Earfun Air 2 review: some of the best budget earbuds around
Earfun Air 2: Three-minute review
The Earfun Air 2 are a shining example of how you don’t need to spend a lot to get great earbuds. Of course, there was a time when buying budget tech meant settling for low-quality products that lacked features, durability or overall quality, but that’s no longer the case.
With how many affordable headphones it sells, it’s no wonder that Earfun has worked out how to make really cracking earbuds on a budget. These sound better than any other audio product I’ve tested from Earfun, with distinct treble and bass, and more of a soundstage than you’d expect for the price.
The design is fantastic too, with both the buds and the charging case being slender and lightweight. The latter will remain in your ears through thick and thin, and the latter are easy to fit into small pockets.
Feature-wise, there are some basics here like an app EQ system to let you tweak your music a little, but one surprising stand-out is the presence of wireless charging, which you certainly can’t guarantee on products at this price. You won’t need to use it too much, thanks to the impressive battery life of the Air 2, but it’s great that you have the option available.
Some missing or hard-to-use features may put some buyers off the Earfun Air 2, though. One such example is the lack of any noise cancellation – some may consider a feature to remove background noises necessary in earbuds in this day and age, though if you don’t really care about ANC, you won’t mind.
The touch controls are also, in true Earfun fashion, a little hard to use, and quickly into testing the Air 2 I resorted to simply using my smartphone in order to control volume and songs. Again, this isn’t a deal-breaker, but it’s worth pointing out the issue to paint a full picture.
Despite this, these beasts easily win their place on our round-up of the best budget wireless earbuds, costing just $49.99 / £49.99 (roughly AU$75) yet swinging for the fences with impressive audio, a lightweight design and some handy features that let you customize your audio experience. Overall, the Air 2 are another pair of seriously impressive low-budget earbuds from Earfun, and you likely won’t be disappointed by what they offer for the price.
Earfun Air 2 review: Price and release date
- Yet to be released
- Priced at $49.99 / £49.99 (roughly AU$75)
The Earfun Air 2 are cheap even compared to other products from this company, which specializes in affordable audio. In fact, disregarding discounted products, they’re actually the cheapest earbuds Earfun offers at the time of writing this review.
To buy them at full price, you’ll be paying $49.99 / £49.99 (roughly AU$75), a lovely low cost that makes them some of the cheapest headphones you can buy right now. Most Earfun products hover between $50 and $100, or equivalent.
Earfun’s latest earbuds are some of the most affordable we've seen for a long time, costing less than competitors like the Earfun Free Pro 3, Air Pro 3 and Air S (and many more, but doing so would risk me complaining about how confusingly-named Earfun’s portfolio is!).
That price makes them cheaper than all but one of the entries in our round-up of the best cheap earbuds. That means they're undercut only by 2022’s Jlab Go Air Pop, which launched for $20 / £20 / AU$49.95 and are available for less in sales.
At the time of writing this review, the Earfun Air 2 don’t have a set release date, and you can’t even pre-order them yet, but that’ll hopefully change soon.
Earfun Air 2 review: Specs
Earfun Air 2 review: Features
- Total battery life of up to 40 hours
- Simple to set up and use
- App brings handy, though not necessary, extra features
Earfun offers a few of the basic features you’d expect on wireless earbuds with its Air 2, and then a lovely extra one.
You can use the Earfun Audio app to fiddle with the EQ of your earbuds, which is a handy too for people who know their audio preferences. You can jump between presets, like rock or pop, or create your own custom EQ using a fairly easy-to-use tool.
The app is also used to toggle a gaming mode, which improves latency for audio, but other than retooling the touch controls (more on that later), that’s all the app does. You don’t need to download it to use the Air 2, which is a big plus.
One feature missing that may put off some audio fans is the lack of any kind of noise cancellation, which is perhaps a sign of the buds’ low price. There’s actually noise cancellation tech in the microphones, making a call sound a bit clearer, but not for your music. Another conspicuously absent tool is wear detection, so you’ll have to manually stop your music from playing, instead of relying on any wear detection to turn it off when you remove the buds.
Setting up the Earfun Air 2 was incredibly easy, both on its first use and then every subsequent time I wanted to listen to music – simplicity really is the name of the game here. You can even connect the Air 2 to multiple devices, so you can easily switch between your phone and, say, your PC or tablet.
The stated battery life for the Earfun Air 2 buds are 9 hours of music listening, with the case rounding that up to 40 hours, and testing suggests that these figures are accurate. That’s a really competitive battery life – not all buds offer a full working day of lasting power!
It takes roughly 90 minutes for the earbuds to charge from full to empty when in the case, and the case itself takes a little longer than that when charged using a cable. However Earfun offers something here that’s almost unheard of for budget earbuds: you can power up the case using wireless charging too. So if you like powering up your phone or smartwatch on a powering mat or pad, the Earfun can join them.
- Features score: 3/5
Earfun Air 2 review: Design
- Svelte charging case
- Buds have AirPods-like look
- Lightweight and protected
The charging case for the Earfun Air 2 is lovely and petite, weighing just 45g and measuring 62 x 47.5 x 25mm – you can easily slip it into pockets with no issue. It houses a USB-C port for charging the case, a rather well-hidden pairing button, and not a lot else.
The earbuds themselves have an AirPods-esque design with a stalk that dangles down from the buds. Each weighs 4.5g and they fit comfortably in the ear – I never had any fit issues during testing, unlike with certain other Earfun buds I’ve tested. The box contains several different eartip sizes too, so you can change them if you find the buds slipping out.
One of the few design features the Earfuns boast is touch controls, but after having wrangled with this feature, I’d recommend avoiding it. In the Earfun app you can assign functions for single, double, triple and held presses for each individual earbud, but I found that the buds were reticent to acknowledge taps. This was particularly annoying when trying to enable the triple-tap function; the odds of the Air 2 recognizing all three taps is incredibly low!
The Earfun Air 2 have an IPX7 certification. In practice, that means they’re technically protected against immersion of up to a meter for 30 minutes. We wouldn’t recommend testing it, just to be safe, but rest assured they’re safe to wear in rainy conditions.
- Design score: 3.5/5
Earfun Air 2 review: Sound quality
- Surprisingly good for price
- Max volume could be higher
For the price, the Earfun Air 2 are really impressive when it comes to audio fidelity – in fact, they might convince some people who were going to spend more, that you really don’t need to.
The strongest suit of the Air 2 is the treble, as it’s clear and crisp, though some peaking occurs when you’re listening at max volume. You might find yourself hitting max volume frequently too, as it’s not actually that loud, so be warned.
Bass is impressive here too, as it’s all-too-often lost in budget earbuds. You can easily hear basslines and lower instruments against the treble ones, and if there’s any gripes we can level against the buds, it’s that mid audio can be lost in some songs.
Perhaps to thank for the great sound quality is the use of a Sony audio codac that allows for more audio information to be sent from your music-playing device to the buds. The Earfun also support Bluetooth 5.3 for better connection reliability, and the Air 2’s maximum working range is roughly 15 meters as a result.
- Sound quality: 3.5/5
Should I buy the Earfun Air 2?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Earfun Air 2 review: Also consider
How I tested the Earfun Air 2
- Tested for 10 days
- Tested at home, in the office and on walks
The Earfun Air 2 were subjected to 19 days of testing for this review, and by 'testing' I mean 'lots of audio streaming'. This was done in the office, at home and on walks through my neighborhood.
I connected the Air 2 to my Xiaomi Mi Note 10 phone and used it for a variety of tasks including streaming music from Spotify, watching Netflix videos, playing Call of Duty: Mobile and conducting phone calls with my mum.
I've been testing tech gadgets for TechRadar for over five years now; currently, I write freelance for several sections (and have tested other EarFun headphones for the audio section) but previously I worked as a staff writer and section editor for the phones section.
- First reviewed in February 2024
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