Is the Huawei FreeBuds 5i worth the upgrade from the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3?

Verdict

Downgrade

The Huawei FreeBuds 5i actually scores 22.6 points below the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 3, so on aggregate review consensus this is a step backwards. On paper: battery life 6.5 h to 7.5 h, battery life (anc on) 4.5 h to 6 h and case weight 45.5 g to 33.9 g. Worth checking: battery incl. case goes 31 h to 28 h and full charge time goes 40 min to 60 min. One caution: this steps down a line tier (FreeBuds Pro 3 to FreeBuds 5i), and base models usually trade away tier features - check the codec and ANC rows above before trusting the score gap alone. And it costs $44 more for a lower score, which is hard to justify on the data alone. Only worth it if a specific feature above matters more to you than overall quality does.