Xiaomi Redmi Airdots Review

In this article we review the famous Xiaomi Redmi Airdots, which are selling for less than $29USD. They’re not new, but they’re a classic in the TWS world already.

Disclaimer: We are in no way affiliated with Xiaomi and we bought the Airdots myself for only $12 USD. The MSRP is $29 USD, HOWEVER, you can get them as low as $9.99 USD, just be careful and buy from an authorized distributor.

Intro

I bought the Xiaomi Redmi Airdots 6 months ago and I have been using them on different occasions. They’re my “abuse” earphones. I throw them around, get them wet, drop them and do all kinds of bad things to them. Today we’re going to take a look at the Airdots and see if they are any good for the price.

 Xiaomi

We are all acquainted with the Beijing-based company because of their leap in the mobile phone industry. They successfully become a threat to big players such as Samsung and Apple, worldwide. This success comes from Xiaomi’s competitive pricing in all divisions, not only for the mobile phone industry, but also for many divisions including home appliances and wearable tech. They’re quite competitive in any line of industry they are active in. They’ve been in the audio business for quite some time now and they have dual driver earphones, dynamic driver earphones and many more. They also have Bluetooth models and the Airdots are perhaps the most popular of them all. Xiaomi also have many sub-brands such as Redmi, Mi & Poco.

Redmi Airdots

These wireless earphones feature a 7.2mm dynamic driver per side and sport Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity? They are also rated “IPX4”.

Xiaomi Redmi Airdots

Packaging & Accessories

The cardboard packaging is small and dull. The features are listed on the sides and the back. There is not much else here. These go for very cheap and as such you shouldn’t expect a lot of accessories. In fact, there is nothing in the package aside from 3 sizes of extra silicone tips.  The silicone tip quality is OK. Nothing more. For the rest? Nada. Zilch. They do not come with a micro-usb cable for charging. They do not come with foam tips or basically anything other than the charging case. Easy.

Design & Fit

The Airdots are really small earphones. We recently reviewed the Edifier’s TWS6 and that was the smallest TWS we reviewed here. The Airdots are the second smallest TWS we have right now. They’re really light weighing only 4 grams. So they’re small and they feature a smooth matte black finish. Both units have a single button on them. The finish is quite slippery and they are awfully easy to drop them while changing tips.

The charging case is also matte black and it is incredibly easy to scratch both the case (and the earphones). Yes, sure it looks good, but not all users of this cheap TWS will be cautious. People will throw these into their denim pockets and they will drop them onto the asphalt and such. The result is these Airdots will look very scratched, as you can already see in this review. My pair is only 6 months old. Imagine how it will look in a year…

As for the fit of the earphones, it is good but because of the short nozzle, many people will have a hard time getting and keeping the seal intact. The loss of seal will sadly result in the disappearance of the low region and they’ll produce an uneven sound, so it is quite crucial to get right. If you can get a good seal, they provide excellent isolation.

Xiaomi Redmi Airdots

Before I forget, it is necessary for me to say that the charging case is the lightest case I’ve ever seen. It weighs only around 20 grams. There also is a LED on both the earphones and the case. The case LED is only to let you know that it is charging. The LEDs on earbuds however are thankfully, status LEDs. The overall design is simple, yet stylish. For around ten bucks, this is as good as it gets. We can complain but come on, $10 USD…

Features & Stability

The best they can do is “OK” when it comes to stability. I had my fair share of pairing issues and the typical “only one side working” problem. If you push their buttons for around 15 sec, they’ll reset themselves and re-initiate the pairing process. This fixes the majority of problems I encountered.

They work OK once you pair them with your phone and use that phone with them exclusively. As for the connection stability, well, it is good as long as you’re in a 5m radius. There is also a slight delay with games according to my tests on an Android phone. This might be different for Apple devices but I, unfortunately, have none at my disposal right now. YouTube’s delay is not as big compared to game apps, but it is there. So if you’re buying them for watching videos, beware.

Airdots give you the ability to use only one side but it’s tricky. Sometimes they do not connect to each other after a long session of single side use. As I mentioned in the design section, there is a single button on each side and they can be used to play and pause the music, answer calls and connect to your assistant, Siri or Google. One thing that works great is the auto pair and auto-shutdown feature. If you don’t use them for 5 minutes they go bye-bye on you.

Xiaomi Redmi Airdots

Let’s talk about the battery life. It is of course not like the big boys of the TWS world. Airdots give me around 3.5 hours of playtime and the case is good for 2 additional charges. So, in total, I get around 11 hours MAX. I mean, you get what you pay for.

You also don’t get fast charging and it takes 2 hours to get the case charged-up. A full charge takes about 1.5 hours for the earphones themselves. The earphones are IPX4 rated so you can use them while training or during light rain. However, the case is NOT waterproof at all.

The part on sound starts on the next page, after the click here.