Huawei FreeBuds 3 rival Apple AirPods with enhanced Bluetooth

In the midst of a host of announcements, Huawei unveiled a new generation of true wireless headphones, the FreeBuds 3. Considered the world's first wireless earpiece featuring Bluetooth 5.1 technology, the Chinese giant technology hopes to take advantage of the market divide Models capable of high resolution in a very congested area.

The new FreeBuds 3 is pretty comprehensive in terms of functionality, but the internal hardware is the story here. As the first true wireless headset to use Huawei's A1 chip, the FreeBuds 3 are a new generation of true wireless headphones for the company.

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The new Huawei A1 chip would have allowed the FreeBuds 3 to display 30% lower latency performance than Apple's AirPods, and 50% lower power consumption in a package that is 95% larger than the Apple AirPods. the venerable wireless H1 chip of the AirPods. The A1 brings a new Bluetooth protocol to the table: BT-UHD. If you are using FreeBuds 3 with a new Huawei phone running EMUI 10.0 or later, both devices will connect using this new standard, which on paper offers data transfer rates of up to 2.3 Mbps . For reference, the next codec, LDAC, offers "only" 990 kbps.

The fact that very few models even offer higher speed support, not to mention high-end connections such as HD or LDAC aptX, is one of the weak points of the coverage surrounding true wireless headphones. With this in mind, audiophiles and commuters looking for new wireless headphones will want to pay attention to BT-UHD. It is possible that Americans seeking to use the FreeBuds 3 do not have much access to it in view of the unstable trade with the United States, but international users will also have access to headsets that do not require not an aggressive compression of audio signals sent via their wireless connection – in theory, anyway. We will not fail to test them once we get their hands on them.

While the support of this new standard in Android is unclear, Huawei phone owners certainly have something to please. Huawei seems to have taken Bluetooth audio much more seriously than in the past, which is good for everyone if they give technology to another company. If BT-UHD succeeds, this would be a welcome improvement in the wireless audio world.

Other notable features of Freebuds 3 include active noise canceling technology with three microphones, improved latency of 190 ms, and wireless Qi wireless charging, if available. There is a 30 mAh battery in each headset that offers 4 hours of playback on a single charge, while the charging case provides approximately 20 hours of full playback. The charging time should only take one hour, both for the headphones and the case.

The Huawei FreeBuds 3 will be available in black carbon and white ceramic colors. Pricing information has not been confirmed yet, but Huawei's new earbuds will go on sale in Europe next month.