Small earbuds usually mean small sound and weak noise cancelling. The Halo Buds 3 are among the smallest we have tested, and on a noisy train they are among the quietest. They are not perfect, but at this price they are hard to beat.
Fit and comfort
The buds sit flush in the ear with no stem. Four sizes of silicone tips are in the box, and the app runs a quick fit test that tells you if the seal is good. We wore them for a four-hour flight without sore ears, and they stayed in place on a run.
Noise cancelling
This is the surprise. The Halo Buds 3 cut low rumble, such as engines and air conditioning, almost as well as earbuds twice the price. Voices and keyboards still come through a little, which is normal. The transparency mode sounds natural and is good enough to hold a conversation at a shop counter.
Sound quality
Out of the box, the sound is warm with a little extra bass. It suits pop, hip-hop and podcasts well. For classical music and jazz, we preferred the Balanced preset in the app, which pulls the bass back and opens up the detail.
They do not sound expensive. They sound right, which is better.
Sofia Mendes
There is support for high-quality Bluetooth codecs on both Android and iPhone, and you can connect to two devices at once. Switching from a laptop call to music on a phone takes about two seconds.
Calls
Call quality is good indoors and fair outdoors. In wind, your voice gets thin but stays clear enough to understand. If calls in the street are most of what you do, buds with a stem still do this better.
Battery life
We got 7 hours 10 minutes with noise cancelling on, and the case holds three more charges. Ten minutes in the case gives about two hours of listening.
| Spec | Halo Buds 3 |
|---|---|
| Weight | 4.6 g per bud, 38 g case |
| Battery | 7 h (ANC on), 28 h with case |
| Charging | USB-C and wireless |
| Water rating | IP55 |
| Multipoint | 2 devices |
Two weeks of commuting
Our test route is a bus, a train and a ten-minute walk beside a busy road, twice a day. It is a hard test for small earbuds, because each part has a different kind of noise. On the bus, the Halo Buds 3 removed the engine drone and left a soft version of the door chime. On the train, the rumble faded and announcements stayed clear enough to follow. On the walk, traffic dropped to a hiss, and wind noise was low thanks to the flush shape.
We also wore them for full working days in an open office. They do not remove voices, and no earbuds do, but with quiet music playing the room disappeared. The buds were comfortable enough to forget, and more than once we walked into a meeting still wearing them.
The app
The Halo app is simple and useful. The fit test takes ten seconds. The equaliser has five bands and four presets, and changes are saved to the buds, so they follow you to a laptop or a television. You can change what a long press does on each side and turn off the touch controls completely, which we did at the gym.
There is a "find my buds" sound and a last-seen map. There is no way to find a bud once its battery is flat, so put them back in the case.
How they compare
The best-known earbuds at $249 cancel slightly more mid-range noise and are clearly better on calls. They are also larger, and their case is twice the size. At $99, the most popular budget pair is good value, but its noise cancelling is a full step behind and it has no wireless charging. The Halo Buds 3 sit between them in price and much closer to the top in performance.
Who should buy them
Buy them if you want quiet on public transport, if you have small ears or if stems bother you. Look elsewhere if you take most of your calls outdoors or want the deepest bass without touching an equaliser.
Pros
- Noise cancelling far above the price
- Tiny, light and comfortable for hours
- Useful app with a real equaliser
- Connects to two devices at once
Cons
- Calls are only fair in wind
- Touch controls are easy to trigger by accident
- Default sound is bass-heavy
Verdict
The Halo Buds 3 give you most of what the best earbuds do for about half the money. They are comfortable, they block the world well and they sound good once you spend a minute in the app.
If you make a lot of calls outdoors, pay more for a pair with stems. If you want quiet on the commute and music at the gym, buy these.
