Xiaomi’s sub-brand Redmi has today launched the Redmi AirDots S in China. The new truly wireless earbuds look identical to the company’s older ‘AirDots’, but come with some internal upgrades.
The biggest change in the AirDots S is the fact that they no longer use a master-slave connection to your phone — that’s what the original AirDots used. The AirDots S actually connect both the earbuds to your phone, which is great. The earbuds now use Bluetooth 5.0, and according to the company, they have double the data transmission rate than the original AirDots.
The AirDots S also come with an ultra-low latency mode, presumably for better performance when gaming. This mode can be activated by triple-pressing the earbuds.
The earbuds come with all the usual features, including buttons that let you control media-playback, or call upon your assistant (Google Assistant, Siri, and XiaoAI are all supported). There’s a microphone for calls, obviously, and the earbuds apparently use a DSP for smart noise cancelation in calls. Don’t confuse this with active noise cancelation — that feature isn’t available on these earbuds.
Unfortunately the AirDots S make no improvements in the battery segment, offering the same 4 hours of playback time on a charge as their predecessors. With the included charging case you can charge the earbuds 2 more times for a total of 12 hours of music playback on your earbuds.
The best thing for AirDots fans however, is the price. Even with the improvements, Xiaomi has priced the AirDots S at ￥99.9 (~₹1,100) — the same price as the original AirDots.
