Xiaomi Buds 5 Review: Flagship sound on a budget

The Xiaomi Buds 5 come in a stylish two-tone squarish case that opens from the front to reveal a nicely sculptured pair of buds. The lid is glossy, while the part of the carrying case with the buds and the battery is matte finish.

There's a USB-C charging port on the bottom, a pair button next to it, and a charging light on the front. You can find the Harman AudioEFX logo on the back of the lid as well.

 

The buds are shaped quite nicely, with fluid and sophisticated design. The markers for the left and right bud are positioned on the actual speaker grill, which is pretty classy, and the sensor for the in-ear detection is also beautifully made. This is all great, but you don't buy a pair of earbuds to look at them, so let's see how they fit inside a (medium-to-big) ear

There are pros and cons to the open in-ear design, and most of those have something to do with the shape of the human ear. While the open in-ear design might suit many people, there are an equal number out there who might not find these comfortable at all.

The main issue is that with such a design, you have zero adjustability and customization of the fit. There are no different ear tips or rubber bands or anything like that.

For my ears, the Xiaomi Buds 5 are too small, and they often fell out even while I was just walking around. The buds kind of hook in your ear canal, and if the latter is too big, they tend to wiggle around a lot.

That said, my colleague Alex found these perfect for his years, and he even "forgot they're even there." Our word of advice is to try the fit if you can before you pull the trigger on one of those.

If your ears are suitable for the Xiaomi Buds 5, a majestic heavenly symphony awaits at a one-click pair distance. We mention this because these support Google's Fast Pair, and the process is super simple.

Right out of the box, these buds sound really good. These little buggers produce surprising levels of bass, and it's well-defined as well. Listening to Sub Focus x Wilkinson is surprisingly engaging with the aforementioned precise and powerful bass response.

The mids are also quite precise; if you enjoy more vocal-centric music, the Xiaomi Buds 5 again deliver the goods. I really enjoy classic rock and heavy metal, so going through some old-school Bruce Dickinson and Halford albums was a joy.

The high can be a bit sterile, but some may also call them clear and precise. Listening to classical music on these buds is also a great experience, although all of the above comes with one big caveat. The sound quality and loudness vastly depend on how well these buds fit into your ear.

Now, the accompanying app offers some nice features, such as the option to record the audio stream that goes through the earbuds (up to 90 minutes per bud) and save it directly on the phone. It's a surprisingly useful feature (that you can massively abuse), and there's a warning to remind you of all ethical implications of such recordings.

If you don't like how the Harman-tuned EQ sounds, there are five different presets to choose from, along with a custom one that lets you tune the sound to your liking via a 10-band EQ. Finally, the buds are touch sensitive and support various gestures, mainly of the "press" variety. There's single press, double press, triple, and press and hold. The good thing is that all of these are customizable from the app, and you can set actions for each of those on the left or right earbud.

Another con of the open in-ear design is the widely varying noise cancellation results you will get with those, again depending on the fit. But even if these fit perfectly, the level of sound isolation could never be on par with a model with silicone tips. We're talking about plastic against your skin type of seal versus silicone which follows the curve of your ear canal.

Xiaomi says these buds can cancel out 40 dB of unwanted sound, and, in perfect conditions plus a specific frequency, this may be true. In real life, though, you shouldn't expect a huge effect, especially with low frequency sounds.

In the app, there are two settings for the noise cancellation: deep or balanced. You can also switch it off or toggle the Adaptive mode and let the algorithms decide what level to apply. In the end, though, it wouldn't matter that much because you probably won't even notice the difference.

Xiaomi claims you can get up to 6.5 hours of continuous music play from these buds on a single charge, with the ANC off. We tried to replicate these numbers but were able to get only around 5:45 hours with the ANC off, and a little over 5 hours with the ANC mode on.

We suggest you leave the ANC option turned off altogether as there's not much going on in terms of background noise isolation. Either way, the cited battery life was a bit overly optimistic. Not that 5-6 hours is a weak result, we just weren't able to confirm the 6.5-hours claim that Xiaomi put on the specs sheet.

Can you go up to 39 hours with the charging case? Probably not, but you can go full 24 hours with no problem whatsoever and as we all know, this is the most popular charging habit/schedule out there. 

It's very difficult to NOT recommend the Xiaomi Buds 5, mainly because they offer such great sound quality for under 100 euros. These buds are very stylish, come with touch controls, a cool audio recording option, high resolution audio support, and a quite flexible EQ.

On the flip side, your mileage will depend on how well these fit inside your ear. If the fit is good, you can equip yourself with some flagship sound for not a lot of money. But if it's not, this can lead to a lot of dropped buds and frustration, so try before you buy.