With the FreeBuds 3, Huawei offers users true wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation. With a list price of £169.99, are they a valid alternative to Apple's AirPods To find out, we've been testing them and can now reveal all in our full review.

Design and comfort; Battery life; Call quality; Overall experience

No volume control; Missing a gesture to answer or reject a call; ANC not great; Some features exclusive to EMUI 10

At the moment it seems that every smartphone manufacturer is offering matching headphones for their phones. This assumes that you will want your gadgets to be made by the development department of the same company that made your phone.

ImageTagInstance gallery-f10e777a-576c-4f98-badc-0a372e2bd7f2 The fact AirPods dominate the wireless earphones market thanks to their comfortable design and easy-to-use charging case is certainly no secret. But, while they do work with Android phones, Apple has primarily designed them with iPhone compatibility in mind.Rival companies have tried to replicate their success whilst also avoiding any comparisons by introducing Android-focused alternatives with in-ear designs. But Huawei, unlike the rest, isn’t bothered about being compared to Apple.The company admits that its newest entry, the Huawei FreeBuds 3, has been positioned as a direct competitor to Apple’s non-Pro AirPods and, as it turns out, the results are pretty impressive. /124260794/.2_6924.3_phonearena.com_tier1 DesignHuawei’s third-generation wireless earphones build upon the design language that was first introduced on last year’s FreeBuds 2 Pro. The open-fit style has been maintained but the stem on both FreeBuds is now m...

Comfortable fit; Wireless charging; Great microphones; Good battery life; Compact design;

Active Noise cancellation is barely noticeable;

Get these over Apple's True Wireless buds, like the one that Apple has popularized, is fast becoming a common sight on people's ears, with good reason. Huawei is trying to put its own spin on wireless cans, stuffing AI-capabilities, smart active noise cancellation, as well as a comfortable fit into...

The Huawei Freebuds 3 has one of the best audio experience we had from a TWS device. Apart from that, pairing is very easy and quick. Battery life is outstanding too. It does not come cheap – Php 8,990 is quite a large amount but significantly cheaper than Airpods.

The Huawei FreeBuds 3 may look like AirPods, but they deliver a novel take on active noise cancelation that will appeal to those who want a wipe-clean pair, or anyone who isn't keen on jamming buds right into their ears.

Compact design; Great open-ear fit; Novel noise-canceling

No iOS app support; No sound seal; AirPod like design

By most estimates, Apple’s AirPods business alone is worth about $8 billion . Let that sink in for a minute. No wonder everyone’s getting into the true wireless earbuds game — from Samsung to Google to Microsoft to Amazon . And of course, Huawei joined the party a while ago .

The Huawei Freebuds 3 may not be the best ANC headphones, but it is the best ANC open-fit earbuds. If you do not like in-canal earbuds and needed ANC, the Freebuds 3 is your saviour, and it helps that they don’t cost as much as other ANC earphones.

ANC works sufficiently for open-fit design; On-ear design alleviates in-ear canal pressure

Limited shortcut taps on the earbuds; Relatively short battery life; ANC is less effective in places with mid- to high-frequency noises; like restaurants

Priced at PhP 8,990, others will undoubtedly dub the Huawei FreeBuds 3 as an AirPods clone, calling it that will do it a big injustice as it offers more than what it appears. Though the decision to make the whole ear bud a single unit instead of having a removable silicone tip remove most of the...

The term of the day in the portable audio world is True Wireless Stereo, or TWS, and it is a feature typically present in higher end Bluetooth headsets. We have in hand (or rather ear) the newest Huawei Freebuds 3 earphones and many seem to have tied the term TWS to this product.