Hi everyone,
I got lucky and managed to grab some FreeBuds Pro 2 online from a UK seller at a good price after weeks of deliberation (looked like it was a small qty dropship as no UK stock for weeks before that.)
I got them pretty quick and have been using them for 2 days now. I really like this design but didn't want the Apple AirPod due to the cable type etc. I had some fake AirPods that were pretty good but really buggy so I went for these.
Obviously all the manual is in Chinese when you get it - this is a proper Chinese market item. Remember that this has not been designed for EU / US release at all unlike some of the China goods that are intended for that market.
I also took a bit of a gamble because there are only a few English review videos out there and most of the web pages about this product are just marketing based rather than real reviews.
Maybe I will post an in-depth review with all the feature stuff I've worked out but I just wanted to chime in and say they sound pretty good (for their design, basically same as AirPods) and mostly work well and have a real good build quality. I was surprised to find you can't skip tracks with the gestures though. Thats the only major thing that is missing for me. But on the plus I was surprised to find out they automatically pause the music when you remove one from your ear (like Apple ones do.)
I use a Samsung S8 phone. They seem to work OK with it although I am experiencing some issues with laggy audio and cutting out. My fake AirPods would cut out at lot worse than this, and I work in an office with plenty of devices around so it might not be the fault of the device but just general RF interfearence. I'm also finding that my tracks are sometimes randomly skipping next - even though you can't do this with a gesture. I am thinking maybe the mic's are picking up voices in the office and triggering it?
I was just searching online reference these issues and found this thread It's good to know that someone has kindly translated the companion app (I didn't even know there was one.) So I am updating my phone now (I hope I might be able to get HWA going with these? I have LDAC already for my Sony MDR's, not sure if its related) and I will also try this app to update the FreePods firmware. If this then helps with the audio lag / interfearnce I will report back.
Update:
I have updated them using the app (thank you again OP.) The laggy audio / buffering stutter has gone away. I have had at least one little bit of signal loss / interfearence so far since update but we will see how it goes. I think they sound better now too but that might just be burn in or pseudo effect for me.
Samsung S8 on current firmware does not seem to have HWA - don't know if it will be getting it but at least this is useful for anyone who has this phone who is interested in FreeBud 2 Pro. As someone menitoned, for simple user of Spotify etc, we cannot exceed 320 kb/s anyway for quality, so no point to stress to much about HWA although it is nice to have.
Good to know about the voice controls. I thoguht it was only using the virtual assistant only (google, siri, whatever.) But actually as people point out, it has bult in freebud 2 audio commands for simple playback control which is cool. You must use the companion app to set it to use English langauge otherwise it is Chinese by default. OP has kindly updated/included English manual in the companion app so check that for the commands.
Again I know most users are using Huawei phone but I prefer these style of earbuds and think this is a good product even for non-huawei phone users if you like this style of ear-bud over in-ear ones (if you like in-ear then something better is Samsung IconX or new ones.)
