Creative Zen Air Pro Review – Affordable ANC Earbuds with LC3+ Audio

The Artistic Zen Air Professional are the newest true wi-fi earbuds from Artistic, that includes lively noise cancellation (ANC), lengthy battery life, Bluetooth 5.3 and customisable contact controls through the Artistic app.

The primary distinction between the Zen Air Professional and the Zen Air Plus is the LC3+ codec, which claims to have greater robustness in opposition to transmission errors, even decrease encoding delay, and the flexibility to play again high-resolution audio high quality.

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Specification

Design

The Zen Air Professional characteristic an in-ear design with silicone ear ideas to assist get a safe match. Within the field, you get small, medium, and enormous ideas.

The general design is straightforward and enticing, with them wanting like most generic earbuds.

These have an IPX5 score making them a sensible choice for health and I discovered the general match to be glorious. The bigger ear ideas present seal, which helps with the sound high quality and retains the earbuds securely in place. Up to now, I’ve used these for an outside run and a number of other gymnasium periods, and I’ve had no points with them falling out or requiring vital changes.

Artistic App – No SXFI

The Artistic App has some helpful customisation for the Zen Air Professional, together with an EQ and choices for the ANC.

The EQ is slightly odd, as you could have two variables for bass and treble, however you need to use the frequency wave to manually regulate the complete vary of frequencies.  

Oddly, the Zen Air Professional and Plus will not be appropriate with SXFI, whereas the Artistic Zen Air are. I think that is as a result of inclusion of LE audio, which I assume shouldn’t be appropriate with SXFI.

Connectivity

The Zen Air Professional use the newest Bluetooth 5.3 commonplace for wi-fi connectivity. I discovered the connection to be strong in testing with no dropouts.

Pairing can be fast and simple, with straightforward switching between a number of paired gadgets.

One neat characteristic of Bluetooth 5.3 is assist for LE Audio. This brings advantages like decrease energy consumption and better bandwidth for future audio codecs.

Relying in your cellphone, the LC3+ assist permits further choices inside the Bluetooth settings. On my Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely, I can toggle from Bluetooth Audio to LE Audio. Nevertheless, in my case, once I change to LE audio, the sound high quality is lowered, and just one earbud works.

When testing this with the Xiaomi 14, Pixel 6, and iQOO 12, there have been no further choices to toggle.

The problems with LC3+/LE Audio seem like phone-related. I’ve seen Reddit customers expressing frustration about how the Samsung UI 6.0/Android 14 replace was supposed to incorporate LC3, however when enabling LC3 mode beneath BT settings, there is no such thing as a sound output.

Artistic consists of the BT-L4 Bluetooth LE Audio SXFI Transmitter with the Zen Hybrid Professional SXFi (or the BT‑L3 with the Traditional), however they don’t promote it individually, so there is no such thing as a straightforward option to profit from LC3+ until you could have a cellphone/gadget that particularly helps it.

Sound High quality

The Zen Air Professional options 10mm dynamic drivers, which Artistic State are custom-tuned to supply highly effective bass and crisp treble.

I examined them with quite a lot of music genres, together with blues, electronica, hip hop, metallic, jazz, and classical, in addition to podcasts and films.

Contemplating the inexpensive value level, I discovered that the earbuds sound good. The sound is a little more refined and balanced than you discover with lots of the inexpensive Chinese language manufacturers you discover on Amazon.

With the EQ off, they’ve a barely heat sound. There may be an uplift within the bass, which gives a nice listening expertise for many genres. The bass doesn’t bleed an excessive amount of into the opposite frequencies, and this enables the mids to be clear with stage of element.

I’m fairly delicate to highs and was pleased that these don’t sound too sharp.

As I predominantly use earbuds for train, I are inclined to desire one thing extra bassy. With the EQ, you must have the ability to dial within the sound to your tastes. Cranking the bass up can provide you an honest stage of thumping bass with out getting extreme.

It might take some tweaking to search out the sound you need, and I might have most well-liked some presets to simplify the method.

The sound stage and instrument separation are respectable for true wi-fi earbuds, helped by the drivers being angled to fireside sound extra straight into your ear canal.

Energetic Noise Cancelling

For ANC, I carried out an artificial check of enjoying airplane cabin noise on my Edifier S3000 Professional audio system with the quantity set to 80%. The ANC on the headphones performs properly.

Sadly, I discovered the ANC to be poor, with a negligible distinction to the sound. Subjectively, I might say there was maybe a ten% discount of the cabin noise, with it being predominantly the low finish.

It’s uncommon to have good ANC on earbuds at this value, and it’s not unusual for costly earbuds to have poor ANC.

Battery

The Zen Air Professional supply as much as 9 hours per cost, with the case offering a further 2 fees, taking complete battery life as much as 33 hours.

In testing, I discovered battery life to align with Artistic’s claims, hitting round 8.5-9 hours at 50% quantity with ANC off and about 5 hours with it on. That is excellent, as most earbuds solely final round 6 hours.

I additionally discover that earbuds with spectacular ANC are inclined to have a shorter battery, so the poor ANC however spectacular battery on these correlates with my previous experiences.

I discovered that the ANC didn’t impression the sound, whereas some headphones can have a big distinction with ANC on or off. Because of the poor ANC and no pierceable distinction in sound, I’d most likely depart ANC off for the improved battery life.

The case additionally fees rapidly through USB-C, they usually cost through QI wi-fi charging. With wi-fi charging, it is advisable place the case down on its again moderately than upright the place the USB-C port is.

Microphone

For calls, the Zen Air Professional use a triple microphone setup with environmental noise discount to assist isolate your voice.

In observe, folks reported my voice sounded clear in a variety of situations. The earbuds do an honest job of decreasing background noise like wind or visitors.

Worth and Various Choices

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The Artistic Zen Air Professional has an RRP of £60 and is obtainable straight from Artistic for £55. Amazon has them listed at £70.

My opinion is that at £55 that is price it, however at £70, you’ll be able to most likely discover higher choices.

The Artistic Zen Air Plus is listed at £55 however is obtainable for £45.

The SoundPeats Air4 Professional is an efficient different with an RRP of £80, however it’s priced at £60 on Amazon.

The Edifier TWS1 Professional 2 are additionally good, priced at round £50.

General

I believe the Artistic Zen Air Professional are pair of finances earbuds.

At £55, you want lifelike expectations, and I believe these sounds nice for the value. I like that they’ve an app and EQ permitting you to dial within the sound to your liking, and I assumed the battery life was glorious.

LC3 assist on telephones shouldn’t be nice, and LC3+ assist appears to be even rarer. Hopefully, this can enhance with time, however LC3 has been out for a few years now.

The ANC was poor, however this tends to be the norm for earbuds at this value level. It does assist slightly, so it’s nonetheless good to have it there.

General, I believe these are properly price it for £55, and I’d definitely purchase them over some unknown model on Amazon at an identical value level.

I’m James, a UK-based tech fanatic and the Editor and Proprietor of Mighty Gadget, which I’ve proudly run since 2007. Enthusiastic about all issues expertise, my experience spans from computer systems and networking to cell, wearables, and sensible dwelling gadgets.

As a health fanatic who loves working and biking, I even have a eager curiosity in fitness-related expertise, and I take each alternative to cowl this area of interest on my weblog. My numerous pursuits enable me to deliver a singular perspective to tech running a blog, merging life-style, health, and the newest tech traits.

In my tutorial pursuits, I earned a BSc in Data Methods Design from UCLAN, earlier than advancing my studying with a Grasp’s Diploma in Computing. This superior examine additionally included Cisco CCNA accreditation, additional demonstrating my dedication to understanding and staying forward of the expertise curve.

I’m proud to share that Vuelio has constantly ranked Mighty Gadget as one of many high expertise blogs within the UK. With my dedication to expertise and drive to share my insights, I intention to proceed offering my readers with participating and informative content material.