Review - Realme Buds Air 8

I bought these after the batteries in my old earbuds (the Realme Techlife T100) wore out. These were over three times more expensive than the T100, but they’re supposed to be better in every single way (at least on paper). This is my review after using them for 5 months.

The earbuds are a bit bulky due to the dual drivers and the ANC microphones stuffed into the body, so you might have a hard time keeping them in if you have small ears. As I said above, the audio quality itself is really good - nothing to complain about - but you can get earbuds that sound pretty close to these for a much lower price (case in point, the T100 / T110).

The noise cancellation is pretty good. I cannot confirm whether it reaches the advertised 55 dB (but then again, the decibel is a really weird unit). It does block out most low-frequency noise, so it’s great when you’re outdoors.

Another thing the manufacturers (and YouTubers) advertise is Hi-Res audio, but I can’t notice much difference between LDAC and AAC even while playing FLAC files. The real benefit of LDAC for me is low latency (the ‘game mode’ also provides low latency, but you have to enable it manually every time).

Issues

I’ve ordered these from the most annoying to least annoying (for me).

1. Sometimes the noise cancellation on one of the earbuds starts ‘leaking’ and letting ambient sound in. Taking the earbud out and putting it back in doesn’t help, cycling through the noise cancellation modes sometimes resolves the problem.
2. To access most of the features on the buds, you have to install the Realme Link app, which like every other app these days “requires” you to create an account. Thankfully they don’t ask for a phone number (yet). The app lets you customize the earbud touch controls, but it’s not nearly as flexible as I would have liked. For instance, double tapping only has 3 assignable actions, and most actions are stuffed inside the triple tap and tap and hold gestures. You also can’t assign any action to tapping and holding both earbuds simultaneously, which the T100 did.
3. Taking one earbud out of your ear causes the other bud to cycle to the next noise cancellation mode. This is helpful when using ANC, since the other bud switches to Ambient Aware when you take one out. However if you’re listening with ANC disabled (as I usually do to save battery), the other bud switches to Noise Cancelling and suppresses what you’re trying to hear outside.
4. Unlike the T100 which automatically switches the sound output to Mono when only one earbud is in use, the Air 8 leaves the audio playing in stereo (meaning you only hear one channel).