Redmi Buds 5 Pro review

Mar 29, 2024

Little known fact before I begin, skip to the next paragraph if you don’t care, but I actually paid ~20 euros for these. How? I first got gifted Xiaomi Mi TWS Earphones 2S, which I then had issues with and warrantied until they were no longer in production, at which point the Xiaomi store gave me my money back and I bought the Redmi Buds 3 Pro for 45 euros, but since I had paid ~55 for the TWS 2S, I got 10 euros back. In the same manner, I had problems on the Buds 3 Pro until recently they stopped being produced and as a result I got my money back (again) and was able to buy the Redmi Buds 5 Pro for 30 euros, but seeing as I got 10 euros back for the previous ones, I technically paid just 20 euros. What other people would have paid easily 150+ euros by this point I got for just 75 euros total and 20 of my own euros. (And this is allowed, the Xiaomi store people even offered this as a suggestion on what I should do) With that out of the way, the categories:

Audio:

Quality:

I have no expertise in this, so I won’t say much, but they sound good! There are 3 presets to choose from in the Xiaomi Earphones app but I like the base one.

There is also Dimensional Audio in the app, which makes everything echoey and makes you feel like you are in a big warehouse, but I don’t like it as it makes audio quality worse. Might be cool for movies, I guess, not that I watch any on these earphones, though.

Loudness:

Really good. They get LOUD levels of loud, and I usually use the 3rd or 4th step in audio when paired to my phone because that’s the perfect volume for me.

Audio bleed:

Allow me to elaborate on this one. A problem many headphones and earphones suffer from is audio bleed. This is where audio that you play leaks from the earphones and people can hear you. Not only is this potentially embarrasing if you are in a socially negative area and people make fun of others for their choices of music, videos, etc, but it can also be really distracting to people like me who are really sensitive to noise. It’s not something that someone will crucify you for, but it’s a nice thing to consider.

With these earphones, there is basically none of it. At max volume, in a quiet room, my friend said that she could only hear it if she really paid attention to it and intended to hear it. Normally, in a relatively loud room, there wouldn’t be any problem at normal volume, keep in mind at max volume it was VERY loud to the point of distorting audio.

8/10, audio quality could be better (Audiophiles would have to confirm this though), but for the price it’s quite nice

Comfort:

The first few days will take some getting used to. It’s a very different feeling compared to, say, bean shaped ones. It also gets worse because the earbud itself is a little bit away from the ear itself due to how big the foam (I think?) cover is. This means that it doesn’t feel truly inserted even if it’s all the way in and something is missing. But it’s in. However, this means they feel very light when in your ear. It’s like they disappear and you simply imagine the audio, it’s amazing. This is how earphones should be.

Having used them for around three weeks now, they feel great. The sense of weightlessness is amazing. It feels like the audio just materializes in your ears and you do not feel any pressure apart from a tiny amount if your ears are small.

In the packaging you can find a few different sizes of the foam covers, I went with the smallest because my ear is tiny.

10/10

Build quality & Aesthetics:

This one depends a lot on which colour you get, but I specifically waited for, and got, the black colour because of the matte plastic on the case. Matte plastic is just better for this kind of stuff. Which is why the rest of this category will be about the black ones.

The case itself comes in a leather (I believe might be the same one used on the 13T Pro, i.e., Silicone Polymer vegan leather) and matte plastic dual finish. The bottom part where the earphones sit is in the leather cover, whereas the lid is matte plastic. There is a light just below where the lid and the bottom part make contact that indicates charging and pairing status. It only shines white, so it tells you if it’s charging or not, but it can also blink to indicate if it is pairing or not. It also lights up solid when you open up the case, which is a nice touch. On the bottom we can see a USB-C port, as per EU regulations, and to the side is a tiny, but slightly visible, button that you can press for pairing. I like the fact that it is hidden, as it adds to the aesthetics, but it is still there, so you can still retain functionality. Finally, on the back there is a simple gray Redmi name. All usage instructions and certifications and whatnot are hidden on the inside of the case on the lid in the earphone part itself, which makes the outside look very nice. The inside is a black glossy plastic (whyyyyyy), with matte plastic on the parts where earphones don’t sit.

The earphones themselves are made from a glossy plastic, but they have an accent in the middle of the stem that I can’t understand what it is made out of, but seems like more plastic. And around the stem on the visible part there is more matte plastic. While Xiaomi presumably intended to make them seem more premium and luxurious by adding that, they essentially just made that part look dirty, so I don’t like it. It’s also worse on the other colours as it’s glossy, which might just act as a thief magnet.

7/10, not enough matte plastic and the stem accent just makes it look dirty. Also, glossy will scratch, peel off, and just overall be not nice in the future

Battery:

I don't have an official score regarding the non-ANC battery life, but they last 20-21 hours on adaptive ANC with personalized ANC and plenty of other battery draining features at ~50% volume, so it's pretty good! I would definitely appreciate better, but it's certainly, by no means, bad battery life.

Extras:

Bluetooth latency:

There’s no latency, or at least no perceptible latency. Good job, Xiaomi.

Range:

Seems about on par with most earphones, so pretty good.

Pairing:

Very fast. First pairing took like no time whatsoever, connecting to the phone takes no time either, pick it up, put it in your ear, and you’re good to go.

Xiaomi Earphones app:

This app is necessary to get half the features, which I don’t like as they could very well be integrated into the Bluetooth menu, but I understand. It’s nice though. And thank god it's in dark mode, credit to Xiaomi for making it dark mode.

In here you can get a lot of fine control over them.

Though I have just had a weird bug where I couldn’t go off of transparency mode, but clearing cache on the app fixed it, let’s hope that that isn’t a common occurence.

Transparency mode:

I don’t use it much, but I like it. It’s quite good for if you need it.

ANC:

God l love the ANC on these things. Pretty much entirely removes a lot of noise and makes it so much nicer to listen to music next to a busy road while waiting for a bus or watching a video in a noisy classroom.

I also find that the automatic ANC level option is pretty good and accurate, I haven’t found myself needing to manually adjust ANC that much

And the personalised ANC doesn’t seen to make much of a difference, but I could just be deaf from hearing explosions in Arma, you never know.

Portability:

These are very good if you want them to fit anywhere. The case is big enough to fit a lot in it but not too big so I could fit two of them side by side in the palm of my hand. Pretty good.

Overall rating

Great pair of earphones, I love them. Highly recommended if you are looking for a pair and have the budget.

9/10