The Air Pro 4+ are EarFun’s latest true wireless earbuds, and the flagship model in the company’s lineup. Air Pro 4+ is packed with features such as dual-driver layout with hybrid DD+BA arrangement, wide codec support including LDAC, aptX lossless and LC3 with Auracast, six-microphone layout, <50ms low-latency mode, wireless charging and active noise cancellation.
All of this is available for under $100, with the latest price at the time of writing being just $76. Let’s see how they perform.
design
The design of the Air Pro 4+ is similar to the previous Air Pro 4 model, with a glossy dual-tone exterior and a long stalk. The earbuds are a little thick, but that’s not a problem, and that makes them easier to handle.
The case has been completely redesigned and now features a spectacular vertical opening hatch that reveals a large portion of the interior. It reminded me of the hatch on mid-engine cars like the Ford GT40, which takes away half the bodywork when it opens. Inside, the earbuds are placed vertically, which looks more interesting than the usual case design.
The overall build quality, fit and finish of the earbuds and case is good. The earbuds also have an IP55 rating for dust and water resistance.
In terms of comfort, the Air Pro 4+ once again scored well. The ear tips are soft and cause no discomfort when inserting or removing the earbuds. You can wear them for a long time without any pain or discomfort.
software
The EarFun Air Pro 4+ works with the EarFun Audio app, which is available on Android and iOS. As mentioned in our previous EarFun reviews, the app is pretty straightforward and works really well, with all the relevant options present and accounted for.
A new addition to the app for these earbuds is AI translation. In theory, this is meant to work similarly to the new AirPods Pro 3 feature, where the app will translate the foreign language you’re listening to and translate it for you in real time. You can also talk into the earbuds, and the app will translate the text so you can show it to others.
earphone audio app
In reality, it rarely works that well. While translation was at passable speed on the AirPods Pro 3, it is significantly slower on the Air Pro 4+. As long as you don’t plan on waiting several seconds after speaking to understand what the other person said, albeit in a somewhat incredulous manner, then you can give it a try. Otherwise, you may have to look at other ways to communicate in a foreign language. I’m sure this feature will become faster and more useful in the future, but right now it’s not ready for use in real-world scenarios.
Display
audio quality
The Air Pro 4+ features a hybrid dual-driver design, consisting of a 10mm dynamic driver and a balanced armature unit. They support Bluetooth 6.0 and offer a wide range of codecs. Starting with basic SBC and AAC, you also get LDAC with aptX, aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless. There is also support for LC3 when using Bluetooth LE with Auracast.
The headlining codec here is of course aptX lossless, which is still quite rare on devices these days. Unfortunately, this is so rare that I didn’t have a compatible smartphone to pair with at the time of testing, so the best aptX version available for testing was aptX Adaptive. So I opted to use the next best thing, which is LDAC, although all codecs were checked as part of regular testing.
The audio quality of the Air Pro 4+ is very impressive. EarFun has shown good performance and taste over the years when it comes to tuning its audio products, and the Air Pro 4+ is by far the best product from the company that I’ve tried.
The company has more or less perfected the ubiquitous Harman target curve, where you get the right amount of bass boost, slight drop in the mids and good treble extension at reference values. The bass has good body and weight, not bloated or mid-bass heavy. The mids remain clear for the most part, with good vocal clarity and instrument separation. The treble dynamic from the balanced armature unit is sharp and clear without detracting from the driver or being too tinny. The overall sound is balanced, clean and works well across all genres and content.
I think the only aspect of sound that earphones could improve on is timbre. It is not easy to achieve a natural sound even with good tuning. You can see all the correct numbers on the screen, and the sound may still be a little low, which is especially the case with balanced armature units which tend to sound slightly metallic. This is also the case with the Air Pro 4+ sound, and the sound can be a bit nasal at times.
This is a very glitchy thing that wouldn’t normally happen if the rest of the sound wasn’t so good. But I’ve had the same complaint with Chinese audio products in the past, where the technical performance is impressive but the last bit of nuance and musicality is missing that would result in an objectively and subjectively pleasant listening experience. Once you take into account that final piece that allows the listener to fully connect with their music, only then do you achieve true audio greatness that goes beyond numbers and spec sheets.
microphone
The microphone performance on the Air Pro 4+ is good. In quiet environments, voices sound clear and loud enough to be heard properly on the other end. In noisy environments, the earbuds do a good job of suppressing background noise. There is a slight decrease in voice quality here, but remains audible.
noise cancellation
The Air Pro 4+ has active noise cancellation. You can choose between two different auto modes or manually adjust the level of ANC as you wish. It was not clear what the difference was between the two AI modes at first, as they both looked similar and had almost the same description. There’s also a Wind Mode that reduces ANC effects to reduce buffeting noise in windy environments. Unfortunately, you’ll have to enable it manually, as other manufacturers have figured out how to automatically enable it when noise from strong winds is detected.
The ANC performance on the Air Pro 4+ isn’t great. There is good separation in the lower frequency ranges, but it seems that the higher ranges are more or less untouched. This doesn’t produce a very effective ANC effect, as you feel like you can still hear a lot of your surroundings. I’ve definitely experienced better quality ANC even at this price range.
The earbuds also have a transparency mode, which works quite well. The default mode amplifies the sound around you in all frequency ranges, and sounds the best in terms of overall clarity, even if the sound sounds unnatural. Natural mode was supposed to fix this, but the sound was quite low and felt a bit muffled.
One issue with these earbuds is that if you remove just one earbud from your ear while using ANC, the other earbud in your ear doesn’t immediately switch to transparency mode. This is something that most earbuds do these days, and even though it’s not enabled by default, you can always pull one earbud out and manually switch to transparency mode, and when you put that earbud back in, both will go back to ANC mode. On the Air Pro 4+, manually switching to Transparency mode with one earbud out keeps both earbuds in that mode, even if you put the earbud back in.
battery life
The Air Pro 4+ has a claimed battery life of 12 hours with ANC disabled. It’s unclear which codec was used for this test, as the earbuds returned only 6.5 hours in my testing when using LDAC in the balanced bitrate preset and 8.25 hours when using aptX Adaptive.
conclusion
The Air Pro 4+ are overall a set of great-sounding earbuds, as we’ve come to expect from earphones. It’s also nice that you get a variety of codecs, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter which one you choose, because you get the same quality everywhere.
Other aspects of performance are commensurate with the price you paid. The microphone quality and battery life are good, but the ANC performance is nothing to write home about.
If these things are important to you I wouldn’t recommend the Air Pro 4+. To me, this is a very straightforward audio quality-focused product, much like the one we recently reviewed. You buy these because you care about sound, and everything else is secondary. You’ve probably recently gotten into the budget IEM hobby and are realizing how annoying it is to use them with your phone on a daily basis. The Air Pro 4+ will take your hassle away, but without any of the cable hassles.
