Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro (Bluetooth) review: double-pinch on these

Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro design and colors

The design and presentation of these is great. Granted, they follow the curves and shapes of Apple’s AirPods Pro quite closely, there are a few modifications.

For example, the case opens up with that front flap, which gives you full view of the earbuds for a nice presentation. It’s not as convenient as a case with a top lid, as you have to carefully hold the bottom part of the case, but it does look cool.

The buds themselves also have slightly thicker stems, stylized with golden accents, and have both pinch and swipe sensors for media control. You know the deal — pinch to play / pause, double-pinch to skip, triple-pinch for back. Then swipe up and down for volume control.

 

The fit is pretty good, I didn’t even have to exchange tips. And the good news is that they come with three extra tip sizes — XS, S, and L (M are on the buds out of the box).

Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro sound quality

The Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro are marketed as absolute beasts of sound, with a dual amp system for the low and high frequencies, and triple drivers — a dual-magnetic 11 mm driver, ceramic tweeter, and yet another planar driver. Sounds impressive!

In reality, the Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro sound… OK. Their bass is boomy, their mids are crunchy and grungy, and their top end is rolled off, so they can sound a bit muffled.

We do recommend downloading the Xiaomi Earbuds app. The Buds 5 Pro come with five audio tuning presets, two of which are Harman — Harman AudioEFX and Harman Master. The former one is activated by default, and is definitely not my favorite. Call me basic but the Harman Master sounded a bit better, opening up the highs and clearing up the mids a little bit.

Thankfully, there’s a custom EQ, which I gravitated to to clean the sound up a bit. With a personal touch, you can get these to sound OK, but the crunchiness in the higher mids refuses to leave — must be a characteristic of the sound of the multiple drivers kicking together.



There’s a surprise additional feature in the buds. They have actual storage, and they can record audio — you can then transfer it onto your phone to listen to. The quality isn’t great, and if you have anything playing inside the buds, the mics won’t be working. So, we are unsure of the purpose of this feature.

The app also allows you to update the firmware of the buds, but it requires you to be registered with your Xiaomi account (or make one if you don’t have one). Why? Since when do we have to sign in with our credentials to download a firmware update? On earphones!

Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro noise cancellation and transparency

Like any other modern earbuds, the Buds 5 Pro have active noise cancellation and a pass-through mode for external sounds.

The good news is that the ANC is pretty good. As usual, the higher the pitch of a sound, the more likely it will to pass through to your hearing. However, any humming and drumming of the street outside, any air conditioner or fan sounds, most hubbub in the local cafe will get severely reduced or erased.

The pass-through — or transparency — mode is OK. Due to the inherent mid-heavy and tinny sound of the buds it, too, lacks a nice crystal top end. At least you can hear speech, which sits in the mid frequency range, well.

Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro battery life

With ANC on, these offer 8 hours of life from the buds, plus 32 hours from the case (volume at 50%). It’s a pretty good battery life promise — you will rarely need the buds on for 8 hours straight. And the case adds a full 4 charges more, so you can basically take these through a 5-day workweek on a single charge.

Well, it won’t be 1-to-1 conversion in real life. If you take calls on them and crank up the volume from time to time, it will of course reduce that. But we can report that we definitely can’t get these to drain quickly or easily.

Charging is done either via a USB C cable or on a wireless Qi pad. If you are really in a pinch, 10 minutes of charging on the wire can get you 4.5 hours of listening time.

Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro should you buy them?

These buds were… a bit of a disappointment. I was hyped by the multiple drivers and Harman tuning, but ultimately did not hear anything special. In fact, the earbuds don’t sound great.

The Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro are coming to the EU for €199. For reference, at the time of writing this, the Google Pixel Buds cost €249, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro cost €179, the Nothing Ear cost €129. All of these options sound better than the Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro and offer extra features, or a better EQ, or firmware updates that don’t require you to create an account with the manufacturer’s platform.

The Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro are not bad or egregious. But they sound a bit too mediocre and ask a bit too much money for me to recommend them.