Redmi Buds 6 Pro Review: high-end features for a mid-range price

The Redmi Buds 6 Pro are the top-of-the-line wireless earbuds in the Redmi sub-brand of Xiaomi. Xiaomi also has some higher-end earbuds called the Xiaomi Buds and Xiaomi Buds Pro, so these are more like the top of the mid-range earbuds from Xiaomi. The pricing is around $80, too, so they’re still quite affordable and they have lots of excellent features for listening to music, movies, or even games. 

Specifications

The Redmi Buds 6 Pro support SBC, AAC, LDAC audio codecs, hi-res audio, 3 transparency modes, and multi-level Active Noise Cancellation modes 55dB/4Khz on Bluetooth 5.3 with a range of 10 meters and dual-device connections. The weight is 46.5g with charging case and the battery life for the ear buds should last 9.5 hours while the charging case can get them to last about 36 hours before having to recharge the case.  The case is charged via Type-C USB and the color options are: glacier white, space black, and lavender purple.  

We’ve also got “coaxial triple drivers” and High Audio Wireless certification with 6.7mm PZT dual tweeters 11mm driver with titanium diaphragm and dimensional audio via head tracking.

What’s in the Box

You get the charging case which contains the earbuds, a very short USB-A to USB-C charging cable, and a set of rubber ear inserts that you can swap out for different sized ears.

The included instruction manual is also very important as there is nothing intuitive about the controls or buttons on these (or any) earbuds, so you’re going to have to read about how to pair them with devices as well as what tapping and sliding gestures on the earbuds might do. We’ll talk about that more later on.

Hardware

The charging case is very smooth with rounded corners like a polished stone. It’s feels extremely ergonomic in the hand. There’s a very discreet hidden button on the bottom next to the USB-C port and that port is the only thing that interrupts the smoothness of this case. 

The front side has a little horizontal light by the edge of the opening. This functions as a power indicator, charging indicator, as well as a battery level indicator. The light is fully lit when fully charged, but its length reduces as the battery level reduces. 

The earbuds themselves are very nice looking and very comfortable. The outer edge has a silver band along it while the inner sides are colored plastic. The sound is pretty fantastic as well for an $80 headphones set. It’s a lot better than other earbuds in this price range. I do get occasional skips on the subway in NYC when listening to my MP3 collection on the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, but that’s not too often. 

The active noise cancellation is great too. The loud New York City streets and subway trains are nicely muffled so you can hear the music better. Transparency mode seems to be a little noisy though.

Our lavender earbuds go great with the lavender colored Redmi Note 14 Pro Plus 5G, too!

When the earbuds are actually in your ear, there are some nice touch/tap sensitive controls that you can do without having to get your phone out of your pocket. Some budget-friendly earbuds really only have speakers and Bluetooth in them which means you have to use your phone to change the volume, pause/play, and navigate playlists with next/previous buttons. 

• Touching and holding an earbud for a few seconds, as if you were pushing it further into your ear to fit better, will toggle between the active noise cancellation and transparency modes. 
• Double tapping the top of an earbud will play/pause music. Or if the phone is ringing it will answer a call, and if you’re on a call it will end the call.
• Tripple tapping the top of an earbud will skip to the next track if you’re listening to music, or if the phone is ringing it will reject the call. 
• A gentle swipe upwards along the edge of the earbud will increase the volume
• A gentle swipe downwards along the edge of the earbud will decrease the volume

Software

The user manual has a QR code to download the Xiaomi Earbuds app which enables more features for the headphones. Unfortunately, the QR code printed in the manual is too small to be scanned by a phone camera, so that doesn’t work.  There is another QR code on the box however, and that is scannable by my Xiaomi 13 Ultra.  That QR code goes to a Google Play web page, but when you click the “See in Play Store app” is greyed out and doesn’t work. It turns out the “Xaiomi Earbuds” app is not available in USA versions of the Google Play Store. I wasn’t able to find the app in Xiaomi’s GetApps store either. So I had to go to the APKPure website to download the app.

Unfortunately, the Xiaomi Earbuds app version 9.0.278 on Xiaomi HyperOS 2.0.3 would not recognize or connect to the Redmi Buds 6 Pro at all. Even restoring the Earbuds to factory settings ’caused the earbuds to connect to bluetooth within the app just fine, but then the app hung at “Connecting” for forever and didn’t interface with the earbuds at all. So all of the special features that would have been enabled by that are not available on my Xiaomi 13 Ultra running Xiaomi HyperOS 2.0.3 and Android 15. Luckily all of the important features can be controlled with touch gestures on the earbuds themselves. Even the “immersive audio” option is already supported in the native Bluetooth settings on my phone. So the only features missing are the ability to customize and program the touch gestures for different functions, the noise reduction customization levels, the “find my earbuds” feature to help track down lost earbuds, and the head tracking capabilities with immersive audio.  There’s no list of what apps, games, or operating systems support the head tracking features though so I don’t know what that would work with or why I would want that anyway. It would probably be pretty cool on a gaming system with a huge 10ft diameter 180-degree half-sphere screen where turning my head to look at things would actually mean something. 

Trying the software on the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ 5G however… everything worked!  The Xiaomi Earbuds app works with no issues!  The “spatial audio” head tracking feature worked too. I tested it in the YouTube app on the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ 5G.  I’m not sure if I care about it, but turning my head makes it sound like the music/video sound is still coming from in front of me even though I’m looking to the side. It feels strange when walking around a room and the sound seems to be coming from some imaginary invisible place. The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ 5G is running Xiaomi HyperOS 1.0.2 with Android 14, so maybe that’s the trick and Xiaomi needs to release an updated app that supports HyperOS 2.0. 

On Windows 11, I was unable to get head tracking to work with the earbuds for gaming, however the stereo/surround sound effects in combination with Nahimic software was pretty incredible.

Pros/Cons

Pros

• Beautiful color options and hardware design
• Active Noise Cancellation & Transparency mode
• Excellent audio quality
• Touch activated gesture controls
• Connects to 2 devices at the same time
• Immersive audio with head tracking

Cons

• No wireless charging
• Software may not work on Android 15 (at the time of publishing)
• No headtracking software on desktop operating systems
• Charging case inner contacts may be difficult to clean

Pricing

The Redmi Buds 6 Pro are not widely available to purchase at the moment. You can order them at Geekwills.com for $80 but that lists green as a color option and not lavender so I don’t know how trustworthy that store is. Some are available on eBay in the $100 range as well, but again you’re probably better off waiting for a wider release. 

Conclusion

I was very impressed with the Redmi Buds 6 Pro wireless ear buds. I love having play/pause, next track, and volume controls right on the ear buds for easy interaction. The sound quality is pretty fantastic as well as is the comfort level.  One thing that you have to be wary of is that wireless earbuds almost always become totally unusable after one or two years of usage. It’s because the tiny batteries stop accepting a charge eventually. So these are certainly disposable tech products. If it’s only $80, then that’s not a big deal, but I was pretty disappointed when the otherwise excellent $330 Angry Miao Cyberblade Earbuds became unusable when their battery life dropped to like 5 minutes. Still for 1 or 2 years of use, the Redmi Buds 6 Pro are probably going to be totally worth it.

Guest appearance by Supermodel Brana Dane.