We’ve been through a lot of budget earbuds. Most of them sound fine for podcasts but fall apart the second you throw on anything with real bass or detail. The Air Pro 4 are different.

Out of the box, the default tuning is warm with a slight bass bump which works great for most music. But switch on LDAC mode with a lossless source and these things open up in a way you dont expect from $53 earbuds. The mids are clear enough to pick out individual instruments in a mix, and the treble has sparkle without getting harsh. Not saying they compete with $200 Sony XM5s, but the gap is smaller than the price difference suggests.

The ANC is solid. Not class leading by any stretch, but it knocked out about 70 to 80 percent of office background noise and airplane cabin drone. The transparency mode is natural sounding which is a nice bonus. Call quality surprised us too, the 6 mic array with AI filtering meant the other end could hear us clearly even walking down a busy street. Battery life is the real kicker though. We used these about 3 hours a day and didn’t touch the USB-C cable for 12 days. Thats wild for this price point.