Huawei Freebuds Lipstick: sounds good!

Huawei sent me a pair of their Huawei Freebuds Lipstick to try out over the holiday period and these earbuds are the statement piece any gadget gal wants in her arsenal.

For me, a fan of tech and a fan of lipstick, the new Huawei Freebuds Lipstick edition are just ideal, although I do question the validity of bringing out an earbud that discounts a large part of your own customer base…

Design

The new Huawei Freebuds Lipstick come in a striking new design that resembles classic lipstick, and while these babies obviously win in the looks department, let me tell you, there is actually a little more to them than just those dashing good looks.

In simplest terms, these earphones are no different, in fact they are identical to the Huawei Freebuds 4. Think design, stem length, and battery. The only things that separate these buds from the Freebuds 4 are that they ONLY come in red and that the case looks distinctively like a lipstick container.

The bottom of the case houses the battery, a magnet, and the stems of the buds. This is also where you’ll pop in your USB C to charge the buds. The Huawei Freebuds Lipstick do not support wireless charging. The actual earphones then sit on dedicated cut outs on the bottom part of the case. The other half is the lid that just slides on top neatly.

A magnet pulls the two parts together. It can be fidgety to get the earbud in the right way and the lid on the case properly but it’s nothing major. Just make sure you have everything on the right way and closed properly or you’ll be hunting for buds in your bag later.

Huawei AI Life

The Huawei Freebuds Lipstick, like the Freebuds 4, can be connected to almost any device through Bluetooth, but it requires the Huawei AI Life app to unlock the full capability.

In the app you can decide what ‘tapping’ and ‘press and hold’ do. Volume control, noise cancelling, and finding your buds if they go missing are also useful functions found in the app.

Audio performance

Just like the Freebuds 4, the audio performance delivered by the lipstick earbuds is good. They are designed to sit outside the inner ear and although that will perhaps be more comfortable for some, I found they let in too much environmental noise in busy environments. They are however perfect for vocals, and I love listening to podcasts in bed with them. In fact, they are so comfortable that I often fall asleep listening and wake with the Freebuds still in my ears.

According to Huawei, the sound quality of open-fit earphones like the Huawei FreeBuds Lipstick is influenced by the size of your ear canal and how you wear them. As a result, ensuring constant and outstanding sound quality in these types of earbuds has always been a challenge.

The earphones with adaptive ear matching (AEM) technology, on the other hand, detect your ear canal shape and wearing conditions automatically. AEM technology successfully compensates for audio differences caused by ear canal size or wearing condition, ensuring that your music always sounds as it should.

My take

All in all, I thought the design of the Huawei Lipstick buds clever, even innovative but, as I mentioned, I might really like the design and find the look super cute but you are cutting your market in half by appealing only to a certain demographic. Does that make these Huawei Freebuds Lipstick more special or was that just a silly move on Huawei’s part? I can’t really decide.

If you are looking for well made, robust ear buds that allow you to stay aware of your surroundings and reproduce excellent vocals and great mid-tones then yes give them a try. However, if you’re all about the bass and want to immerse yourself in a musical vacuum of your choice then these are probably not for you.

You can find the Huawei FreeBuds Lipstick on the Huawei Store (online) for R3 999.

Take note:

According to Huawei,

Battery capacity

Per earbud: 30 mAh (min.)*

Charging case: 410 mAh (min.)*

Playtime:

Music playback on 1 charge: 4 hours (with ANC disabled)** and music playback on 1 charge : 2.5 hours (with ANC enabled)**

Music playback with charging case: 22 hours (with ANC disabled)** and music playback with charging case: 14 hours (with ANC enabled)**

Charging Time:

About 1 hour for the earbuds (in the charging case)**

About 1 hour for the charging case (wire, without earbuds)**

*Typical value. Actual capacity may vary slightly. This capacity is the nominal battery capacity. The actual battery capacity for each individual phone may be slightly above or below the nominal battery capacity.

**Based on the test results of HUAWEI lab, for reference only.