Alongside the much-awaited Realme Smart TV and Realme Watch, the company also launched a cheaper version of its truly wireless earbuds that were unveiled earlier last year. Called the Realme Buds Air Neo, these earbuds look the same as the original but lack some of the premium features like in-ear wear detection and wireless charging.
Realme Buds Air Neo: Specs and Features
Starting off with the design, Realme Buds Air Neo looks exactly like the original Buds Air. Both the charging case and earbuds look pretty much the same. There’s only one way to differentiate between the two, i.e. the air-hole cutout at the top. It is similar to what you may have seen on Apple’s earphones, for equalizing pressure and offering better acoustics.
Each earbud weighs merely 4.1 grams whereas the charging case weighs 30.5 grams. They are super lightweight and should be comfortable to use, thanks to the semi in-ear design. The earbuds are equipped with bigger 13mm dynamic bass boost drivers as compared to 12mm drivers aboard the original Buds Air. Realme has also baked the R1 chip, along with Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity support onboard.
Realme Buds Air Neo also supports instant auto connection via Android’s Fast Pair feature to enable quick pairing of the earbuds with your smartphone. Like its elder sibling, Buds Air Neo also supports touch controls. You can tap twice to answer calls or play/ pause music, thrice to change tracks, and long press to invoke a voice assistant.
In addition, you can long-press on both earbuds to enable the super low latency mode, which brings the wireless latency down to 119ms. This will come in handy for gamers. If you want to customize the touch controls, you can do that from within the Realme Link app.
The earbuds offer only up to 3 hours of continuous playback, which is super low. But, you get a total of 17 hours of playback with the charging case. It can charge your earbuds 5x times and it takes more than 1 hour to charge the case itself. Realme Buds Air Neo has also swapped out the USB Type-C port for the older-gen microUSB port on this cheaper variant.
With merely 3 hours of continuous playback, you will have to take breaks more often than not to charge the earbuds and that could be a hassle. OnePlus Bullets Wireless Z are neckband-style wireless earphones that cost a few bucks less and deliver up to 20 hours of playback on a single charge.
Price and Availability
Realme Buds Air Neo is priced at Rs. 2,999 in India and will be available in three color variants, namely Pop White, Punk Green, and Rock Red. Sadly, the company does not make its more affordable earbuds available in the signature yellow color.
The white color variant will go on sale at 3:00 PM later today for the first time. It will be available exclusively on Flipkart and Realme’s website. The green and red color variants are coming soon, as revealed during the online launch event.
