Honor Magic Earbuds: Affordable noise-cancelling TWS earbuds let down by mediocre battery life and limited controls

The Honor Magic Earbuds are a decent pair of TWS earbuds, especially considering their price of less than €100/£100. As we covered in our recent review, the earbuds sound rather good considering their form factor. Likewise, the multiple microphones achieve decent call quality, and the accompanying charging case is well thought out. The same applies to the Huawei AI Life app, an app that is required to get the most from the Magic Earbuds.

However, two elements prevent us from using the Magic Earbuds as daily drivers. Firstly, the earbuds cannot last a full working day without needing to be charged. It would not be so bad if the earbuds could last until lunchtime, during which we could give them a quick top-up. However, the earbuds run out of juice within 3 hours of music playback and calls. If you are working from home currently, like us, then the Magic Earbuds will require charging twice a day at least.

Secondly, the earbuds support relatively few shortcuts. At the time of writing, it is only possible to customise what double-tapping the earbuds does. Honor does not include an exhaustive list of commands, either. Notable omissions include volume controls, which seems unfathomable with TWS earbuds. Similarly, there is no option for trigger a command with a single-tap, nor can you customise what long-pressing the earbuds does.

In practice, this meant that the Magic Earbuds felt more cumbersome to use than competitors like the Creative Outlier Gold or other sub-€100/£100 TWS earbuds. Hopefully, Honor adds more functionality to the Magic Earbuds, as their combination of noise-cancelling, good microphones and instant connection with devices makes the earbuds stand out from their peers. Please see our Honor Magic Earbuds review for our full thoughts on these pair of TWS earbuds.