Xiaomi FlipBuds Pro
The latest premium TWS from the house of Xiaomi will follow in the footsteps of the Mi Airdots Pro and Mi Air 2 Pro and are now sold under a new name. The FlipBuds Pro has been officially available for the Chinese market since the end of May. Unlike the predecessors, the Xiaomi in-ears will probably also make their way to Europe. This is indicated by the new name and the fact that the Xiaomi FlipBuds Pro has already passed the certification of the Bluetooth SIG – both of which point to a global version of the TWS, i.e. also for the German-speaking region.
With the energy-saving Qualcomm QCC515 chip including aptX support and new Active Noise Cancelling technology, which supports a maximum noise reduction depth of 40 dB(A) and is supposed to reduce background noise by up to 99 percent, the Chinese manufacturer wants to win the favor of buyers in the highly competitive TWS market.
OPPO Enco Buds
Things are getting more difficult every day: making a pair of realistically priced true wireless in-ear headphones that are in some way different from the many other realistically priced true wireless in-ear headphones already flooding the market. A company as intrepid as Oppo has one or two ideas on how to make it happen, of course.
OPPO has launched a new Enco Buds Truly wireless earbuds in Thailand. As leaked earlier, the device comes in White and additionally in Blue color. It is similar to the OPPO Enco W11 that launched in countries like India but has few upgraded features like Bluetooth 5.2.
The real question, though, is: can these USPs help the Enco Buds stand out from the crowd? Let’s see how OPPO Enco Buds competes with the Xiaomi FlipBuds Pro.
Xiaomi Earbuds Design
Unlike the oval cylindrical shape of the Air series, the FlipBuds Pro has become more rounded and compact. Xiaomi claims that this design is in line with the new Xiaomi logo design concept. However, in terms of shape, it looks very similar to OPPO’s Enco X.
But FlipBuds Pro is still simpler and more like a pebble. The frosted material has also turned into a glossy finish. The Xiaomi logo is on the spindle, and the pairing button and charging port are at the bottom. Of course, the Flipbuds Pro case still features wireless charging. Other than that, there are no extra design elements. Unfortunately, it’s only available in black, and with the glossy finish, fingerprints will soon cover your entire earbuds case.
When you open the case, you will find that the lid is very flexible, so it is very easy to open the box with one hand. Taking out the earbuds, you can see that the shape of the earbuds is very familiar. It looks like the black version of Airpods Pro, but Xiaomi has added some of its own design elements, so you can find some differences if you look carefully. For example, the earbuds look similar to the AirPods Pro, but they are actually larger than the Apple earbuds. The earbud stem is also thicker. So they have a better fit in your ears.
OPPO Earbuds Design
The all-new Oppo Buds come with 8mm dynamic drivers. The company claims that these 8mm dynamic drivers are capable of delivering heavy bass. These earbuds come with a density of 100.6dB. It offers a frequency response range of 20Hz-20KHz. The earbuds are offer with noise cancellation support that uses an algorithm based on DNN (deep neural network). It also supports IP54 dust and water resistance rating. The Enco buds from Oppo also allow automatic connections and intelligent call support features.
As for the design, the earbuds come with an angular design. The Chinese brand claims that this type of design helps users get the better fitting. Additionally, the design looks quite similar to Samsung Galaxy Buds. As for the dimensions, the single earbud measures 22.2 x 19.6 x 22.7mm and weighs 4grams each. Finally, the charging case of OPPO Enco Buds measures 67×40.4×27.2 mm whereas each earbud measures 22.2×19.6×22.7mm. The earbuds weigh 4 grams each and the charging case weighs 37 grams.
Comfort
We all know that the Air 2 Pro does not have the best fit, but thanks to the enlarged earbuds and the new design, this issue is no longer a problem. There is a ring of a metal-like decorative strip to make the earbuds look less monotonous. This time the Xiaomi Flipbuds Pro has abandoned the Air 2 Pro’s personality design and changed to a more popular form factor, making it suitable for more people to wear. Xiaomi is right to make this change, after all, good wearing comfort and solid active noise cancellation performance of the earbuds are the most basic requirements.
The headphones weigh 6.1 grams (~0.2 oz) each and are thus pleasantly light. The Xiaomi headphones are not noticed negatively in everyday life, even during longer use. Thanks to the ergonomic design, the in-ears also fit comfortably to the auricle and the external auditory canal in our opinion. We cannot conclusively clarify whether the casing construction of the FlipBuds Pro is waterproof since the Chinese manufacturer does not provide any information on this on its website. Since the Mi Air Pro was already certified according to the IPX4 protection class, we assume that rain or sweat will not cause any problems for Xiaomi’s current premium TWS.
Xiaomi FlipBuds Pro ANC Performance
One of the criteria for identifying good and bad active noise cancellation earbuds is the strength of noise cancellation. Although the earbuds have improved the design to reduce the wind noise, the effect is still relatively poor. In addition, the Flipbuds Pro’s transparency mode is not as transparent as the Samsung Buds Pro either, but other features of the Flipbuds Pro are basically the same as the Samsung Buds Pro.
There are three noise cancellation modes to choose from, but there is not much difference in noise reduction intensity. The transparency mode has an option to Enhance voice, which when turned on, will slightly degrade the environmental sound and retain the human voice. Considering the price, Flipbuds Pro’s noise cancellation performance is still at a relatively good level.
At the same time, the new Enco Buds also feature ANC and this is quite unexpected for budget TWS earbuds. This will improve the audio quality reducing unwanted noise in certain environments.
Sound Quality and Operation
The LHDC encoding on the Xiaomi Air 2 Pro is replaced with aptX Adaptive, a Bluetooth encoding protocol. The tuning style favors heavy bass, the vocals have lower volume, so listening to rock or symphonic music is a more suitable choice. Gaming latency with Xiaomi phones is very low, but for non-Xiaomi phones the latency is very high, if you are not a Xiaomi phone user, you need to pay attention to this.
The Flipbuds Pro is also operated by touch instead of press. Long press to switch to the noise cancellation mode, short press to control the music play and pause, the previous song and the next song. Volume can also be controlled in the earbuds through custom settings. There is another good news too, you can control the Flipbuds Pro settings without using the XiaoAi App.
Connect with XiaoAi App
You only need to go into the Bluetooth settings to do all the operations, and the response time of the pop-up animation has become faster too. But you can only enjoy the above features if you are a Xiaomi phone user, otherwise, you still have to use the Chinese XiaoAi app. The app on Xiaomi phones and non-Xiaomi Android phones is the same, there are no missing features. But the XiaoAI iOS app does not support this earbud yet.
One feature is particularly interesting, if you do not put your earbuds in the earbud case within three minutes, the phone will remind you that the earbuds are not in the case, which is a very useful feature for users who often lose their earbuds. It is also worth noting that plastic charging case of the Xiaomi TWS weighs 57.4 g (~2 oz) together with the headphones, which feels substantial in the hands.
This time Flipbuds Pro also supports a dual device connection similar to the Huawei FreeBuds Pro, which simply means that you can connect two Bluetooth devices at the same time. When you connect two devices, the earbuds will automatically switch to the device which is playing the audio, without you having to manually switch. The convenience of multi-device switching is even more convenient than the Samsung Buds Pro.
One might wonder, can it connect to three devices at the same time? The answer is no, if there are three or more devices that need to be switched, they still have to be connected manually. Dual device connectivity should be the biggest highlight on Flipbuds Pro, and we think it’s worth buying it for this feature alone.
Enco Buds Performance
The OPPO Enco Buds feature an 8mm dynamic audio driver inside. The driver intensity is 100.6 dB at 1kHz and the earbuds operate at 20Hz-20kHz frequency range. The company says that this helps in rich and deep bass sounds.
Speaking of which, the wireless earbuds support both SBC and AAC codecs and have audio transmission2 via Binaural Bluetooth for reducing the delay in the wireless audio signal and enable super low-latency sound.
The main upgraded feature compared to the Enco W11 is that it has Bluetooth 5.2 chip inside. The latter has Bluetooth 5.0 for connectivity. Either way, both of them support a Bluetooth transmission range of up to 10 meters.
Battery
The Xiaomi Flipbuds Pro does not continue the advantage of the long battery life as of Mi Air 2 Pro. The Xiaomi Flipbuds Pro comes with only about 7 hours of battery life with the ANC turned on, and only 28 hours of battery life with the earbud case for charging. So the battery life is just ordinary.
There is a USB Type-C port that offers 2 hours of music playback in 5 minutes. The earbuds case also has Qi wireless charging support.
In terms of battery life, the OPPO Enco Buds have a rated battery life of 24hrs with the charging case. Each earbud is said to give a backup of about 6hrs in a single charge. This is due to the 40mAh battery on each earbud and 400mAh on the semi-transparent case. On the other hand, the charging case comes with a 400mAh battery. This charging case also features a USB Type C Charging Port for charging both the earbuds and the case. On a single charge, the Oppo new buds can provide a total battery of 24 hours. Both the earbuds take up to 2 hours to fully charge. Both the earbuds and charging case takes about 2.5 hours to fully charge.
Other features include a Type-C charging port(on the case), touch controls, low-latency gaming mode of 80ms(Triple tap to activate), IP54 dust and water resistance, automatic pairing, intelligent call noise cancellation.