Redmi Buds 6 Pro Review: Value For Money That Is Off The Charts

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Mid-range earbuds are a crowded market. You get varying degrees of quality for similar price points. But the Redmi Buds 6 Pro fall into that mid-range bracket while purporting to be ‘pro’ earbuds.

I’m here to work out if that pro tag is deserved. The Redmi Buds 6 Pro have ANC, transparency mode and a driver the same size as AirPods Pro 2 so there is a lot of promise. And I’ll give you a hint; for £64/$80, these earbuds are incredibly hard to beat.

Here’s my full review.

User experience and design – comfy but annoying controls

The Redmi Buds 6 Pro look and feel like pretty much every other flagship pair of earbuds; they’re white, glossy and have stems. In other words, they look and feel a lot like a pair of AirPods.

That’s fine, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it etc. There are two other colour options though to switch things up a bit; Lavender Purple (my favourite) and Space Black. They’re comfortable too; silicon tips mean they should fit in most ear shapes and the stems mean they feel secure. You also get IP54 dust and water resistance and Bluetooth 5.3.

My main problem with the design though, and with the Redmi Buds 6 Pro in general, comes with the control system. Xiaomi has opted for touch controls instead of mechanical buttons, just like other flagship earbuds.

I already dislike touch controls; they’re imprecise, temperamental and generally annoying. But the Redmi Buds 6 Pro seem particularly fiddly. Throughout my testing, I regularly struggled to do the things I was trying to do on the first try.

Often I would end up changing the volume when trying to control ANC or I’d end up skipping a song when I only wanted to pause it. The most frustrating thing is that the Redmi Buds 6 Pro would, not an insignificant amount of time, simply not register me touching the stem.

With time you get used to the controls but they really aren’t my thing. Give me real buttons any day!

Sound quality – solid but nothing revolutionary

The Redmi Buds 6 Pro sound exactly as you’d expect for a pair of flagship earbuds from a non-audio specialist company; safe, inoffensive and pleasing to the masses. That sounds unimpressive until you realise just how cheap these things are. For £64/$80, you get a sound profile that almost matches AirPods Pro 2, Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro and the like.

Underneath the bonnet, there are coaxial triple drivers, with the main dynamic driver 11mm in size which is the same as AirPods Pro 2.

The Redmi Buds Pro 6 don’t sound exactly as good as those more expensive earbuds, but they aren’t far off. The main difference is that the Redmis just sound a touch more underdeveloped and less able to really let the individual parts of songs (high, mids, lows and bass) shine on their own.

I don’t really have any complaints about the sound quality. There’s enough bass there to keep you satisfied and the highs never sound tinny or coarse. Listening to podcasts is also a pleasant experience which is where the spatial audio begins to shine.

You won’t find a better spatial audio feature at this price point which really comes into its own when you start to play games or watch movies. And that’s something to keep considering when reading this review, the Redmi Buds 6 Pro cost half of what you’d pay for other Pro buds.

You also get to customise the sound profile of these earbuds using the Xiaomi Earbuds app where you can also control other features like ANC. Speaking of which…

Audio features – ANC, transparency mode and microphone

You get ANC up to 55 dB which is generally very good. Again, a standard of ANC that you won’t find anywhere else for this price. You can adjust how much noise cancelling you get through the app too. On the London Underground, the only noises that properly penetrated the ANC were those higher-pitched squeaks and squeals.

There isn’t a huge amount of audible hissing either which is always great when dealing with ANC.

As for the transparency mode, it’s ok but not the best I’ve ever used. If you’re listening to music at a medium volume level then you won’t be able to hear much else other than the music.

Whilst we’re here, these things can go loud. I was really impressed with the volume levels and hardly ever went above 50%. You’ll have no worries drowning any exterior noises out. Oh and you get dual device connection so you can switch seamlessly between two separate devies connected to the same earbuds.

One thing I always skip over with headphone reviews is the mic quality on calls but the Redmi Buds 6 Pro do it so well, even in windy conditions, that I couldn’t not mention it. So props there!

Battery and case – one nifty feature

There’s been a lot of interest lately in companies trying to redesign cases to be more interactive. Mark’s JBL Tour Pro 3 review highlighted a brand that has placed a screen on their earbuds case.

Xiaomi hasn’t gone that far, but they have put a handy battery-indicating light bar on the front. You press the case button and it lights up to show you. As for the rest of the case, it’s not remarkably small but it’s fine to go in any pockets.

The battery is stated to last 9.5 hours on one charge with ANC turned off with a total of 36 hours when combined with the case. I was using them mostly with ANC turned on and found that the battery lasted about 6 hours which is still a healthy amount.

The best thing though is the fast charging. Plugging the Redmi Buds 6 Pro into a USB-C cable will give you two hours of listening in about five minutes. Really handy if you forget to charge them regularly…which is certainly me.

Conclusion – are they worth buying?

All of what you have just read needs to be contextualised with the fact that the Redmi Buds 6 Pro only cost £64/$80. You get a lot for that price. When you start adding ANC, transparency mode and more complex driver hardware to earbuds, you very quickly head upwards in price. But Xiaomi has kept it low.

These are, by price definition, mid-range earbuds. But they certainly aren’t in terms of their feature list and audio quality. I was impressed a few months ago in my Sony WF-C700 review which cost £89/$99 but the Redmi Buds 6 Pro are easily better in every way (apart from those pesky touch controls!).

Therefore, these earbuds are very easy to recommend. For that money, how couldn’t you?