Huawei's latest AirPods imitators add noise suppression

Huawei adds noise suppression to the third generation of FreeBuds, its true wireless headphones looking almost identical to Apple's AirPods. The FreeBuds 3, announced today by IFA 2019 on stage, includes four hours of head-to-head entertainment and a puck-shaped circular charge case that extends the total listening time to 20 hours. . The ear cups are available in black or white.

Huawei says FreeBuds 3 is the world's first open-design noise canceling headset. This means that the earpieces do not create a sealed physical barrier between your ear canal and the world around you, as do the silicone tips of ordinary ear canal earbuds.

Photo of Jon Porter / The Verge

This is an unusual design for a pair of noise canceling headphones, and this could have a significant impact on the function's operation in the FreeBuds 3. The active noise cancellation tends to work better with low-frequency sounds like the roar of an airplane or the sound of traffic, but it is less effective at higher frequencies, which is why it is useful for headphones to also try to physically block sounds so that They do not enter your ears.

When I asked Huawei about this, he said his priority with headphones was comfort and that people are less sensitive to high-frequency background noise while trying to listen to music. He added that in some cases, hearing high frequencies, such as car alarms, was useful for people because it allowed them to become aware of what was going on around them.

Huawei also introduces a new chip called A1 chip, FreeBuds 3, which it compared to the H1 chip used by Apple in its AirPod. The company claims that the new chip is the first in the world to support the Bluetooth 5.1 standard and is designed to offer lower latency and power consumption than other Bluetooth chips. However, although Apple's H1 chip allows its earphones to automatically pair with nearby phones, I still had to jump into the Bluetooth settings menu of a phone to pair it with the FreeBuds 3. Huawei.

Unfortunately, I could not properly test the noise suppression capabilities of FreeBuds 3, as Huawei's demonstration room was almost completely silent. However, the headphones sounded good in the brief time I spent with them, with well-controlled bass levels and an articulated sound stage. I also found that the FreeBuds 3 were comfortable and well suited to my ears.

Huawei's FreeBuds have never feared to carry the Apple influence on their sleeve. However, with the noise cancellation introduced with the third-generation headsets, Huawei is offering a feature you can not technically have with the AirPods (at least not until next year), although I'm a bit skeptical about the quality of the noise. the cancellation will work with an open design in practice.