Realme Buds Air 3 Neo Review – Good Buy For Casual Use

The Realme Buds Air 3 Neo comes at a price of Rs. 1,999 in India. The earbuds are available in two different colour options: Galaxy White and Starry Blue.

The Realme Buds Air 3 Neo packs the following items indie the box:

• Earbuds
• Charging Case
• Type-C Cable
• Three pairs of eartips (S, M and L)
• User Guide

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Before we talk more about the Realme Buds Air 3 Neo, let’s see what on-paper specs look like:

• Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.2
• Supported OS: Android and iOS
• Battery: 460 mAh
• Weight: 38 gm

Starting off with the design, the earbuds come inside in a pebble-shaped case. The case itself is very light and compact, weighing only 38 grams. It can easily slide into your jeans pockets. The case is available in two colour options: White and Blue. We have the latter for the review.

The case has a very simple and stylish look to it. It has a plastic build, yet it feels durable and sturdy in my hands. The case has a matte finish and doesn’t catch fingerprints or dust easily. There is a small LED on the bottom side of the front which lights up when you open the lid or while charging the case.

Talking about the lid, it’s made of a translucent plastic material and opens/closes using a spring mechanism. Now, I’m not sure how durable this spring mechanism is but it sure leaves a nice clicky sound while closing.

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The buds have a stem design which features touch controls like AirPods but they look very different. It’s neither too long nor too short. Similar to the case, the buds also have a matte finish and fits nicely in my ears. It comes with three different ear tip sizes (small, medium and large) so you can find the right fit for yourself. I found the medium ones perfect for my ears.

The buds were very comfortable to wear for long hours due to their lightweight build. I did not have any discomfort or pain in my ears even after having long binge watching sessions.

The Realme Buds Air 3 Neo come with IPX5 water resistance, which means it’ll be fine while you workout in the gym or use it in light rain.

Now let’s talk about the real deal here, the audio quality. Realme Buds Air 3 Neo offers a quite good sound quality with clear and crisp vocals. I was really enjoying my Spotify playlist. The bass is good and you can also use the boost bass feature.

People who like listening to Hip-Hop and EDM music will really like these earbuds. The earbuds get pretty loud; however, I won’t recommend them to be used at the maximum volume as the quality decreases somewhat.

There is no ANC here but the AI noise cancellation does its job quite nicely. I could still enjoy my music even while walking on the road or in noisy environments like my office. Let me clear it out, it’s nowhere close to earbuds with ANC but good enough for its price.

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Coming to call quality, I used the Buds Air 3 Neo to make a few calls and found the audio to be fine. However, the other person on the call could hear the background noise clearly. If you have a call to attend, make sure you are not in a noisy environment; else the other person won’t be able to hear you properly.

Overall, the audio quality is above average for the price tag and I have no complaints except the mic quality in the audio department.

The Realme Buds Air 3 Neo packs a 460mAh battery inside. Realme claims a battery life of 7 hours from the buds alone on a single charge and the case adds another 23 hours of battery life.

However, the claims were far from what I noticed. I got a battery life of around 5 hours and the case adds another 4 cycles. I won’t say it’s bad but I just expected more since there is no battery draining ANC here.

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Another thing missing is the support for wireless charging. However, Realme makes up for that by providing fast charging using the Type-C cable that can give 2 hours of playback with just 10 minutes of charging.

The Realme Buds Air 3 Neo uses Bluetooth 5.2 cor connectivity. The buds are very quick and easy to pair. Just open the lid and that’s all, it automatically goes into pairing mode. You can download the Realme Link app on your phone in order to access all the features of the buds.

The app UI is pretty simple and straightforward to use. Just pair your buds and it’ll automatically show on the app. You will see the battery status of the buds on the home screen, but sadly there is no option to see the battery left in the case.

There are three sound effects you can select from – Bass Boost+, Balanced and Bright. There is no option to customise the EQ, so you have to select among those three options only. You also get a Volume enhancer option which further increases the volume level if you like hearing loud music. I don’t recommend using it as the music starts tearing up at such high volume.

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There is also a dedicated game mode for all the gamers out there which brings down the latency to as low as 88ms for a better gaming experience.

You can double tap on the bud to play/pause the music, triple tap to play the next track and even touch and hold to increase/decrease the volume. Of course, you can customise these using the app.

Sadly the music doesn’t auto pause when you take the buds out from your ears. So remember to manually pause the music to save your battery. Apart from that, it also misses out on multipoint connectivity, but again I didn’t expect so much from it.