Earfun Free Pro 3 - first look (Patreon)

I received my sample of the Free Pro 3 and wanted to share some details with you.

When looking at the images (old Free Pro 2 always to the left) you can see that the new one increased in size slightly. Not only the charging box got larger but also the unit itself is slightly thicker now which would suggest a bigger battery for both. The ear wings remained more or less the same as before thus after some time the rubber will probably get loose just like on the old one, but the angle changed, they aim more upwards now. Tips are slightly different than before and they are round now, but even the largest tip size is slightly smaller than the previous one, because of this I get a worse hold with the new ones as they tend to slip out easier at least for me.

I won’t comment on sound quality as Earfun’s tuning is just a place holder for me, it sounds grainy and bassy but I have definitely heard much worse.

Controls etc are exactly the same as they were before, tapping on the right one increases volume, decreases on the left one, double tapping starts or stops playback etc, no real changes here.

I tried both ANC and transparency mode again like before by keeping the left unit touched for some seconds and to my surprise both seem to perform worse than on the old Free Pro 2. Especially transparency mode lacks that transparency, it hardly passes through any treble, the old one sounded more natural to me although still far from perfect. ANC seems to block out less mids now while already the Free Pro 2 was no class leader here. I asked Earfun about this and allegedly they are still trying to optimise this.

The biggest changes are under the hood, these improvements over the old model are definitely welcome although the new codecs will be of little benefit for iOS users:

1、Drivers:  from 6mm to 7mm for a better sound；

2、Use Qualcomm QCC 3072 Chip with aptX™ Adaptive Audio，Support Qualcomm® Snapdragon Sound™

3、Better Battery life, Total 33 hours;

4、Enhanced 6-Microphone CVC Technology for Crystal Clear Call

5、Bluetooth 5.3, support LE Audio.

6、Multipoint function, Connect to two devices at a time

Earfun also applied the High-Res certification, for LDAC support but they are still waiting for the results.

I am still waiting for details about a possible cooperation. I assume Earfun wants to release an own “Oluv’s edition” aside the regular one. Unfortunately they won’t give me access to the DSP and I am not sure they will accept my requirements because this time I want to include various tunings for different ear canals selectable through the app, otherwise I would like to allow for custom settings to be imported through the app as files or whatever and maybe even allow for an “expert EQ” which gives you access to all the parametric filters. I highly doubt they will customise the app in such a way to allow for all those features without getting access to the DSP I won’t be able to fine tune the volume curve or maybe even include dynamic filters for loudness compensation at low levels etc. I have way more ideas which I would like to have included but this probably won’t happen with this product.

Therefore as for now just see it as a hypothetical project, I definitely won’t invest my time into some half hearted approach with too many trade offs.