Redmi Buds 4 Active Review: Best Budget Earbuds?

TechLekh Verdict

The Redmi Buds 4 Active provide good quality sound in all specturms and have decent latency. For the price, the earbuds are quite appealing and get a recommendation from us. 

The Buds 4 Active comes with a clean design and has decent build quality. The touch controls are a bit unorthodox but the Bluetooth connection is quite strong.

Sounds from the Buds 4 Active are very much present in the moment and the earbuds get quite loud. The latency is just about noticeable in both normal and game modes and the buds are not suitable for fast-paced games but causal gamers won’t have many issues.

Xiaomi has been selling products of all varieties in Nepal for quite some time now. From phones to accessories, the Redmi lineup has a popular fanbase in Nepal and is known for bringing good quality items at an affordable price. Enter the Redmi Buds 4 Active: a new contender in the budget earbuds category. So, will it swim or will it sink in the sea of countless budget earbuds already available in Nepal? Let’s find out.

The Redmi Buds 4 Active price in Nepal is Rs. 2,999. It is a TWS that features an IPX4 rating and offers up to 28 hours of playback and is available for purchase via Daraz and retail stores all over Nepal. Let’s take a look at the specifications below to get started.

ALSO READ: Kick Buds S Pro Review: ANC on a Budget?

Redmi Buds 4 Active Review

Design

The Redmi Buds 4 Active has a squircle-shaped case. Our review unit is the Bass Black color and the case has a matte finish except for the sides which run all around the case in a gloss black finish. The case feels solid in hand and the build is quite decent.

Weirdly, the Redmi branding is placed on the back instead of the front and it confused us a few times when opening the case. The case also features a single LED that lights up but you’ll have a hard time knowing the exact charge remaining from just a singular light.

Opening the lid, the hinge is pretty solid and snaps into position rather quickly and you’re greeted by the earbuds which have the same matte finish. The earbuds have a connection light on them for pairing mode and the overall design is pretty good.

There are no markings or indications for the touch areas giving it a unibody-type look and the earbuds do look clean, but it does mean you may occasionally miss the touch-sensitive area while controlling them.

The earbuds themselves are the in-ear type and are pretty lightweight. They have a long stem and came with additional ear tips in the box. Overall, there are no complaints regarding the build of the earbuds.

Connection & Controls

Redmi Buds 4 Active features Bluetooth v5.3 for Bluetooth connection. The connection was seamless and the buds auto-connect with the last connected device when popped out of the case. We didn’t experience any dropped connection issues with the buds. As for the range, Redmi advertises a 10m range in open space which is pretty standard.

The buds come in two modes. A music mode and a game mode. You can switch between them by holding both buds for about 1.5 seconds. There is only a chime that plays so you really can’t tell which mode you’re in.

We compared the game mode of the Redmi Buds 4 Active to the Ultima Atom 520 in beast mode (game mode basically), and the latency was identical.

The buds have noticeable latency in normal mode and the gaming mode helps the latency a lot but it is still not suitable for fast paced games. 

You get touch controls on both earbuds. The touch controls are not very intuitive, to be honest. You can tap twice to play/pause the song or triple-tap to change the song. Triple tapping on either bud only switched to the next song.

Sound & Mic

The earbuds feature a 12mm Bass Pro driver. The earbuds were comfortable at around 40% volume for most songs. During our testing, we stuck the volume at 40-50% range and cycled game mode on/off to note the differences in quality and latency.

Overall, the sound quality is good. It isn’t anything special but for the price, it’s decent and gets the job done. The sound is of very in-your-face quality.

Anyways let’s dive into the sound. But, as always, we’ll have to put the disclaimer that music is very subjective and experiences can vary with the source audio and the mixing/mastering done. It also varies with the ear shape of the listener so you might not have the same mileage as we did.

Starting off with some K-pop. We chose the ever-popular As if it’s your last by Blackpink, during the chorus the bass was quite flat. It was overpowered by the clear vocals and the disco beat going on. It’s not like you couldn’t hear it, but you had to really focus to clearly hear the bass line. The mids and highs are fine.

Time for some J-pop and we chose Yonezu Kenshi’s Lemon for this one. The piano chords were easily heard and the vocals were warm, really representing the tone of the song. The guitars and violins in the chorus would often fade in and out. The bass melody was really difficult to hear in this song. Still, it was a pleasant experience, especially the vocals.

Moving on to Rock songs in Thunderstruck by AC/DC, the guitars completely stole the show with the main focus being on them. The bass was again pretty flat but was pretty audible.

So far, the Bass Pro driver hasn’t really lived up to its name. Maybe it was our song choice, so we went ahead with Lucid Dreams by Juice WRLD to give the earbuds a shot at redemption. The bass was clearly audible and didn’t tear apart. But, you won’t feel the thump that you can so clearly hear in the song. It’s somewhere in the middle.

The earbuds sound pretty good for the price. The Bass Pro drivers do a decent job of delivering good sound quality in all spectrums.

The microphone is decent and the voice comes out pretty clear. There were no issues while using the earbuds for calls and just some voice recording.

Battery

Redmi claims 28 hours of playback battery backup with the Redmi Buds 4 Active. During our usage, the earbuds were quite close to that. At the time of writing, the earbuds were nearing 20 hours of playback at around 4 days and the case didn’t require charging. There’s only a single LED so we can’t accurately determine the charge level. Also, there was no USB-C charging cable in the box.

So this was our review of the Redmi Buds 4 Active. What do you think of the Redmi Buds 4 Active? Let us know in the comments!