Earfun Air Pro 4 Plus Earbuds Review: Premium Sound for Less Than $80

Last year, I awarded a CNET Editors’ Choice to Earfun’s Air Pro 4 earbuds, saying they were «hard to beat for the money.» The same can be said for Earfun’s new-for-2025 Air Pro 4 Plus, which also earned a CNET Editors’ Choice award. Though these earbuds aren’t without a few small shortcomings, those could easily be fixed with future firmware updates. At around $80 on Amazon, the Plus model costs $20 more than the standard Air Pro 4, but features a pretty significant upgrade to sound quality.

Read more: Best wireless earbuds of 2025

Same look, different charging case

The Air Pro 4 Plus do look very similar to the Air Pro 4 on the outside, though they’re a touch larger, according to Earfun. That said, I wouldn’t have objected if Earfun had called them the Air Pro 5 because the differences are substantial.

First, the Air Pro 4 Plus’ case is different. Second, the buds are equipped with a new dual-driver system that pairs a 10mm dynamic driver with an «ultra-light FeatherBA» balanced-armature driver that helps improve bass and treble performance. (Knowles is the best known purveyor of balanced-armature drivers, but this is not a Knowles driver.) Earfun says the buds have a Nano Side-Fitted Acoustic Architecture that introduces a «first-of-its-kind micro side-mounted design for enhanced sound clarity.» (I’m not sure what that all means, but it sounds sophisticated.) Additionally, they have Bluetooth 6.0 instead of Bluetooth 5.4.

Lightweight at 5.2 grams per bud (the same weight as the Air Pro 4), I can’t say they have a premium look or feel to them, but they don’t feel cheap either. I got a tight seal with one of the included eartips, which is important for performance and doesn’t happen with a lot of earbuds I test.

These are comfortable earbuds to wear and fit securely enough for me to run with them. They are IP55 splashproof and dust-resistant, while the Air Pro 4 have no dust-resistance rating. I tend to prefer physical control buttons, but I didn’t have any issues with the buds’ touch controls once I customized them to my liking in the companion Earfun app for iOS and Android. They also have ear-detection sensors that pause your music when you take a bud out of your ear, a feature not always found at this price.

I have mixed feeling about the new charging case. While the original Air Pro 4’s charging case has more of a clamshell design with a lid that covers the top of the case (you lay the buds down in the case), the case for the Plus has a flip-up lid and vertical design (you set the buds in the case and they stand up vertically). It looks a little generic and is bigger than the Apple AirPods Pro 3’s case, for example, but overall, I like the design of this new Plus case better. However, I found it a little more difficult to get the buds in and out of the case. Both Earfun cases support wireless charging.

Upgraded sound quality

When I reviewed the Air Pro 4, I gave them high marks because they fit well, sounded good, had decent noise canceling and voice-calling performance and a relatively robust feature set along with good battery life. I can’t say those buds did anything exceptionally well, but for around $60 to $65, they measured up nicely against other earbuds that might cost twice as much — and that was their value proposition.

The Air Pro 4 Plus have very similar specs. They’re also powered by Qualcomm’s QCC3091 SoC (system on a chip) and feature QuietSmart 3.0 Adaptive Hybrid Active Noise Cancellation «up to 50dB.» So aside from the Bluetooth 6.0 upgrade, the main difference between the two models is the driver design and their sound quality, though I did notice some slight improvements to the noise-canceling performance (it’s unclear whether that’s due to a software update or hardware update).

And sound quality is where the Air Pro 4 Plus excel for sub-$100 earbuds. They simply offer richer, more detailed sound than their predecessor. The Air Pro 4 are slightly warmer sounding, which some people prefer, but the Air Pro 4 Plus deliver better bass definition and have smoother, more revealing treble that has more sparkle to it (in a good way). The Plus are even clear enough to accentuate flaws in less well-recorded tracks, so you may occasionally experience some moments where you don’t like what you’re hearing.

I don’t remember seeing any earbuds in this price range that have dual drivers. Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 3 Pro have dual drivers and sound very good (I’d put them a touch ahead of the Earfun for sound quality), but they list for $200. (I also like the Galaxy Buds 3 FE, which have a single driver but are very well tuned.) And I recently tested the Status Pro X earbuds, which have a triple driver configuration with dual Knowles balanced-armature drivers. They offer slightly cleaner, more expansive sound than the Earfun Air Pro 4 Plus buds, but they cost $300.

I was fine with the default sound setting and some of the other preset EQ options, but you can create custom EQs in the companion app to fine-tune things even more. You can also do a short hearing test and have an AI hearing profile created for you.

It can be a little confusing to go from a custom setting to one of the presets, and in a potentially bigger issue, the app didn’t seem entirely stable in my tests. The earbuds would occasionally disconnect from the app when I used them with an iPhone 16 Pro. I also tested them with a Google Pixel 9 Android phone and was able to pair the two phones simultaneously to the earbuds in multipoint mode without a problem.

Solid feature set with good noise canceling

While the buds don’t have spatial audio with head-tracking or a conversation awareness mode (when you speak, your music is automatically muted and the buds transparency mode kicks on so you can have a conversation), they have just about everything else.

Like the Air Pro 4, there’s support for the AptX Lossless and LDAC codecs for Android devices that support those codecs (it’s debatable how much of a difference using these so-called higher-quality codecs makes compared to using the AAC codec). You can activate a low-latency gaming mode in the app and manually dial in the amount of noise-canceling you want — or opt for AI Ear Adaptive ANC or AI Environment ANC, which is similar to Apple’s Adaptive audio mode that adjusts the ANC level on the fly based on how much ambient noise is around you.

The noise canceling is decent — I’d rate it 7 out of 10 — but not on par with what you get with the stellar noise-canceling of Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (Gen 2) earbuds. Also, the transparency mode, which allows ambient sound to enter your ears, is just average and doesn’t sound nearly as natural as the AirPods Pro 3’s even when you activate the «natural» setting in the app. It works fine, but people have become transparency mode connoisseurs — I feel that Apple has raised the bar with the quality of its transparency mode, so it really sounds like you’re not wearing earbuds even when you are.

Voice-calling performance

My voice calls sounded good in quieter environments, and the buds do a decent job removing background noise in noisier environments. But in the noisy streets of New York on a very breezy day, they fell a little short. The buds were able to reduce the background noise for me, but callers said they had a hard time hearing what I said as my voice glitched and cut in and out. The Air Pro 4 seemed a little better at balancing the reduction of background noise and picking up your voice (that’s where all these algorithms and «AI» come into play). I can’t speak to the quality of the microphone hardware, but this is one area where I think Earfun can hopefully make some improvements via a firmware upgrade.

Slightly improved battery life

I used the buds for four days without having to recharge them. Equipped with a slightly larger battery than the Air Pro 4, the buds are rated for up to 8 hours of battery life at moderate volume with noise canceling on and up to 54 hours of total charge time with ANC off. That compares to 7.5 hours and 52 total hours for the Air Pro 4. The 8-hour single charge number is the same as the AirPods Pro 3’s rating. However, the total battery life for the Air Pro 4 Plus buds is almost double that of the Apple AirPods Pro 3.

Earfun Air Pro 4 Plus final thoughts

If Earfun could figure out a way to raise the level of the voice-calling performance of its flagship earbuds from a B- to an A- or so, they’d be the almost perfect sub $100 true-wireless earbuds. We’ll see if we get some tweaks and small improvements with future firmware upgrades, but as it stands, the Air Pro 4 Plus are still excellent for the price. They offer good fit, a strong feature set, effective noise canceling and improved sound quality that competes favorably with more premium earbuds.

Air Pro 4 Plus key features, according to Earfun

• Dual-driver system pairs an ultra-light FeatherBA armature with a 10mm dynamic driver
• Nano Side-Fitted Acoustic Architecture introduces a first-of-its-kind micro side-mounted design for enhanced sound clarity
• Auracast enables tuning in and out of local broadcasts for seamless public and private audio sharing
• QuietSmart 3.0 Adaptive Hybrid Active Noise Cancellation up to 50dB
• Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound
• Bluetooth 6.0 + Qualcomm QCC3091 chipset with aptX Lossless
• Next-gen LE Audio & LC3 codec for ultra-low power consumption and stable transmission
• Support for Sony’s higher bandwidth LDAC audio codec
• Enhanced 6-mic with AI algorithm + Qualcomm’s cVc 8.0 tech
• Google Fast Pair
• <50ms ultra low latency mode for better video and gaming experience
• Up to 54 hours total battery life (up 8 hours on a single charge with ANC on)
• Sound personalization options in Earfun app
• All-new multi-device connectivity
• IP55 splashproof and dust-resistant
• Fast charging and wireless Charging (10-minute charge gets you 3 hours of play time)
• In-ear detection sensors