I can’t use in-ear earphones anymore: all of them hurt my ears, so the over-ear format is a must for me.

I have just bought the Redmi Headphones Neo, Xiaomi’s budget over-ear Bluetooth headphones, for 40€ in Amazon. They usually sell for around 60€, so it was a good deal. I have always preferred wired headphones, but at 40€ they were cheap enough to take the chance.

Noise cancellation

The main reason for the purchase: my office is noisy. They have up to 42dB of adaptive Active Noise Cancellation, with three levels and an adaptive mode that adjusts automatically to the ambient noise.

The cancellation is good, filtering out the office chatter and the servers & AC hum, but it is not at the level of the 300€ Sony. For the price, it is great for working in a noisy office (or at home with a noisy daughter).

The rest

• The radio coverage is amazing: I can walk around all our huge office and they are still connected to the laptop.
• Battery is enough for all the week
• Dual-device connection, so they can stay connected to the laptop and the phone at the same time
• Three microphones with noise reduction for calls
• They wieight 263 grams, more than most over-ear headphones, noticeable after a full office day, though the protein leather cushions stay comfortable

Latency

As with every Bluetooth headphone there is audio latency, and they have no low-latency mode. For real-time audio applications I still need my wired Superlux HD681B.

Full specifications at Xiaomi. For 40€ they are a great deal, just don’t expect the silence of the 300€ flagship ones.

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