found them very comfortable and they haven’t fallen out once in the week I’ve been using them. You also get a very clear manual and guide book along with a charging cable. The case is a nice small size allowing it to fit in your pocket very easily. Such is the level of detail that Earfun go to they have also included a little cleaning stick to help keep the contacts clean. (Sometimes it’s the little things that make the big difference).
A couple of taps on the left or right bud will allow you to go forward or back a track, you can pause, switch on noise cancelling and control a few other things just by touch them a certain number of times. I found this very handy. The noise cancelling was adequate for my needs.
I’ve dealt with Earfun in the past and I have to say that their customer service is 2nd to none. If I have only one thing I’d add to the features, that would be in ear detection. I used this alot in previous models, but this is a minor thing and I’m being a bit picky.
Overall I love these, they are my favourite new gadget.
I mainly bought these for the ANC (active noise cancellation) on the tube in London. The tube can be very loud in places, particularly on the Central Line — it’s a test for even the best over-ear noise cancelling headphones with loud screeches that no headphone will drown out. So putting it into context, the Earfun Free Pro 3 did very well, particularly for more of the low-hums of the train enabling me to listen to music, or watch a video without having to crank up the volume too high. You can also switch to ambient mode which allows me to hear others easily.
The company recently released new firmware (0.2.0) versus 0.1.6 out of the box. The new firmware added better noise-cancelling, the ability to disable touch controls, and a new setting for wind noise cancellation. Battery life is around 5-6 hours with the better quality Bluetooth aptx codec switched on, which is perfectly acceptable. Using these for calls isn’t a priory for me, but from the small number of calls I’ve tested I was at least legible, but this style of earbuds isn’t normally the best for calls outside of a quiet environment.
Here you get a discrete pair of earbuds that don’t stick out, and are not stem-styled, so these are very good for the gym our running/cycling. Earfun provides four different sized buds to suit most ear shapes, a couple of foam buds and two different wing tips as well. So Earfun is covering most bases here. A short USB-A to USB-C is also included for charging, although you can just as easily stick this on a wireless charger too.
Lastly, a shout out to the customer service team at Earfun that responded quickly to questions I had as well as rolling out a number of new firmware updates early on to improve the product. As mentioned at the start, the product is a great all-rounder for the price and should be on your shortlist if you are looking for this style of earbud.
Update (14 November 2023): A new update was released (v 0.2.1) that added some new profiles for noise cancelling called ‘Ear-Adaptive’. This provides a default and three alternative ANC profiles to tailor to individual ear canals. It’s a great addition, improving the ANC further for me. Also, I’ve playing around with the various equalisers and would recommend to not use the default option — I’m enjoying the various preset options available, but you can also set your own if none of the preset options suit. Still very much impressed on how much these earbuds offer for the price.
So revisiting this set of earbuds now they’ve had a couple of firmware updates and have done a few tests comparing the capabilities of the buds on a new phone using AptX Adaptive.
First, the bluetooth signal strength and stability to maintain high bitrate in Adaptive mode on these is incredible. Literally i can walk from the front of my house to standing on our back door step (about 7-8 metres through 3 walls) and they’re still coping with high bitrate.
My other buds fail (downgrade to low mode) a good couple of meters sooner.
Secondly these sound even better with AptX Adaptive. Using the Olaf boosted EQ profile with a couple tweaks these are so incredibly fun to listen to. Especially if you’re into EDM with that classic V profile of thumping bass and lots of treble. These just are so much fun to listen with.
Only downside is the ANC performance is definitely the weakest part of the entire package. THey just don’t knock the ambient noise down by as much and the highest pitch sounds like keyboard clacking in an office just don’t get pulled out much. So i’d say ANC is a “could do better” but the rest of the package is great
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Original review from Oct:
Headline summary — brilliant bargain
What’s in the box:
Earbuds
USB-C 10cm cable
6 sets of tips: Med fitted but 2 smaller and 2 larger sets by the looks of it. Plus a set of foamies loose in the bag separate
3 sets of stablise bands (small, large and flat)
Instructions
Charging case is small and pocket friendly. Less chunky than the Senn MTW3 and similar thickness to Samsung Galaxy FE case but wider
The case opens nice and wide (slightly over 90 open lid) making them easy to get in and out. Features Qi Wireless charging which is a nice feature bizarrely lacking from buds costing 5x the price (Bose looking at you!)
Usual pairing process once you’ve peeled away the tape blocking the charge ports and let them initialise. Either can be done in-app or just in settings.
App
You can update firmware, customise buttons (both sides indepdent and from a good list of options), EQ, which comes with a bunch of presets including Oluv’s natural and boosted EQ’s (more later), options for codec (aptx adaptive available), mic options, voice, and a find buds option. Simple and clean app, nice and responsive. Perfectly functional
ANC
I’d say theyr’e probably the worst out of the 3 i’ve got here but it’s still enough to drop white noise down a few dB but it’s nowhere near as capable as some more expensive buds. It’s definitely passable when out and about. The firmware update you get on launch of the app (0.2.0 at the time) adds a wind-noise feature which seems to be the in-vogue feature.
Fit
Initially used the small tips and large wings and they fit fine but still i find the need for a shallower overall fit to get the best experience for me so i switched to my goto Spinfit CP1025 TWS tips and the buds are immensely comfortable. Almost no pressure in any spot. The wings adds the security but are very soft silicone and flex so they really don’t pressure your ears. With the tips switched improving my fit i get a good boost in bass too.
Sound
The EarFun signature sound is “ok”. Nothing special but perfectly fine. I immediately tried Oluv’s 2 pre-sets and it really wakes these things up in a big way.
The “Oluv Boosted” EQ adds that more V feel. But for me it did push the bass a little bit too boomy for me on some tracks
Sub bass is present and solid. I took the Oluv boosted preset and knocked the bass down 1 notch on the 1st two points and it eased off the boominess plus i pushed up the top end a little as i felt it lacked a little bit of aireness. Am talking EDM / Drum’n’Bass music here — for most other things it’s ok. But backing off the bass a touch on the boosted EQ was the sweetspot for me.
They’re a fun set and for the money they punch above their weight. I think my MTW3 are better still and handle things a little tidier and give me a little more detail but i think for the asking price these are a great casual set. I’ll spend some time with the EQ on these and see what i can manage but out of the box with minimal fuss you have a solid fun set of earbuds for a super competitive price. I think they definitely compete strongly with the Samsung Galaxy Buds FE which are a good 30% more expensive.
The ANC is definitely similar and AptX adaptive being present means more options for better audio than the limit of Samsung SSC
These are a solid value prop.