The Wave Pro X is EarFun’s latest headphones and its newest flagship model. They feature a new dual dynamic driver design targeting low- and high-frequency ranges, as well as have eight microphones for voice pickup and active noise cancellation.
In typical EarFun fashion, you also get loads of features, including digital and analog wired inputs, aptX Lossless and LDAC support, Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast support, and multi-point pairing. The headphones are priced at $130 and available in black. Let’s see how they perform.
Design and comfort
The EarFun Wave Pro X are a very premium-looking and feeling pair of headphones. They have a minimal yet modern aesthetic with a pleasing overall design.
The Wave Pro X have angled earcups with a matte finish. On the outside are two shiny surfaces with a spun metal texture. The controls are neatly placed along the edge on the right earcup. The yokes are adjustable for length, and the earcups also fold in for ease of carrying around. The headband has foam padding on the inside and a fabric-like texture on the outside.
The ear cups feature plush foam padding that is very easy on the ears. Inside, the speaker grilles are covered with opaque fabric with a soft-touch feel. The left and right speakers are clearly marked on the inside, should you feel lost. If you’re trying to put the headphones on in the dark, you can always rely on the single-sided controls to orient yourself.
The Wave Pro X are very well built. Everything feels good to the touch, and all moving parts bend and slide with reassuring smoothness and tactility. The buttons also have a pleasing clickiness to them. However, as with most full-sized headphones, these aren’t weather-sealed, so don’t expect to use them in the shower or near the pool.
The headphones are also quite comfortable. The foam ear cup padding can be stuffy in warm weather, but that is to be expected from the material that is designed to block out sound. The pads have a decent amount of depth to them, so the speaker grilles don’t touch or put pressure on your ears. The Wave Pro X are also reasonably light, so you don’t feel like you have a ton of weight on your head.
The Wave Pro X come with a nice big carry case in the box that fully covers the headphones. Inside the case are two cables, a USB-C for charging and data and an analog audio cable.
Software and features
The EarFun Wave Pro X are compatible with the EarFun Audio app, available on Android and iOS. This is a well-designed, straightforward app with an easy-to-use UI. However, while most features are available to the user as-is, a couple of them are locked behind a user account.
EarFun Audio app
Through the app, you can control features such as the ANC modes with various levels of adjustability. The EQ function has a bunch of different presets as well as custom and auto-tuned modes. A game mode is available to reduce latency while gaming. You can also control the paired devices, the Bluetooth audio codec, voice prompt language and volume, LE Audio settings, and button functionality.
EarFun also has an AI translation function, which translates incoming spoken sounds within the app. However, this is one of the two functions that require you to create an account within the app; the other one is the Professional EQ feature.
Performance
The EarFun Wave Pro X have a dual driver setup, consisting of a 40mm dynamic driver for low frequencies and a 10mm LCP dynamic driver for high frequencies. You get a dizzying array of Bluetooth codecs to work with, including SBC, LC3, AAC, aptX, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD, aptX Lossless, and LDAC. On top of that, you can also plug the headphones directly in, either using the analog audio cable or a USB-C cable. The internal USB DAC supports audio up to 16-bit/48kHz.
However, despite having all the groundwork laid out, the Wave Pro X ultimately do disappoint when it comes to audio quality. The sound is overly dark and muffled, due to a combination of boosted mid-bass and the lack of pinna gain in the upper frequencies.
This was an issue with the original Wave Pro as well. While EarFun tends to tune its earbuds closer to DF neutral with a bit of bass boost, the headphones always seem to be tuned too warm. Our ears are sensitive to frequencies between 1 kHz and 8 kHz due to the shape of our outer ears amplifying sounds in that region for evolutionary reasons. A flat-tuned pair of speakers sounds perceptually flat to our ears since our ears modify the sound as they would with real-world sounds. However, headphones, and especially earbuds, send sound straight down the ear canal with little or no interaction with the outer ear, and so they have to be tuned brighter to account for what is termed the “pinna gain”.
However, the Wave Pro X, much like the Wave Pro before them, do no such thing. This results in a dark, muffled sound as frequencies that our ears naturally expect to be accentuated simply aren’t. Add the elevated bass regions and the sound takes on a somewhat muddy tone. That’s a shame, as the lower mids and the overall timbre are quite decent on these headphones, but the lack of upper mids and lower treble energy makes the sound quite dull and unengaging to listen to.
Clipping those frequencies also has a downside on the perceived detail and technical presentation. The sound just comes across as unfocused and soft, and overall quite boxy, as if trapped between your ears. The ANC accentuates this effect.
Moving on, the Wave Pro X have okay microphone performance. In a quiet room, the sound is clear enough but on the quieter side. In a noisy room, the voice quality doesn’t change much, but a lot of the background sound also comes through. A neat feature of EarFun headphones is that you can hear your voice when the mic is on, so you don’t feel as claustrophobic while on a call.
Finally, the noise cancellation performance is okay for the price segment. You’re not quite getting the best noise cancellation out there, but it gets the job done for basic indoor sounds as well as a lot of the low-frequency noise outdoors. Higher-frequency sounds do tend to come through, however, and the earpads’ seal tends to break even with slight head turns.
Conclusion
The EarFun Wave Pro X are well-designed and well-built headphones that also happen to be quite comfortable. They are packed to the brim with connectivity options, have a rather useful companion app, and a long 50-hour battery life. The ANC and microphone performance were also reasonable. The only issue was the tuning of the sound, which left a lot to be desired. If EarFun could bring its brighter, more balanced sound signature from its earbuds to these headphones, it would have a winner on its hands.
