Earfun Wave Pro review: it would be silly to ask more from budget wireless headphones

Earfun Wave Pro: Two-minute review

The more I test Earfun earbuds, the more the name makes sense: while these music machines won’t quite impress audiophiles, they provide enough handy functionality and useful features – at lovely low prices – to make the listening experience fun. The ear part of the name probably doesn’t require justification.

You may have noticed that the new Earfun Wave Pro are not actually, earbuds; they are, in fact, the first pair of over-ear headphones that this relatively new audio company has made. Yes, it made a ‘Pro’ product before the regular bog-standard one.

Thankfully, not only has Earfun avoided dropping the ball with this new form factor, but it’s managed to make perhaps its best product yet. It carries over what made Earfun’s earbuds great, and turns it up to 11.

We should start at the price: these are lovely and cheap compared to many other over-ear headphones, cheap enough that your grandma might pick them up from a big-box electronics store to buy as a Christmas gift for an unruly teen. They undercut several other Earfun earbuds as well as some fairly big names in the budget headphone market.

Don’t set your expectations low just because of the cost though: these sound surprisingly great for the price. Both bass and treble are pronounced, and while some mid sounds are lost between the two, the overall soundstage is a lot more audible than on many equivalent-price rivals I’ve tested.

I particularly like how Earfun has avoided the classic budget headphone bass trap (either having barely any, or way too much). If the Goldilocks tale had covered budget headphone bass power as well as beds and porridge heat, the flaxen-haired trespasser would certainly pick the Wave Pro.

The headphones feel great to wear too. They’re not heavy and have soft cup padding, plus they’re easily foldable to tote around and have a great build quality. My favorite part of the Earfun Wave Pro is the incredible battery life (80 hours, down to 55 if you have ANC on), which all but eliminates the need to charge these cans on your next road trip. Seriously, unless you’re constantly listening to music, you’ll probably only find yourself charging these things two or three times per month.

Any gripes I had with the Earfun are pretty minor: they take a weirdly long time to turn off, the five different ANC modes risk confusing people who only recently learned what that stands for (active noise cancellation), and there’s only one color option, which might dismay fashionistas.

I called them minor, alright! And it was hard to find even these, because the Earfun Wave Pro really knock it out of the park when you consider competitors at their price point. 

Earfun Wave Pro review: Price and release date

• Released in January 2024
• Priced at  $79.99 / £79.99 (roughly AUD$120)

You can pick up the Earfun Wave Pro for the very reasonable price of £79.99 / $79.99 (roughly AU$120).

Being Earfun’s first over-ear headphones, we can’t compare them to any predecessors, but it’s worth noting that the brand has loads of earbuds ranging from $50 to $120 (or equivalent) so these fit roughly in the middle of the brand’s line-up.

Given that you’re spending roughly $400 / £400 / AU$600 for the best headphones on the market, the Earfun Wave Pro definitely reside in the ‘budget headphone’ camp.

Rivals in that sub-$/£100 area include the Sony WH-CH520, which retail for a touch less, and the JBL Tune 670NC (which retail for a tiny bit more, as do the Sony WH-CH720) – but sales can fold minor price differences like that with ease. Both predate it on our list of the best cheap headphones. 

Earfun Wave Pro review: Specs

Earfun Wave Pro review: Features

• Total battery life of up to 80 hours
• App brings a few useful extra features
• Multipoint connection to multiple devices

I’ve gushed about it enough in the opening of this review, so it’s worth starting with one of the best bits of the Earfun Wave Pro: it has an amazing 80-hour battery life. That’s over three days of non-stop music, if you’re so inclined, though switching on AMC drops that to 55 hours.

While you do see the odd headphone here and there with eighty-plus-hour battery lives, it’s rare, and most budget rivals on the market will give you half that (or less). I was staggered to see the Earfun Wave Pro last longer between charges than my nerdy endurance workout headphones designed for long expeditions, but here we are.

Charging is done via the USB-C port on the headphones, with Earfun stating that 10 minutes of charging gets you 10 hours of (ANC off) listening. 

You don’t need to download the Earfun Audio mobile app to use the Wave Pro, but it brings a few extra features that enhance the experience.

You can use the app to toggle between five different types of noise cancellation, boot up an equalizer to customize your sound experience, turn on a game mode for improved latency, and also change the on-can controls in case you want the volume up button to do something other than turn the volume up. You can also assign long press commands to the buttons which is a bit more useful. I found the default EQ of the headphones fine too, though you can tweak them to fit any preference.

As mentioned, the app lets you select between several ANC modes: Normal, Ambient, Wind Noise, Comfort ANC and Strong ANC. Five modes is a lot (even if one, Normal, is actually ‘off’), and I can see some users being confused by all this choice. Roughly I’d call the modes a sliding scale of strength, but it’s worth playing around until you find one you like and sticking with it.

For calling, the headphones have five microphones which pair with an algorithm that’s designed to isolate your voice from background sounds when you’re talking. By all accounts, I sounded clear when talking to people on the phone.

The Wave Pro also have multipoint connectivity, which lets you pair to two separate devices and jump between them based on what you’re doing. It’s situationally a really useful feature so you can connect to, say, your laptop for streaming a movie and also your phone in case a call pops up.

• Features score: 4/5

Earfun Wave Pro review: Design

• Comfortable and light design
• A few on-cup controls
• Folds up into carry case but no IP rating

You’ve seen headphones, right? Yeah – the Earfun Wave Pro looks exactly like you'd expect: two cans connected by a headband. This band can be adjusted and the cans can be rotated and tilted a little, so it’s easy to fit onto heads of different sizes. 

Unlike some budget headphones, you can fold the Earfuns up to reduce their space, and this way they’ll also fit into the surprisingly premium-feeling carry case you get in the box.

The cups are fairly wide and are clad in soft memory foam caps. Honestly, these are some of the most comfortable headphones I’ve ever worn. The weight certainly doesn’t hurt either – weighing 268g in all, these aren’t the lightest headphones by a fair margin, but they still feel easy-breezy to wear. You’re not going to get earache from wearing these for too long.

Unlike many other low-cost headphones I’ve used, I was pleasantly surprised by the build quality of the Wave Pro. Many of its rivals have cheap plastic which results in the occasional ‘creak’ or ‘squeak’ when you move your head, but the Earfun had none of that.

You’ve got several buttons on the right ear cup: a noise cancellation toggle (which switches between ‘normal’, ‘ambient sound’ and ‘noise cancellation’, not the full range available on the app), a volume up and down rocker, and the power button. The power button is easy to use to turn on the headphones, but you have to hold it down for a full six seconds to turn them off, which feels far too long to be convenient. Plus there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, for if you prefer wired audio, but plugging a jack into it turns off the headphones, and I couldn’t find a way to turn it back on (and thus use noise cancellation) while the jack was still connected.

There’s only one color option: bog-standard black. It’s an inoffensive hue, but I’m always a fan of funky color choices.

• Design score: 4/5

Earfun Wave Pro review: Sound quality

• Well-balanced audio
• Mid lost a little
• Max volume is really, really loud

The usual stumbling block where low-cost headphones are concerned is sound quality, but compared to their rivals the Earfun Wave Pro are really impressive… though they obviously won’t compete against super-pricey audiophile-pleasing premium options.

The bass is decent – yes, decent is a good word for it. It’s there, it’s solid and audible, but it’s not exactly going to shatter your teeth, if that’s what you want. I read comments from buyers who found the initial bass levels lacking – thankfully the EQ mode in the app lets you fix this, if you like your music to make your head (and boots) shake.

At least the bass is matched really well with the treble. By default I found both mixed well together, to the point that I didn’t actually deploy any EQ tweaks – beyond my testing to conform these worked. Rarely did low-end or high-end frequencies impair or overshadow each other, though on occasion some parts felt lacking – I’m listening to Toto’s Hold the Line as I write this and the piano accompaniment is a little harder to hear in the mix than I'm used to. 

If anything is missing in the soundstage, though, it’s the mid sounds between bass and treble. Instruments and lines could sometimes get lost between the low- and high-frequency titans, or smushed together to create ‘noise’ instead of ‘music’.

But it's important to remember that these are truly budget conscious over-ears and the Wave Pro never sounded tinny across the course of my listening, a death sentence for low-cost cans. Even at high volumes, I never heard songs exhibit that horrid hiss through the treble. 

Perhaps some of my praise for the Earfun's audio is down to these headphones' long list of tech specs: there are 40mm drivers, a High-Res Audio certification (both for wireless and wired music) and a Lossless Digial Audio Codec (LDAC) for improved Bluetooth streaming.

The Earfun Wave Pro’s max volume is wincingly loud, loud enough that I wouldn’t recommend listening for very long. But it’ll definitely appease people who like to get their blood pumping with deafening bangers. 

The ANC on the headphones is good, not great, but most people will find it fit for purpose. I mainly listened on the strongest mode which still let in some sounds, but it’s a lot better than nothing.

• Sound quality: 4/5

Earfun Wave Pro review: value

The Earfun Wave Pro offer you considerable value for money, when you consider the range of features and admirable sound quality for the price.

These are certainly budget headphones, yet you wouldn't be going amiss by opting for them over pricier alternatives and pocketing the cash, if you don't need the real premium trappings of rivals.

I say that all without mentioning that the Earfun comes with a carry case, so you won't need to spend extra on one of those.

• Value: 5/5

Should I buy the Earfun Wave Pro?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Earfun Wave Pro review: Also consider

JBL Tune 670NC
A little more pricey, the JBL Tune 670NC have a great range of features, though their audio quality doesn't quite hit the high notes (pun intended).

See our full JBL Tune 670NC review

Sony WH-CH520
If you don't mind ditching the ANC, these Sony buds sound great, with extra EQ options to improve it even more.

See our full Sony WH-CH520 review

How I tested the Earfun Wave Pro

• Tested for over two weeks
• Tested at home, in the office, on public transport and on walks

I used the Earfun Wave Pro for about two weeks for the testing of this review, plus a few days before the official testing period when I wanted to get my bearings with them a little.

I mostly tested the phone while it was connected to my Android phone, though I also tested it on various gadgets like other phones, an iPad and my work laptop. I used it for music, podcasts, TV streaming and some games too.

I've been reviewing gadgets for TechRadar for a little over five years as of writing this review; originally for the phones team as a writer then editor, but I currently write reviews for various sections of the site. I've tested various Earfun earbuds as well as other low-end headphones to rival the Wave Pro. 

I also tested these immediately after the same-price Edifier W820NB Plus, which was a useful counterpoint.

• First reviewed in April 2024

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