Tested: Huawei FreeBuds Lipstick | Ear-filling style

Is it a lipstick stick? No, they are headphones of crazy elegance, the FreeBuds Lipstick, with a very rich sound and equipped with the function of cancellation of ambient noise. But still weighed down by Huawei’s annoying tendency to design impractical cases.

WE love

You can’t help but fall in love with the bold design of the Huawei FreeBuds Lipstick as soon as you hold what appears to be a stick of lipstick in your hands. We even pushed the concept so far as to add a little discreet perfume to the box. In a black case with a gold band, two bright red earphones with black openings, in the form of putter golf like AirPods.

The 84.5g weight of the stainless steel case and the hard plastic finish of the earphones reassure us: it’s not junk.

Headphone control and configuration is supported by the app Huawei AI-Life, available on the Apple App Store. For Android, first download the Huawei AppGallery from a web browser.

The Bluetooth 5.2 connection is stable and takes place quickly when you take the headphones out of their case. They even accept being connected to two devices at the same time and broadcast the one that emits sound. Interesting addition in the Android version, we see in Huawei AI-Life all devices in the “Connection Hub”, up to eight, that have been paired for the first time. You can then select the two that are active.

Enough preparation, we want to know what these cute bright red headphones have in store.

The bass, discreet from the start, is astonishingly precise when it is put forward in a musical piece. The voices are rich and, in the high frequencies, we hear the detail of each instrument.

We have better sound quality here than with AirPods, no doubt. Their form of putter gives good breathability, but keeps them from competing in sound with the best button-shaped in-ear headphones, like the Jabra or Galaxy Buds.

Headphone control is fully configurable from the app Huawei AI-Life. One can decrease or increase the volume by flattering the headphones down or up, stop or resume the music, answer a call or stop it with two taps. Firmly maintaining the pressure activates the cancellation of ambient noise or rejects a call.

We love less

The main irritant of these headphones is their case. First, you never know which way to insert the headphones into their compartment. Then you have a 1 in 4 chance of replacing the square case cap correctly. We understood over time that we had to align the golden bands. Anyone who doesn’t know will do like our few guinea pigs: push the badly placed cap by forcing it, at the risk of damaging it.

Ambient noise cancellation makes an honest difference, nothing more. You can clearly see the effect in a very noisy environment like the metro, but it’s not enough to take full advantage of the music. Nothing to do, of course, with the efficiency of good big headphones, and it’s not very competitive compared to other headphones.

Luxury is expensive. The suggested retail price is $348.99. Fortunately, they can be found at a more reasonable price at some retailers.

The 22-hour battery life promised by the case, 4 hours for each earphone, is clearly below average. With ambient noise cancellation, we drop even lower, 14 hours for the case and 2.5 hours per earphone.

Obviously, these headphones from Huawei don’t have access to the Apple ecosystem as well as AirPods, capable of switching smoothly between Apple devices and summoning Siri. And we don’t have the “Connection Hub” in the iOS version of the app.

One buys ?

Here we have a magnificent design with more than respectable sound quality, as well as well-crafted software innovations. But at their full price, the purchase seems unsavory to us.

In promotion, however, we have a very competitive product from a technical point of view despite some weaknesses, and unbeatable from a look point of view.