Redmi Earbuds S Review

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The Redmi Earbuds S, also known as the Redmi AirDots S, are a pair of affordable truly wireless earphones by Xiaomi. Despite the pricing, the company markets these as full-featured wireless earphones with an attractive, lightweight design, 12 hour battery life, splash-resistance, and a dedicated low-latency gaming mode. As for the price, the Redmi Earbuds S will set you back by a mere $24 or so in the Indian market.


That's not a lot of money even for wired earphones, so to deliver a truly wireless earphone experience on such a tight budget was likely not easy. So the question is, does Xiaomi have yet another cracking value proposition at its hands or is it yet another pair of forgettable Bluetooth earphones clogging up Amazon? I picked up a pair to find out.

Design

The Redmi Earbuds S have what has now become a very common design for truly wireless earphones. You get the classic in-ear style design along with a case that also charges the earbuds.


The Redmi Earbuds S come in a rather small and good-looking case. It's tall, so it won't fit inside the coin pocket in your jeans, but the overall volume of the case is quite low so it won't take up a lot of space inside your main pocket or bag.

The case has a matte finish on the exterior with the Redmi logo embossed on the top and product information printed on the bottom. The matte finish looks decent but can get scuffed and my unit even had some scuffs out of the box.


Before moving inside, there are two more things on the outside. On the front, just below the lip for opening the lid, is a tiny red LED that shows the charging status for the case. The LED is behind the plastic that shines through it and isn't visible when it isn't lit. On the back of the case is the microUSB connector for charging. microUSB is still common in this price range, so that wasn't a surprise. But with phones — even in the budget end of the market — increasingly getting USB-C ports, you might end up having to carry a separate cable just to charge these earphones with your phone's charger.


The lid for the case opens quite easily with two hands but as is usual for cases this shape, opening with one hand is a bit of a challenge and may lead to the case being dropped. Inside, the two earbuds are in a standard layout with their speakers pointing down. The case uses two pogo pins for each earbud to charge them. The receptacles for the earbuds are the only glossy bits on this case and the product in general.


The case is really light, especially with no earphones inside them. The overall build quality is quite decent for the price. The lid opens and closes with a reasonably well-weighted mechanism and shuts tight with only a little bit of play.

The earbuds have the same matte finish as the case. They have a pill-shaped design that fits the cavity of your outer ear quite nicely, although your mileage may vary. There's also an LED on each that's hidden away and glows to alert you of charging or pairing status.


Both earphones have a large multi-function button on the outside that spans nearly the entire width of the earbud. The problem with this design is that it is nigh on impossible to place them in your ears without pushing at least one of the buttons. This could result in all sorts of things happening, from playing music before you are ready or launching the voice assistant on your phone.

I have mentioned this in previous reviews but having buttons on the earbud themselves isn't a great idea. To use these buttons, you are required to push on them, which pushes the earphones deeper inside your ears every time and creates an uncomfortable sensation. The buttons on the Redmi Earbuds S are also very clicky and make a loud click in your ears every time you use them. Xiaomi has also tied a lot of functions to these buttons; eight of them, to be precise. This also includes the Game mode (which we will talk about later) that requires three continuous presses of the button, which is more annoying than you

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