The Soundpeats Air5 Pro earbuds deliver a bass-heavy but clear sound, strong ANC for the price, and excellent comfort, giving them a premium feel despite their mid-range cost. Their main drawback is the clunky app, but overall they are well-built, feature-rich, and highly recommended for the value.
| Pros | Cons |
| Bass forward sound Very comfortable ANC is great for the budget Customisable EQ and buttons when app works Battery life | Bass forward sound The app Tiny weeny charging cable |
First impressions
If I had a penny for every set of earbuds or headphones Hubbley get a chance to review, I’m sure I’d have… well lots of pennies. But – this is my actual first set of earbuds I’ve had a chance to review on the team, and initial impressions are that they are surprisingly fabulous!
In what could be described as a saturated market, Soundpeats are not a brand I’ve come across before, so I expected their Air5 Pro to be very much like other similarly priced earbuds. In fact, I’ve even seen these described elsewhere as “budget” earbuds, and certainly for the hardcore audiophiles they could be described as such. However, in my opinion these are of a premium feeling, mid-range quality. My previous earbuds were a set from LG that you would absolutely describe as budget, at a tenth the price, but they lacked the feature set, build quality and finish of the Air5 Pros. These are not budget.
Out of the box
The specifications for the Air5 Pros are quite extensive. Some highlights from their website include:
- Active Noise Cancellation (ANC)
- A Snapdragon QCC3091 chip
- 7.5 hr single charge on earbuds / 37 hr charge on case (reduced with ANC on)
- LDAC & aptX Lossless support
- Bluetooth 5.4 & Dual-connection device support
- 6 mics with “AI ENC Call”
- Game mode (low latency connection)
- IPX5 rated
The product itself is packaged well in a nice compact box. 2 pairs of spare ear tips and a charging cable are hidden neatly in the box, and I wouldn’t have actually spotted the manual had I not been looking for it. The case is sturdy and well designed with a button on the outside as well as USB-C charging port, and it doesn’t feel like the case will pop open by itself and spill the earbuds out onto the street.
The earbuds themselves feel of an excellent quality and have a nice glassy sheen to them. I am also fond of the modern trend to provide devices fully charged and ready to go!
Pairing and Config
A caveat here – I own a Pixel 8a phone, which has been excellent to me except for one niggle; my current (cheap) earbuds have a peculiar problem with Bluetooth connectivity whilst using my Pixel watch, a (sort of) known issue that apparently plagues other combinations of Bluetooth earbuds and Pixel devices.
The pairing process here was quick – like quicker than any other Bluetooth device I’ve used with my phone in recent memory – and I’m pleased to say, rock solid in testing so far other than a random small delay in the initial connection to the right ear the first couple of times I used them. Without any change to the configuration, they just work with the various combinations of taps of long presses on each side controlling various aspects of play, volume and voice assistant, although the initial combos weren’t exactly as intuitive as I thought they could be.
This is where the app comes in. Now, the recommended “PeatsAudio” app comes in at a staggering 1.9/5 average reviews on Android, so I somewhat reluctantly installed it in order to configure the earbuds. And yeah, the app isn’t great. For starters, you are required to provide an email address and login in order to use it – for what exactly other than marketing and spam is unclear. There is then some unreliability in navigating the screens, in particular the equaliser settings.
However, the positives are that the screen for configuring the presses (once you are on it) actually works and works well! It’s clear what you are changing, and it appears to set the new press combos instantly, although some UI confirmation of this would be great.
The fit and sound
Usually, I find I need to switch to smaller ear tips in order for these kinds of earbuds to sit comfortably in my ears, but these were instantly a great fit. I tried them out whilst on a run and they didn’t budge, although weirdly they did feel like they could have dropped out. I suspect this was largely because other pairs I had owned were in fact too snug, as these really were secure the whole way around. Swapping out the ear tips for a smaller size for a quick test, they were still a good fit but definitely looser and definitely could have fallen out. Maybe.
I also tested the limits of the Bluetooth by moving through my Victorian thick bricked hose and I managed to maintain a solid clear connection from one end of the house to the other! This is quite unusual given I often struggle to maintain a solid WiFi or mobile connection in my office, so I was pleasantly surprised.
Now for the most important bit – the sound. Happily, in normal use they are pretty fantastic. Clarity was great, with a good range on the sound, and thanks to the decent physical fit creating a good seal in the ear canal as well as the 10mm driver, the bass was some better than I’ve heard on any set of earphones or earbuds in years. Whilst running I listened to a range of tracks to check this out, including some Drum & Bass tracks and general 00s indie. Everything was predominantly bassy, but not to the detriment of the mid or top range which were clear and with a crispy treble. This was particularly noticeable on some of the more guitar heavy tracks (Seven Nation Army was a noteworthy listen!). The app does support changing of EQ settings, so if you want to tweak the audio output of the Air5 Pros to balance out the bass, you can, and this is a very effective solution to anyone not favouring a bassy sound.
Podcasts and phone call audio were also crystal clear and there was no difficulty in making out what was being said. And in testing the mics out during a phone call, my caller reported no issues in hearing what was said, although we were in a quietish room. To be certain, I recorded myself talking and was pleased to hear no issues. Again, this was in a quiet room – I’ve seen reports that in noisy environments, it also works well with some clever voice isolation tech built into the snapdragon chip.
Other features
The Air5 Pros also support a couple of other features worth checking, including Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), game mode (low latency mode) and the ability to switch to a different Bluetooth audio codec LDAC, which has a higher bitrate than aptX.
The ANC is not going to compete with the higher end over-ear headphones or top of the range earbuds, not at this price point. But it is surprisingly really, really effective. They are effective for up to 55db, and mileage will vary on how they well they work for individual users, but a good ear canal seal will help. I found them great at blocking out traffic and wind whilst jogging, but I could just about hear a bicycle bell, which suited me well.
The low-latency mode was tested with a laptop and a couple of games on the phone. I would argue that the latency was already pretty decent, but the game mode advertises <60ms and I couldn’t discern any real lag when playing games with this enabled.
Enabling LDAC (through either the app or on-ear presses) disables low-latency mode and dual-connect. With the limitations of quality on available streaming services, it was very hard to notice any major improvement between aptX HD and LDAC, but others have reported noticeable clarity with the appropriate audio sources.
Conclusion
Whether a bass-forward sound is a positive or negative will be largely a preference thing – for me this was a positive. Other than that, the Air5 Pros are built well, great looking, super comfortable, have great ANC, are very configurable and all at a very reasonable price. Highly recommended!
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