Get 40% Off the Excellent-Sounding Earfun Air Pro SV Earbuds – CNET [CNET]

Earfun’s new AirPods Pro alternatives, the noise-canceling Air Pro SV, are normally $90. But you can pick them up for $54 with this discount code.

This deal for Earfun’s Air Pro SV earbuds, perhaps the value brand’s best-sounding buds yet, has been around for the last month or so. But I thought it was worth surfacing again for those who might have missed it.

The buds still aren’t available on Amazon, but Earfun is selling them through its website and you can pick them up for $54 when you apply the 40% off discount code SUMMER40 at checkout. That remains their lowest price to date. 

The Earfun Air Pro SV have a few things going for them. First, as noted, they sound shockingly good for a set of earbuds in this price range. They feature big, open sound with well-defined bass and good clarity. They’re also lightweight and comfortable to wear. It’s important to get a tight seal for optimal sound quality and noise canceling — while I was able to get a decent seal with the largest set of ear tips, I got an even better seal with another set of tips that I personally like to use.

Read more: Best Wireless Earbuds for 2022

The noise canceling is effective and the buds connect to a companion app for iOS and Android that allows you to tweak the sound profile and update the firmware. I did notice that the sound changes for the better when you engage noise canceling — the volume and bass are boosted. Additionally, a fairly natural-sounding transparency mode allows ambient sound in if you want to hear the outside world around you for safety reasons. 

Earfun is highlighting how you can see the buds’ squared-off stems through the case — there’s a little window — but aside from the stems, the buds themselves have a similar shape and design to the AirPods Pro. While the case offers wireless charging, the buds are missing a sensor that pauses your music when you take them out of your ears (you can use a single bud if you want) and resumes playback when you put them back in. They’re IPX5 splash-proof, and battery life is rated at six hours with noise-canceling turned on. There’s also a low-latency gaming mode and touch controls that work reasonably well.

Earfun talks about them having “six professional mics for a stunning call experience,” and they work decently enough for calls but I was disappointed with the noise reduction while using them in the streets of New York. They didn’t do as good a job with noise reduction as I’d hoped, and callers said they could hear a lot of background noise. Perhaps Earfun can tweak the noise reduction with a firmware upgrade, but the call quality is the only thing that holds them back from being exceptionally good for the money. As it stands, they’re still worth buying at this price for their sound and fit.