Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3 review - Well-equipped in-ears with a few limitations

The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3's charging case is a little smaller than on the predecessor model, without its capacity being any smaller. You can choose between white, silver and green.

The case is made from plastic but it still has a high-quality feel. It has a button set into it for manual pairing. On the back, there is a little window made from nano glass which features the writing "Huawei". This not only looks nice, but it also contains a charging coil for wireless charging. The case opens smoothly and holds the buds securely while having been optimized for long use. Huawei states it can be opened and shut at least 100,000 times with no issues.

While the earbuds are IP54 protected against dust and water, the case doesn't have any specific certification. This means the earbuds are protected against a damaging amount of dust and are water-resistant from every angle against splashes of water. Subsequently, sweat and rain should not be an issue, but they are by no means fully waterproof.

Next to the USB port, which is used to provide power to the charging case, you can see a little speaker. This is used to provide audible notifications, such as the buds' charging status, and it also allows you to find the case using an audio signal if you lose it. Unfortunately, it seemed that we didn't have a compatible phone available to test this with.

The earbuds are nice and light and can be adapted to the size of your ear with the help of the supplied silicone attachments. Included are a variety of sizes: XS, S, M and L. The smallest size is a new addition compared to the previous model. With the correct attachment, the FreeBuds Pro 3 are comfortable to wear — they just don't always sit perfectly when you are working out or moving around a lot.

In our test, we primarily used an Android smartphone to give the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3 their sound and we activated the LDAC codec to achieve the best possible sound quality. The latency was very good and we didn't notice any delays during video playback. The sound is really good for in-ears, especially low sounds are able to stand out. However, the sound is a little too treble-heavy; low frequencies are clearly audible, but could do with being more powerful.

This in turn benefits the FreeBuds when making calls, as voices are better emphasized. In general, the Huawei headset is comparatively well-suited for making calls and can at least make use of three undefined microphones and a bone microphone. In closed rooms, it's easy to understand the person on the other end of the call. Minor background noise is filtered out — as long as you are actually making a call. We still noticed the background noise of a laptop when recording a voice message, but not during a phone call. The FreeBuds Pro 3 also cope well with light wind, but they also reach their limits when surrounded by loud road noise or strong winds.

The HearThrough function, which Huawei simply calls Attention, works fine in itself, but it is permanently accompanied by an audible background noise, which we found a bit annoying. The recorded ambient noise and voices also sound a little too hollow.

On the other hand, we were positively surprised by their active noise cancelling (ANC). This carefully eliminates minor background noise such as the humming of a refrigerator or the whirring of a fan. The noise of an airplane was also able to be significantly reduced, although there are certainly more powerful solutions in this field. The test also showed that the manual ANC control always delivered poorer results and that the automatic mode (dynamic) managed to get the best out of the TWS.

THD (Total Harmonic Distortion): Harmonic distortion quantifies the amount of distortion caused by non-linear distortion (harmonic content) in relation to the original signal. THD only refers to the fundamental component. The distortion factor is often mentioned in the same breath, but it refers to the overall signal. 
THD+N (Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise): This value is comparable to THD, but in addition to the interference power of the harmonics, that of the noise is recorded as an effective value.
For the measurement, a low harmonic sinusoidal signal (1 kHz, > 0 dB) is played back via the headphones being tested, which is recorded by a linear measuring microphone (measuring distance: approx. 1 cm) in an artificial head.

Both values are given as a percentage. The lower the value, the better the signal fidelity.

The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3 certainly can't be described as endurance runners, but they still delivered good results in our test. In our Spotify test with ANC and LDAC activated and with an adjusted volume of 65 dB(A), they lasted just under five hours. However, it should also be noted that ANC worked in ultra mode, but in a fairly quiet environment. Depending on whether the algorithm intervenes in everyday life, the runtimes can decrease accordingly.

During a flight lasting around two and a half hours, we primarily used the FreeBuds Pro 3 for noise cancelling and only listened to music for 20 minutes. In this scenario, the Huawei in-ears were surprisingly frugal, as the battery level had only dropped by a third after landing.

We can subsequently say that the buds' battery life is absolutely suitable for everyday use, but the competition often offers a considerable advantage in this field.

The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3 can currently be found at major online retailers such as Amazon for just under US$300.