Earfun Wave Pro X review

To (sort of) quote Albert Einstein: it’s all relative.

Dopey is canonically the tallest of the Seven Dwarves, but he’s not going to be playing in the NBA any time soon. Jeff Bezos isn’t currently as wealthy as Elon Musk, yet we doubt he has to go to the local thrift store to save a few quid on second-hand jeans.

Despite their reasonably modest asking price, the Wave Pro X are, in fact, the most expensive over-ear wireless headphones that Earfun has ever made. They’re still a long way from premium, but in breaking the £100 / $100 barrier, the Chinese brand may subtly be signalling its intention to move more upmarket in the future.

For now, Earfun’s costliest cans are still competing in the budget arena, albeit at its upper limits. Earfun has always been good at keeping prices low while packing myriad features into its various headphones, but it needs to up its game if it wants to trouble rivals from Sony or Austrian Audio when it comes to sound quality.

Price

At £120 / $130 / AU$240, the Wave Pro X have moved more upmarket than the more affordable £80 / $80 / AU$120 of the standard Wave Pro, putting them on a direct collision course with the excellent, Award-winning Sony WH-CH730N (£100 / $180 / AU$230) we tested recently.

Elsewhere, the five-star Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT remain a quality pick at £129 / $129 / AU$255, but they don’t offer active noise cancellation (ANC). If you’re willing to spend a bit more, the JBL Live 780NC (£170 / $250 / AU$300) and Philips TAH8000E (£140 / $149 / AU$246) are both solid noise-cancelling alternatives.

Build & comfort

As we found with the more affordable Wave Pro, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Wave Pro X would set you back a good deal more than their reasonably affordable price might suggest.

To look at and live with, they’re headphones which exude a level of quality belied by what is still a budget-friendly price tag, with Earfun once again impressing us with how solid and durable its latest over-ears feel. The rival Sony WH-CH730N are nicely made, but even they don’t have the luxe allure of the shiny Earfuns.

The circular earcups are weighty and solid, made to appear all the more premium courtesy of their shining metallic surface emblazoned with the Earfun logo. The inner edge of the headband feels sturdy and well-appointed with faux leather, complemented by a fabric exterior that actually puts us in mind of the far more premium Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3.

Comfort-wise, we have few complaints. On a two-hour flight to France, the Earfun over-ears are comfortable enough to prevent our journey from feeling like an ordeal. The only area of slight concern comes from the headphones’ clamping force, with some of our review team complaining that the ear cushions lack stability during movement due to their excessive softness.

The travel-friendly over-ears fold away fully into a ball, and we imagine that no matter how many times we swivel the earcups horizontally or collapse them in on themselves, the Wave Pro X will continue to bend, swivel and flex until the cows come home. There's no official IP rating for these over-ears, so we would just be a little cautious about wearing them out in the rain.

Physical controls are located at the base of the right earcup, comprising a power on/ off toggle alongside an elongated volume control and a noise cancelling button. They’re not particularly luxurious, but once you get used to their positioning, they’re easy to use and tactile in their operation.

Features

We’ve seen some impressive battery life figures in our time, but these are up there with the best of them.

The Wave Pro X offer a sensational 50 hours of battery life when ANC is in play, rising to a seismic 90 hours with noise cancelling switched off, easily surpassing the 75-hour maximum playtime of the Sony WH-CH730N. Better still, a fifteen-minute quick charge will grant around ten hours of playback if you’re rushing to get back in the action.

Their ample battery life and nifty fast-charging capabilities mean that it’s unlikely you’ll ever find yourself stymied by a pair of flatlined headphones. Wired listening is also available via both 3.5mm aux and USB-C cables. When going wired, you can listen to the Wave Pro X powered on to retain functions such as noise cancelling and digital signal processing, or sacrifice the aforementioned by listening passively with your cans switched off.

Despite their reasonable outlay, the budget over-ears grant Bluetooth Multipoint for switching between twin sources on the fly, while a low-latency Game Mode reduces audio latency for a more responsive in-game experience.

Similar to what we’ve seen on the latest Apple AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods 5, Earfun has furnished the Wave Pro X with its own AI translation feature, wherein the tech processes the language being spoken and then translates the audio into your headphones. Over 100 languages and dialects are supported, but be aware that you need to be logged in to an Earfun account to access this particular feature.

Higher-quality codec support is impressive at this level, with access to aptX Adaptive and LDAC from compatible sources. Auracast is also on hand, allowing you to tune into compatible streams from other Auracast-enabled sources.

The feature-packed Pro X are hosted by a similarly in-depth and easily navigable companion app from which you can personalise the headphones’ touch controls, access AI translations, toggle between noise cancelling settings, and access a comprehensive 10-band equaliser.

ANC & call quality

The Wave Pro X use an advanced eight-microphone array paired with real-time processing to analyse your external environment in pursuit of more consistent active noise cancellation and clearer voice calls.

Earfun offers three noise-cancelling settings here: ‘Normal’, ‘Active Noise Cancellation’ and an ambient ‘Transparency’ mode. In truth, only two are worth knowing about, as the ‘Normal’ setting switches off active noise cancelling to provide solely passive isolation provided by the headphones’ substantial ear cushions.

With ‘Active Noise Cancellation’ switched on, the Wave Pro X are impressively effective. The barrier they provide isn’t impermeable, but the wireless over-ears do a fine job of subduing the rumble of engines on a short-haul flight or the chatter of passengers in the airport beforehand, even if nearby voices can pierce through.

Voice calls aren’t quite on the same level. The Wave Pro X are better at blocking out environmental sounds than the Sony WH-CH730N, but their noise reduction interferes with caller speech, negatively affecting its overall clarity and making us sound robotic and artificial if we speak while noise is being processed in the background.

Overall clarity isn’t bad, but even in quieter settings, the Wave Pro X don’t sound as natural or authentic as their Sony rivals.

Sound

This is becoming an all-too-familiar tale for Earfun: a competitive price, an attractive design and a feature set that bulges at the seams, all let down by sound quality that lags some way behind.

Muse’s You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween gives us a suitably spooky taste of what Earfun’s latest over-ears can do, infusing the tumultuous tune with plenty of forcefulness, especially at their generous lower end. Instrumental textures are painted with reasonable insight, and there’s undeniable body to the booming drums and screeching guitars.

The midrange reproduction isn’t bad, either. While leading edges of notes aren’t quite as crisp and clearly defined as the Sony CH730N, there’s enough textural detail and overall clarity to make the opening violin plucks on Agnes Obel’s The Curse sound sufficiently nimble and authentic.

The Wave Pro X produce a powerful sound that fills our ears ably, yet they lack the cohesion and dimensionality to make tracks soar. Earfuns’ latest can sound congested and compressed – especially when it comes to complex or densely layered arrangements – leaving Björk’s Bachelorette sounding squashed and lacking in drama.

Like their cheaper Wave Pro counterparts, this ‘X’ edition also lacks dynamic expression. Rather ironically for a pair of headphones with ‘Wave’ in the title, the Earfuns’ dynamic presentation is akin to the still water of a static pool, as opposed to the crashing swells of an undulating seafront.

This one-dimensional, limited presentation becomes most apparent when charged with tackling complex musical arrangements. Hans Zimmer’s The Battle from the Gladiator soundtrack should be a rich tapestry of changing moods, but the Wave Pro X don’t have the elasticity to accommodate the composition’s interlocking rhythmic patterns or dynamic shifts.

Move to the Sony WH-CH730N, and you’ll see how things should be done. Immediately, there’s far more drama and scale to Zimmer’s ten-minute epic, brought about by the Sonys’ more expressive dynamics, better sense of timing, and superior organisational talents.

In desperation, we reach for the physical cables bundled with our sample cans, and while the resultant sound is a little clearer than before, it isn’t enough to rectify the Wave Pro Xs’ deficiencies. No matter how we listen – streaming from Tidal, accessing higher-res codecs, using a physical connection – dynamics remain stunted and uninvolving, while most tracks continue to lack propulsion and a tangible sense of rhythmic drive.

Verdict

Like most of our recent encounters with Earfun’s ever-growing roster of wireless headphones, this feels like a missed opportunity.

The Earfun Wave Pro X have mostly impressive all-around credentials – especially battery life – but their limited sonic abilities mean they fall short in the most important area of all. If you’re seeking budget noise cancellers but sound quality still matters, heed our advice and buy the more musically engaging and more affordable Sony WH-CH730N instead.

Review published: 3rd November 2026

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Build 4
• Features 5

MORE:

Read our review of the Sony WH-CH730N

Also consider the JBL Live 780NC

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