Xiaomi is not entering a lot into the true wireless space with not one but two pairs of affordable true wireless earphones. While the Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 does feel a little expensive for most people at Rs 4,499 the Redmi Earbuds S is certainly launched at impressive pricing of just Rs 1,799. This makes it one of the most affordable true wireless headsets available in India following the company philosophy of making products affordable while delivering on quality. The Redmi Earbuds S is the Indian variant for the famous Redmi Air Dots S that was launched in China in April. The earbuds don’t cost much but offer decent value in terms of comfort, ease of use, and good sound.
The Redmi Earbuds S comes with an impressive design and is very light at just 4.1g per earbuds. This makes the headset one of the most comfortable truly wireless earbuds in the market here in India. The earbuds stay hooked in the ear without any support and the silicone gels do a good job in isolating the sound and you get three pairs of ear tips in the box helping you get the perfect fit. The earbuds are IPX4 rated for water resistance and does a good job of protecting the earbuds from occasional splashes and sweat.
The Redmi Earbuds S are pill-shaped and look simple, ear earbuds have a large button that is used to control playback. You can play, pause or answer calls using a single click or invoke the voice assistant configured on your smartphone using the double press. You can also triple press the button to toggle a low latency mode on the Redmi Earbuds S to improve the response times while gaming. Unfortunately, the earbuds do not come with control for volume and playback of tracks in the earphones and you will have to pick up the device to adjust these, the controls are the same on both the earbuds.
The Redmi Earbuds S comes with a charging case that is of the right size and looks good, there are magnets to keep the lid shut and make sure the earbuds stay in place, the Redmi logo on the case is the only branding on the entire product. The rear of the charging case houses the USB port for charging and unfortunately still uses the Micro-USB port instead of Type-C. The earbuds support SBS code and come with a 7.2mm driver, the Bluetooth on the device is of the latest Bluetooth 5 generation and doesn’t come with a master-slave setup, meaning that you can use the earbuds individually as well.
There is support for environmental noise cancelation during voice calls and the Redmi Earbuds S promise four hours of battery life on the earphones and two additional charges using the case and the earbuds did last according to the claims in our usage. While the higher-end market of the true wireless earphones offers amazing audio quality, the same cannot be said about the budget segment and there are only a handful of budget earphones that offer a good quality listening experience on a budget. The Redmi Earbuds S attempts to offer such an experience under the Rs 2,000 price bracket.
Given the fact that the earbuds only support SBC Bluetooth codec, the Redmi Earbuds S sound pretty decent. The sound is clean and is not disturbing with noises or extreme bass. The sound quality is on par with the other neckband style earphones at the same price and the Redmi Earbuds S gives users the benefit of true wireless connectivity without the sacrifices of sound quality. The earbuds offer just the right about of depth in the sound to make it enjoyable with some perception of the direction.
The Redmi Earbuds S is acceptable for voice calls and performs in a mediocre manner. We did not face any issues with the call quality in the indoor environments and the connectivity was generally stable overall. The low latency mode did improve the experience at gaming with a small drop in the sound quality, while there was still a small noticeable delay it was very much acceptable given the pricing of the device. When we were on call, the environmental noise cancellation did help a little in the noisy environments but the functionality of it is highly limited.
We’ve tried out plenty of truly wireless earphones in different price segments and I’ve always been skeptical whether the budget segment will bring any good. Xiaomi has now shown it that even the budget segment can produce some device earphones, the Redmi Earbuds S is surprisingly good for the price. We’ve tried other earbuds in this price segment from lesser-known brands, but the Redmi Earbuds S perform more reliably and give a decent audio output overall.
