Xiaomi Redmi Buds 8 Pro Review: Three Drivers, Little Stamina

The Redmi Buds 8 Pro are affordable earphones, yet they are the most ambitious that Xiaomi's sub-brand has produced. On paper they have what it takes to trouble serious products, mid-range models included. The design is a semi in-ear, stem-style noise-cancelling model that plugs into Xiaomi's wider ecosystem, hence compatibility with the brand's own application.

Without standing out in shape or in resistance to the elements, these earphones hide several features rarely found on affordable true wireless models: a multi-driver architecture, LDAC codec support and Dolby Audio processing.

The recorded test used firmware version 3.2.2.1 and version 1.36 of the companion app.

The design of the Buds 8 Pro is relentlessly ordinary, closely resembling the many distant clones of Apple's stemmed earphones, particularly in the white finish tested. The verdict is blunt: everything is competently done, without a scrap of originality. Simple rounded shapes, uniform tones, no quirks and no point of view — almost nothing gives these earphones a real identity, and they could easily be mistaken for a Huawei model. That is not objectively a fault, but it wins Redmi no points against more distinctive rivals.

Build quality does not change that picture either: honest, but again with nothing to set the brand apart. Rated IP54, the Buds 8 Pro show no design flaws, although the glossy white coating picks up micro-scratches fairly quickly. Nothing remarkable for true wireless earphones of this kind, but nothing embarrassing either.

The case is similarly uninspired in appearance, yet it carries a few simple and effective ideas. It uses an angled opening, which pushes the earphones further out for an easier grip, and it has a white LED bar across the front. That bar performs a small animation while charging and gives a reasonably precise indication of battery level. The only real omission is wireless charging.

Comfort often comes down to small details. Unsurprisingly, the Redmi Buds 8 Pro are not intrusive and sit comfortably within the better part of the field, but the shape of the acoustic body does not appear especially optimised. That section is a little more bulbous than average, which can be felt in the hollow near the entrance to the ear canal.

The earphones take up slightly more room and are not as pleasant to wear as the best-shaped alternatives, particularly for smaller ears. That difference is compounded by Xiaomi supplying only three sizes of silicone tip. How well they stay put also depends on the wearer's anatomy; the Buds 8 Pro do reasonably well on that front, but they are not really the earphones to choose for running.

Drawing on the experience both brands have accumulated, the earphones offer complete and intuitive controls. Unlike many entry-level products, the stem is exploited fully, including the swipe gesture for volume adjustment. Tap recognition is precise despite fairly marked latency, and the brand lets the user reassign the controls in the app. Not everything is optimal by default, but it is simple to build a bespoke control scheme that avoids awkward actions such as triple taps. A squeeze-based system is probably a little more efficient, but Redmi has produced an excellent imitation.

LE Audio is still rare on affordable earphones, and Redmi does not break the pattern: the standard is absent despite a Bluetooth 5.4 chip. Otherwise the picture is very positive, with fast pairing, multipoint connection and LDAC support. Signal stability proved good in practice, though with the standard SBC and AAC codecs latency was surprisingly high at around 300 ms, and range was fairly average.

Shared across Xiaomi and Redmi devices, the companion app is a solid complement to the experience. Beyond control customisation it governs most of the automatic behaviour, including wear detection, and offers reasonably advanced audio functions: a 10-band graphic equaliser, an immersive sound mode with either Xiaomi or Dolby processing, and left and right balance. None of it is exceptional in itself, but the work is notably pragmatic. Less impressive are the numerous localisation oddities scattered through the app, which has clearly been machine-translated.

The audio architecture is unusual. According to Redmi — and the details take some digging out — it combines an 11 mm dynamic driver with a titanium-plated diaphragm and two 6.7 mm piezoelectric drivers, all in a coaxial configuration with the drivers aligned. Multi-driver arrangements do not always end happily, as manufacturers often exaggerate the spectacular side to show off the supposed qualities of the individual elements.

Here things are rather different, because Redmi is fairly restrained at the top of the spectrum. There are more linear tunings around, and a few peaks of brightness slip through, but it is hard to call the sound aggressive or artificial, which is already a very good start.

Any real emphasis is found in the bass, which is boosted a little more than necessary but without exuberance. The extra presence starts from the lower midrange, and it is felt mainly as an added sense of foundation rather than heaviness; the midrange is never swallowed by the bottom end. Xiaomi has in fact been more restrained than some rivals whose tuning is far more demonstrative.

The signature is well suited to its target audience. The sound is not fatiguing, and the bass lift adds a welcome touch of drama. If needed, a better balance is easy to restore with the app's equaliser. The Redmi Buds 8 Pro do not surpass the competition, but that relative sense of balance sets them apart from references with genuinely questionable tuning. They suit every style and almost every listening level, although a really high volume does throw the presentation off a little, particularly on female voices and cutting instruments.

Technically not everything is perfect, and the three drivers audibly collide slightly in the treble. That register is open and detailed, but not always especially precise or dynamic. The highest frequencies show some overshoot, independent of the overall signature, and the final harmonics of voices lack the naturalness of good single-driver models. Bass management is likewise very sound, but without the nuance of excellent drivers, and the Redmi can drift a little on genuinely complex tracks.

Elsewhere, the width of the soundstage sits in the better part of the average and the sense of space is well respected. Ultimately the set lacks a little technical finesse, but the Redmi Buds 8 Pro deliver on their promises. Without approaching premium products, they suffer from no glaring weakness, which is already a luxury in their category.

Ambitious on paper, with up to 55 dB of attenuation claimed, the active noise cancelling performs well in the bass and through most of the midrange, so droning sounds are almost entirely removed. It collapses fairly quickly on reaching the upper midrange, however, and voices slip through the net, as do rushing sounds such as ventilation. That is a shame, because passive isolation is already quite pronounced for semi in-ear earphones, with bass and treble attenuated to roughly the same degree — a coherence spoiled by the dip around 1 kHz.

Transparency is driven by three settings (normal, voice and sound enhancement) and the pass-through is decent, though marked by a slight but constant veil from the upper midrange onwards. On the measurements that shows up as a stable plateau at around -10 dB rather than any collapse. It is perfectly usable in practice, but it also has an adaptive element that cannot be switched off, which steadily reduces the level of pass-through in the face of what it judges to be loud noise, with variable results. However effective it is in ideal conditions, the transparency mode is often unpredictable.

With an array of three microphones per side and wind resistance quoted at 12 m/s, the Buds 8 Pro promise good call performance. In practice, pick-up is surprisingly good in quiet surroundings, with a good tonal balance and some immunity to plosives and sibilants. Things deteriorate somewhat in noise: the attenuation is genuinely effective, but the voice is far from spared, losing clarity and even intelligibility. Most situations will pose no problem, but a call from a really noisy place is difficult.

Quoted at 8 hours without noise cancelling but only 4 hours 30 minutes with it, single-charge battery life is no high point for a 2026 design. In practice, the 4 hours 30 minutes are not even reached with cancelling active, the recorded figure being closer to 4 hours 10 minutes, which places the earphones clearly below the current average. At 7 hours 30 minutes without cancelling, Redmi saves some face. The case supplies roughly three additional charges. The performance is therefore acceptable without noise cancelling and close to poor with it.