Realme’s latest launches include a new pair of earbuds under its Air series, called the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro. Here’s our detailed review of the same to help you find out whether Realme’s new flagship earbuds are worth their price of Rs 5,499 or not.
Design & Comfort
The Realme Buds Air 7 Pro comes in four colour options and the brand sent us the Racing Green hue which, in one word, looks gorgeous. Resembling the signature Aston Martin shade, the case has a matte finish and is made of aviation-grade aluminum along with a plastic strip running around the whole case with a brushed metal look.
At the top is the Realme branding, while at the front there’s an LED light that turns green, red, and white to show you the battery status and pairing status of the buds. There’s also a thin ridge for opening the case with ease. At the back you get the “Hi-res audio” branding along with a USB-C port.
The inside of the case is all black, with the “Make it real” branding on the lid. There is also a pairing button inside that can be held to make the earbuds enter pairing mode. The lid opens with a spring mechanism and isn’t flimsy at all.
The finish of the whole case feels premium while it looks so, too. As for the buds, we have seen this design before with multiple earbuds and it works just fine for my ear shape. It fits perfectly, feels comfortable for extended sessions, and stays in place even during vigorous movement. The shape of the stem is a little different than other earbuds and it is given a glossy finish which does look appealing but attracts fingerprints when you operate the touch controls. The ear tips also have a yellow accent.
Speaking of touch controls, you can customise them with the Realme Link app. There are four controls on offer, including double tap, triple tap, touch and hold, and slide up or down where only the sliding one cannot be customised as it is locked to volume control. The slide gesture is also a little finicky as it required multiple attempts before it worked. The tap gestures worked without any issues, though.
The buds are also rated IP55 for dust and splash resistance.
Sound Quality, ANC Performance, App Features
The Realme Buds Air 7 Pro have coaxial dual drivers (6mm + 11mm). Further, they are Hi-Res Audio Wireless certified and support the LHDC 5.0 codec. They connect wirelessly over Bluetooth v5.4.
The sound quality of the Buds Air 7 Pro is quite impressive. All my testing was carried out with Realme’s latest Realme GT 7 (for which the review is now also live). The buds get a classic V-shaped EQ tuning as default as the mids take a slight backseat with the higher-end frequencies being more prominent in the sound signature. The treble is handled really well while the vocals sound clear. Instrument separation is also clear while the amount of bass on offer is decent.
However, if you take the custom EQ route and tune the audio to your liking, you can further enhance the bass where the vibration intensity gets much higher than default. Once you do that, each beat hits you in the head. This will be liked by the bassheads who prefer to have an equal amount of bass as the clarity of the audio.
Playing with the LHDC 5.0 codec paired with Apple Music’s lossless playback further really amped up the whole experience. Even without the codec, the sound quality of the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro is still quite impressive.
Further, there’s a Dynamic Audio feature available in the Realme Link app that can further enhance the low, mid, and high-end frequencies and create a minor echo effect. They do create a difference in the audio signature for the better but the difference is noticeable only at higher volumes.
The Spatial Audio feature further enhances the echo effect and boosts the vocals in music which doesn’t sound the best in daily use. It is best to turn on this feature when watching movies or videos where dialogues play a major role.
There’s also a Golden Sound feature where Realme claims to offer studio-quality audio customised to the user’s ear canal structure. The feature messed up with my preference of the audio signature, hence, I kept it turned off.
There’s a Volume Enhancer toggle that purely increases the volume of the earbuds if you prefer listening at louder volumes which, however, we wouldn’t recommend for extended periods. They are so loud that even at 50% volume I was comfortable with listening to them, unlike other earbuds where I have to keep it at around 70%.
A Game mode is also there that can reduce the Latency between the audio and video up to 45ms when playing games and it worked as it should. It brought down the latency to some extent which is vital for those who game a lot on their phones.
Then comes the MindFlow mode that can play sounds of nature and various seasons if you prefer sleeping with your earbuds on and while listening to these peaceful sounds.
The buds support multi-point connectivity also which worked fine for me as I could easily switch between my tablet and phone while using the buds to take calls and listen to music.
Wear detection is also present which is quite a useful feature and again, worked without any hiccups. Auto-answer for calls can automatically answer incoming calls for you if you take the earbud out of the case and wear it.
Earbud fit test and Find my Phone features are also there for added convenience. At the bottom of the app, an estimated remaining time for the buds is also shown based on the battery left in the earbuds. Google Fast Pair is also supported by the earbuds so pairing it with new Android devices is seamless.
The earbuds support active noise cancellation up to 53dB which is quite a high value, and that translates well in real life too. You can feel the vacuum they create when you put them in your ears the first time.You can feel the vacuum they create when you put them in your ears the first time.
The ANC on the Buds Air 7 Pro is impressively effective in blocking out all frequencies of sounds, even the higher pitched ones. Noises like that of the fan were handled very impressively. Surprisingly, even with the music turned off, only a small fraction of the ambient noise made it through.
There’s also a wind noise reduction feature that specifically targets wind noise and cancels it out. While the feature does work and it cancels out more wind noise than any other earbuds I have tried in the segment, some amount of wind noise does still make it through.
The only issue I had with ANC is that when it was enabled, the left earbud, for some reason, cancelled out less noise than the right one due to which there was this weird sound distortion where I could hear more external noises from my left ear and none from my right one. However, changing the position of the earbuds and moving them within my ear would solve the issue.
The transparent mode worked well too. While the ambient noise was still a bit muffled, it still did a good enough job for me to call it effective at this price.
Battery Backup and Call Quality
Realme says the Buds Air 7 Pro can deliver up to 48 hours of playback with the case when ANC is turned off. I didn’t measure it down to the minute, but with ANC on and the volume set above 60%, I used them for 2 to 3 hours daily and still had around 20% battery left in the case after a week—which is pretty solid. As for individual use, you can expect over 5.5 hours of playback on a single charge with ANC enabled, which is quite respectable.
As for call quality, there’s a 6-mic system at play with 3 mics on each earbud. The mics on the Realme Buds Air 7 Pro do a fairly good job of capturing the speaker’s voice, ensuring clear calls in most situations. That said, they’re not completely immune to background noise—some ambient sounds still come through in busier environments. Even so, call quality remains quite reliable overall.