EarFun’s new flagship over-ear headphones bring dual-driver audio, adaptive noise cancellation, lossless playback, and a huge battery life in a surprisingly affordable package.

Over-ear headphones have become increasingly feature-packed, with premium models from Sony, Bose and Sennheiser offering increasingly sophisticated noise cancellation, wireless audio and customisation. But you don’t necessarily need to spend hundreds to get a lot of those features.

EarFun has built a reputation for bringing higher-end features to more affordable audio products, and its latest headphones are no different. The EarFun Wave Pro X is the company’s new flagship over-ear model, building on the original Wave Pro with a new dual-driver acoustic system, adaptive hybrid ANC and Qualcomm’s latest QCC3095 audio platform.

After spending time with the headphones, here’s how they perform.

Unboxing

The EarFun Wave Pro X comes in a box containing the headphones themselves, housed in a carry case, alongside an instruction manual, USB-A to USB-C cable, headphone cable and warranty card.

It’s a fairly straightforward package, but having a carrying case included is useful for an over-ear pair of headphones that you’ll likely want to take between home, work and travel.

Design and comfort

The Wave Pro X is available in both Black and White colourways, with the black model I tested featuring a silver finish on each ear cup. Around the ear cup, you’ll also find physical buttons which handle power on/off, volume and noise cancellation, with these buttons being customisable inside the EarFun Audio app.

There’s soft padding around the ears and across the headband, which made the headphones particularly comfortable. I’m not someone who usually finds headphones particularly comfortable, but the Wave Pro X felt good during extended listening. The only issue was that the arms of my glasses and the earcups didn’t quite get along. Other than that, the padding made them comfortable to wear.

The headphones weigh 259g, which is 9g lighter than the previous EarFun Wave Pro headphones.

Setup

Getting started with the Wave Pro X is quick and straightforward, whether you’re connecting over Bluetooth or using the EarFun Audio app.

The headphones use Bluetooth 6.0 and support Google Fast Pair, while Multipoint Connection allows them to stay connected to multiple compatible devices.

The Qualcomm QCC3095 platform sits at the heart of the headphones, bringing Bluetooth 6.0 alongside Snapdragon Sound and support for a range of codecs.

In my experience, pairing was simple, and the headphones were quickly recognised by the EarFun Audio app.

Sound quality

The biggest change from the original Wave Pro is arguably what’s happening inside the earcups.

The Wave Pro X uses EarFun’s new DCAA, or Dual-Coaxial Acoustic Architecture, combining a 40mm DLC dynamic driver with a 10mm LCP driver. The two drivers sit along the same acoustic axis, with EarFun’s crossover system managing how different frequencies are distributed.

The headphones also support aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless and LDAC, alongside SBC, AAC and LC3, and are Hi-Res Audio certified.

In practice, I found the low end performed pretty well, but the vocals initially sounded a little muddied. Thankfully, the customisable EQ in the EarFun Audio app helped here, with the Vocal Enhancement preset working better for my preferences. And after a longer time spent listening with the headphones, I found myself really enjoying the quality on offer.

My AirPods 4 still seem to offer greater clarity in sound. However, considering the price of the Wave Pro X, the overall performance is very good.

The Adaptive Hybrid ANC also performed well. With eight microphones monitoring the surrounding environment to adjust the noise cancellation accordingly, I found the ANC did a good job of reducing wind and lower-frequency background noise even if I could still just about hear my keyboard while typing.

Some of that isolation will naturally come from the over-ear design itself, but overall I thought the noise cancellation was pretty effective, especially considering the price.

One particularly useful feature is that the Hybrid ANC continues to work when the headphones are connected by USB or AUX. That means you don’t have to sacrifice noise cancellation when switching to a wired connection, which could be handy when working at a computer or using a device where Bluetooth isn’t an option.

App

The EarFun Audio app continues to be a strong part of the overall experience.

The app lets you customise button controls, access EQ customisation and different listening settings, while also handling various headphone controls and features. The AI translation tool is a cool addition too, as we mentioned last time out.

Once again, I found the EQ settings particularly helpful to help enhance vocals and tailor the sound to my own preferences.

The app also provides access to features including Multipoint Connection and Ultra-Low Latency Game Mode.

90 hours of battery life

Battery life is another area where the Wave Pro X excels.

EarFun claims up to 90 hours of playback with ANC turned off, or up to 50 hours with ANC enabled. A 15-minute charge can also provide up to 10 hours of playback.

For anyone using headphones throughout the day, that’s more than useful enough. 

Pricing and availability

The EarFun Wave Pro X are available now on Amazon for $129.99 in Black and White, with an early-bird promotion offering 25% for a limited time on the EarFun website.

At $129.99, the Wave Pro X is unlikely to match the flagship headphones from Sony, Bose and Sennheiser. However, the appeal of the Wave Pro X is how much it manages to pack into a considerably cheap pair of headphones. And genuinely, I was impressed by both the comfort and sound quality.

Dual drivers, lossless codec support, adaptive ANC, USB Audio, Bluetooth 6.0, multipoint connectivity and up to 90 hours of battery life make for a pretty impressive feature list at this price.

The link above is an affiliate link. RouteNote may earn a commission on sales generated. The EarFun Wave Pro X were sent to us by EarFun for review. We were not paid to give our opinions on the product.