Describing the budget earphone segments as a bloody warzone would be an understatement. Most new brands deliberately choose to release their first or new products in this segment, which is already saturated with products from established, emerging, and legacy brands. This is because price, more than any other factor, dictates sales and, by extension, the popularity of a product.

The Sound Signature is Subjectively Not for Me, Reproduces Music Just Like Any Buds at Its Price, Believe me, I tweaked every tweakable setting, Speaking about ANC…, I can’t believe I found a useful gimmick, Realme Buds Air 7 Pro – Buy or Bin?

But an affordable price, more often than not, comes with compromises, especially in audio performance. Yet, the CMF Buds Pro 2 manage to strike a delicate balance between audio quality, software experience, and refinement for just RM299 (RM219 now). It offers such an impressive package that it’s difficult to recommend anything else.

So, can the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro, priced at RM399 (RM359 now), offer a more compelling package to dethrone SoyaCincau’s current pick as the segment leader? Well, the headline gave away the answer, but here’s the only reason it lost.

The Sound Signature is Subjectively Not for Me

Before I started listening to the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro, I scoured the app for settings that artificially enhance the sound, which can sometimes have a negative impact on the audio quality and turned them off. You know, like those fake surround sound modes that make the audio sound muffled.

So, I turned off Volume Enhancer, switched the preset equaliser to Original Sound, and kept Dynamic Audio disabled.

Since these buds support Low Latency High-Definition Audio Codec (LHDC) 5.0, a Bluetooth audio transmission standard developed by Savitech that supports up to 24-bit/192kHz audio formats, I paired them with the Nothing Phone 3a, which also supports LHDC. Personally, I couldn’t hear the improvements in audio performance with this codec turned on, but I left it on for this review since it’s the highest bitrate option on these earbuds.

Note: During the photoshoot, I didn’t have the Nothing Phone 3a, so I used the Nothing Phone 3 instead for the illustration.

With the settings tweaked, I played Westlife’s Swear It Again and immediately noticed the song sounds different. After hearing more of the song, I realised that this is the first time I’m playing this song on an earphone that has a bright sound signature. The CMF Buds Pro 2 and my daily drivers, the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, have a warm sound signature.

I swapped to the CMF Buds Pro 2 and played Whatcha Doing by Dua Lipa, noting down how the harmonising bit in the beginning sounded. It was smooth, with a nice balance between the bass and the highs. Restarting the track and jumping to the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro, the difference was clear, with pronounced highs, restrained bass, and sharper clarity.

Furthermore, those harmonising vocals are spread out on the CMF, while on the Realme, they were more focused on a single point. As for Dua Lipa’s vocals, whenever she hits the high notes, her voice becomes sharp and bright on the Realme while it rolls off on the CMF, keeping her voice blunt and soft.

So in general, the CMF Buds Pro 2 sounds warmer, with more emphasis on the bass and mids while the highs are laid back. Songs sound harmonious with the overlap of the low and high frequency ranges, while still maintaining good separation.

Meanwhile, the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro produce a more analytical sound with the frequencies contained within their range. Musical elements are clearer and more defined, but too much for their own good, as they feel over-sharpened.

That said, some prefer this sound signature just like how some prefer bitter Durian.

Reproduces Music Just Like Any Buds at Its Price

Putting the sound signature aside, let’s examine how well it reproduced the audio. Many budget earphones struggle to reproduce a clean bass, given the amount of energy and precision required. So, it comes as a surprise to nobody that the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro struggled here.

At default settings, the bass is boomy, loose and lacks definition. In bass-heavy music, this boomy bass can be overpowering, drowning out the mids. This can be somewhat remedied by turning on Dynamic Audio and moving the bass slider to -3. At this level, the bass doesn’t mess with the mids and restores some definition without completely losing the thump. However, it still doesn’t do anything to fix the looseness.

But it’s not like the CMF Buds Pro 2 were any better with their bass handling. Surprisingly, I had to dial the bass back to -3 as well to stop it from being intrusive. That said, I felt like the CMF Buds Pro 2 had better separation between deep bass and mid bass, though the difference is very subtle and not a deal breaker for the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro.

When reproducing the mids and highs, the Realme’s are much clearer and detailed compared to the CMF Buds Pro 2, thanks to the DAC’s analytical approach. Musical elements and instruments in the track are well separated, allowing you to identify them with ease. Not just that, but they are also painted with texture, so you can hear the material, and there’s enough nuance between the frequencies to give the audio dimension.

However, the same cannot be said about the vocals, where its analytical sound works against it. In Cupid – Twin Ver., the warmth in the girls’ voices that was present on the CMF Buds Pro 2 was replaced by an overly sharpened, treble-skewed tone on the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro. Their voices felt like they were void of any texture or character compared to the CMF Buds Pro 2.

This alone would be a dealbreaker for me. But for those who appreciate the analytical sound signature, you may feel differently.

On a more positive note, the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro are able to control the volume of soft and loud elements well enough to give the song dynamics, preventing the song from sounding monotonous.

Believe me, I tweaked every tweakable setting

Since software plays a major role in extracting the best performance out of a compact audio device, I went back to Realme Link and played with every sound-enhancing feature that I either turned off or hadn’t touched. The preset EQ modes did little to help with my opinions on the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro.

So I tried Realme’s Golden Sound feature, which performs a series of hearing tests and asks you to choose your preferred sound. I took the test, chose my preference, and found that it just made things a little worse. This personalised EQ made the highs even clearer at the cost of more bass loss in the vocals. It also made the output louder at the same volume level. As you can already tell, I switched back to Original Sound.

Realme also has a Spatial Audio feature for simulating 360-degree sound. I tried with the sample audio provided by Realme in the app, but I couldn’t hear a difference. Switching to Tidal’s 360-degree audio tracks only results in an error message saying that the audio device isn’t supported.

Note: Between testing and writing this review, Tidal shifted away from Sony’s 360-degree audio to Dolby Atmos. The option to listen to Dolby Atmos tracks only becomes visible when connected to a device with native support.

Also, my normal listening volume on the Galaxy Buds2 Pro when working is around 25% because I don’t have to overpower the environmental noise thanks to ANC, I don’t want to ruin my acute hearing, and it allows me to think without being distracted by the music. So that’s exactly what I did with the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro connected to the Nothing Phone 3a and discovered something odd.

There’s a section in the volume range where the difference in volume between two levels is abruptly huge and not progressive like the other levels. Meaning it’s either too soft or too loud. So at this point, I ditched the Nothing Phone 3a and its LHDC 5.0 codec and switched over to my Surface Laptop Go 2. After that, volume levels were good, and I could proceed with evaluating it.

I did an A|B test with and without the LHDC 5.0 codec, and to my ear, at least, I couldn’t tell a difference.

Speaking about ANC…

Even before I started evaluating the Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) performance, I found something annoying about the process. It just takes too long to switch between ANC and pass-through mode. First, you’ll need to tap and hold for a couple of seconds until you hear a very subtle chime that’s easy to miss. But don’t worry, because that’s followed by a vocal announcement on which mode you are switching to. Only after that is the ANC engaged.

However, it becomes even more frustrating when you must go through this process when switching to pass-through mode. I need to keep the person waiting until the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro takes its time to switch. So I would just pull one of the buds out of my ear when someone starts talking to me, which triggers the audio to pause.

By comparison, you just tap and hold on the CMF Buds Pro 2, and you’ll hear a chime while the mode switches. It’s just that straightforward. That said, both the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro and the CMF Buds Pro 2 don’t have a feature that will automatically switch to passthrough mode when you speak, like on my Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro.

As for the ANC performance itself, Realme offers different ANC frequency ranges, from minimum to maximum strength. Since ANC is supposed to block out the noise from the outside world, I left the slider at the maximum position. I also turned off Wind Noise Reduction because it seemed to weaken the ANC function.

At this level, with no music playing, the ANC of the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro is quite good at muffling the high-pitched frequencies, like the droning of the centralised air conditioner. You can still hear it, but the volume is about 60% now, which is quite impressive for the price.

Testing both the CMF Buds Pro 2 and the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro back-to-back, the CMF Buds Pro 2 are just a tad better in some scenarios, but equal overall. Start listening to music, and you stop hearing those low frequencies altogether.

Go lower down the frequency range, and the effectiveness of the ANC becomes weaker. My colleague’s mechanical keyboard, people talking next to me, and the creaking of the office door opening break through the ANC barrier. You must crank the music past 50% volume to drown these noises, which is the opposite of how I normally use my ANC headphones.

This also explains why I can’t tell the difference between ANC mode and passthrough mode when there is no music playing. On more than one occasion, I would end a conversation with my colleague, tap and hold on the bud to return to ANC mode, only to find out that the mode is just switching to passthrough mode.

By design, passthrough mode is supposed to create a clear channel for external sound to enter your ears as if you weren’t wearing earbuds. So, when you talk, you’re not supposed to hear your voice in your head, like when you close your ears and talk.

But on the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro, and the same goes for the CMF Buds Pro 2, you can hear your voice in your head when you talk. It’s uncomfortable having a conversation, so it’s best to just remove the buds altogether, which is what I did.

ANC and passthrough modes require a lot of algorithm tuning and processing power to get right, which is why premium headphones offer a good experience. So, I would ask you to manage your expectations for ANC and passthrough performance in this class of earphones.

I can’t believe I found a useful gimmick

The Realme Link app is full of features and gimmicks. Ironically, the feature I laughed at for being a gimmick turned out to be one of the app’s strongest. It’s called MindFlow, and it’s filled with serenading, instrumental music. I listen to this kind of music when working, but can’t find a proper curation on Tidal while Spotify interrupts me with ad breaks.

So I found the music in MindFlow to offer a calming and relaxed sense, which helped keep my mind clear. My favourite were the Moonlight and Meditation scenes.

Besides this, you get your usuals like automatically pausing the music when you remove one or both buds and dual connection mode, allowing you to automatically switch between two connected devices depending on which is playing a new audio source.

Then there’s the music controls, which surprised me. When I reviewed the Huawei FreeArc, I thought that it was just Huawei implementing the double-tap to pause. But lo and behold, the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro also use double-tap to pause, while a triple-tap moves to the next track. So, there’s no more gesture motion left for going back to the previous track.

There is an option to remap the controls. But for some strange reason, there is no option to assign a function for a single tap gesture. Swiping vertically on the stalk of buds adjusts the volume, but it’s finicky, just like other similar implementations.

Realme Buds Air 7 Pro – Buy or Bin?

For RM399, the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro checks a lot of boxes. Though the sound signature is not my cup of tea, it still reproduces audio clearly with great control. Yes, the ANC and passthrough modes aren’t that impressive, but it’s expected at this price point and is no different than the CMF Buds Pro 2.

Speaking about the CMF Buds Pro 2, here’s where the predicament starts. Despite coming in at a lower price, the CMF Buds Pro 2 are equally as good and, in the sound department at least, outperform the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro in my opinion.

But the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro does have an edge when it comes to battery life. Coupled with the charging case and ANC off, the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro offers up to an impressive 48 hours, whereas the CMF Buds Pro 2 can expect around 43 hours. Surprisingly, with ANC turned on, both go up to 6.5 hours, and this figure drops further when you turn on their respective hi-res codecs.

Despite the battery life advantage, the CMF Buds Pro 2 is still the better option as it offers better sound quality at a lower price. It’s hard to choose anything else over it. But that doesn’t mean the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro belong in the Bin! When considering price to performance, they are absolutely a Buy. But only if the CMF Buds Pro 2 are discontinued.

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