These budget headphones are a lesson in how to make talented musicians sound like they’re doing nightclub karaoke

I’m not going to string you along. The EarFun Wave Life headphones are categorically not some of the best headphones out there. The Wave Lifes are straight-up bad, which is majorly disappointing seeing as EarFun has made some of the best budget earbuds in the past.

The Wave Life pro headphones have some redeeming features: they’re pretty comfortable, the call quality is fine, and they have Bluetooth 5.4. But when the most important aspect of a headphone — sound quality — is this dire, it’s hard to look past.

But for just $79/$59, could these headphones be worth it in a pinch? I’ll discuss everything in this EarFun Wave Life headphones review.

EarFun Wave Life review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A pair of budget headphones that are comfy, but that’s it
• Who is it for? I don’t think anyone should buy these
• What does it cost? $59 / £59
• What do we like? They’re pretty comfortable
• What don’t we like? The sound quality is really disappointing

EarFun Wave Life review: Specs

EarFun Wave Life review: Price & availability

As with other EarFun products I’ve reviewed (the Wave Pro, Air 4 NC, Uboom X), the list price on EarFun’s website is not the price you’ll ever see the Wave Lifes being sold for. Do not believe that $59 is a sale price — it is the real MSRP.

The EarFun Wave Life headphones are listed as $79 on Amazon U.S., but they have only ever been sold at $59. Similarly in the U.K., the list price is £79 on Amazon U.K., but they are often on sale for £55.

$59 is very cheap for a pair of wireless headphones, but as will become clear, you get what you pay for. The cheapest good headphones I’ve tested are the $79 JLab JBuds Lux ANC, which performed like a much pricier model. Yes, they’re $20 pricier than the EarFun Wave Lifes, but the JLabs are so good.

I reviewed EarFun’s Wave Pro headphones last year, and the sound quality on those cans was marred by tinniness, lackluster bass, and muffled mids. Unfortunately, the cheaper model Wave Life hasn't escaped those malaises, but the lighter price tag might at least soften the blow.

EarFun Wave Life review: Design & controls

• Cups rotate 90°
• Relatively soft cups
• Can feel drivers through mesh casing

I think the design of the Wave Life headphones leaves something to be desired. It’s like a Shein version of the Sony WH-1000XM5 ($399) headphones, with plasticky cups and buttons that attract dust like it’s going out of style.

These buttons are for ANC, power, and volume up/down. You can also skip forward by long pressing the volume up button, and these buttons are all customizable in the EarFun Audio app. I kept the default settings, but it’s nice to have the option.

It’s not all bad, though, don’t get me wrong. The headband has a nice ¾ inch or so of foam, and the cups themselves are soft. The cups can also fold 90°, so I was able to fold the headphones up small for easy transportation.

The mesh casing of the actual cups, though, is very flimsy and thin. I can actually feel the drivers themselves through the foam. Although I didn’t actually feel this on my ears during listening, it does make me wonder about the sturdiness of the build overall.

The headphones are also really light, which could be either poor build quality or purposeful for ease of use. I did appreciate the lightness as it made listening for hours comfortable.

EarFun Wave Life review: Features & connectivity

• Dual device connection
• Bluetooth 5.4 means the range is good
• Custom EQ so you can attempt to save the sound quality

One thing I was impressed with was the Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, which means the range is super long. I was trying to watch an Instagram Reel while walking to lunch, forgetting my phone was still connected to the headphones. This was at least 320 feet away, so I was really impressed with the range overall.

I was also able to connect to my phone and laptop simultaneously using dual device connectivity. This isn’t automatic: I had to long-press the ANC button to get the headphones to enter dual pairing mode. From there, I was able to manage this connection in the EarFun Audio app.

If you want to listen via wired playback, the Wave Lifes have that option! Bizarrely, though, it’s not via a 3.5mm audio cable you’d normally expect — it’s USB-C. The USB-C cable EarFun provides with the headphones is very thick and obstinate, so it got in the way every time I wanted to move my head. It’s also only about 3.3 feet long, which is pretty short in the grand scheme of things.

There’s also a customizable EQ, which does its best to mitigate the abysmal out-of-the-box sound quality. Despite the EQ, though, I was unable to get a properly semi-decent sound quality, which I’ll discuss in full later.

If the actual build of the drivers is poor, then there’s very little an EQ can do. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound; it’ll try its best, but there’s bigger problems here.

Most people in the market for budget headphones aren’t the kind of people who want to download loads of audio apps to their phones, so they won’t even know these headphones can be adjusted. Why didn’t EarFun just ship the headphones with a better EQ enabled? I just don’t understand.

EarFun Wave Life review: ANC

• Mediocre ANC
• ‘Normal’ mode makes air con even louder
• Just a bit disappointing

As I really enjoyed the EarFun Air 2 ANC earbuds, I had high hopes for the Wave Life’s ANC performance. However, I was left disappointed.

While testing, I played ‘Patience’ by Mall Grab semi-loudly through the headphones and then put YouTube on on my laptop. I could still hear Gordon Ramsey (yes, I watch reruns of Kitchen Nightmares all the time) over the top of the music. The ANC certainly doesn’t filter out 94% of ambient sound, as per EarFun’s claims.

Then, bizarrely, the ‘Normal’ mode didn’t just switch off ambient/ANC. It actually increased the volume of the air con in the office. I could hear the steady hum of the fan as if it was just a few inches away.

I’m not impressed at all with the ANC, and it sucks that there’s no option to completely turn it off. Even ‘Normal’ mode suffers from the same issues ANC does.

EarFun Wave Life review: Audio quality

• Terrible sound quality
• Muffled mids, nonexistent bass
• Muddy everything

I’m a professional writer, and I’m not sure that even I have the words to describe quite how bad the sound quality on the EarFun Wave Life headphones is.

I couldn’t quite believe the poor sound quality; I thought I might have been hallucinating it. I gave the headphones to four people in the office, and they all reacted identically to me: with a wince.

The Wave Life headphones have a strange combination of tinniness, muddyness, muffledness, and distortion. The music sounds as if played from underwater.

I played ‘Minnesoter’ by The Dandy Warhols — granted, off a record that came out the year I was born, but I’ve found in the past that older recordings tend to be more forgiving than new masters — and everything sounded terrible. The drums were tinny, the bass was muddy, and I couldn’t hear the licks of synth I know are there.

I wondered if it was a recording issue, so I played ‘Birds of a Feather’ by Billie Eilish on Qobuz. Given that Qobuz is a hi-res streaming platform, the songs should, in theory, sound better than something like Spotify.

However, the hi-res platform barely made a difference. ‘Birds of a Feather’ sounded more like a Billie Eilish cover band than Billie herself (I want to thank my colleague Ashley for that soundbite). The percussion sounded like it was being played on moss; wet and squelchy, but not in the ‘90s acid house way I like.

When I listened to ‘Black Magic Woman’ by Eric Clapton, I thought that Eric’s vocals sounded alright. Not good, but alright. However, the bass and percussion were so muffled and muddy that it ruined the whole track.

Next, I switched up genre to the aforementioned ‘90s acid house. I listened to ‘Loaded’ by Primal Scream, which actually sounded decent for a while. The start of the track has a pretty minimal soundscape, with just percussion and piano. Then the brass comes in — and it was just more of the tinny, muddled mess I criticized earlier.

After ‘Loaded’, I played ‘(It goes like) Nanana’ by Peggy Gou. If you don’t know this track (although you’ve probably heard it — it was everywhere in summer 2023), it’s a high-BPM classic house track with a pulsing synth beat.

This synth beat was muddy, and the house drum machine was tinny. The only part of the song that sounded decent was Peggy’s vocal, so I lowered bass on the EarFun app to see if that fixed the muddy issue.

Well, yes, it did fix most of the muddiness. But lowering bass brought in another issue: major tinniness. The higher-pitched synth modulations in the latter half of the track sounded pretty good, but this is a house track. It’s supposed to have a groovy bassline. With the EarFun Wave Life headphones, I had to make a choice: muddiness, or tinniness. It’s like choosing between rotten egg or rancid milk for dinner. Mmm — neither, thanks.

The Wave Lifes are placed weirdly on EarFun’s lineup of audio gear: they’re $20 cheaper than the Wave Pro, and they sound considerably worse. The Wave Pros sound bad, too, so I didn’t really anticipate the Wave Lifes to be much better. But the Wave Lifes sound so much worse, that I would only ever recommend the Pros over these.

EarFun Wave Life review: Call quality

• Decent mic quality
• Audible speech
• Not all bad

To test the Wave Life headphones’ call quality, I called my boyfriend. He said I sounded “pretty good”, but there was a lot of fuzziness on the sibilance. When I asked him, “Do I sound better than my AirPods Pro 2?” He said that it sounded like I was saying “AirPodzzzz”.

So, I guess these would be good headphones for the bees in your life. All jesting aside, I think these headphones have decent-enough mics for calls, but you don’t just buy headphones for the call quality.

EarFun Wave Life review: App

• Custom EQ easy to use
• Can customize touch controls
• Manage dual device connection

As with other EarFun products I’ve tested, I was able to customize the EQ, multipoint connectivity, touch controls, game mode, and voice control settings in the EarFun Audio app.

While the EarFun Audio app doesn’t have any groundbreaking features like the Soundcore app’s HearID feature (which I loved when testing the fantastic Soundcore Space One Pro headphones), it is simple to use and easy to navigate.

The EarFun app definitely makes these headphones at least a touch more listenable — I wasn’t stuck with the frankly abysmal sound quality of the Wave Lifes right out of the box. I was able to play with EQ and find one that either reduced tinniness or muddiness. Ideally, I’d like to find an EQ that reduces both, but that didn’t happen.

EarFun Wave Life review: Battery

• 60 hours without ANC
• 37 hours with ANC
• USB-C rechargeable

In terms of budget headphones, 60 hours battery life is pretty decent. The JLabs JBuds Lux ANC just overtake the Wave Lifes, with 70 hours no ANC and 40 hours with ANC. Obviously, budget headphones are going to have more impressive battery lives; the Marshall Monitor III headphones go for 70 hours with ANC.

Recharging is easy with the USB-C cable (which is also used for music playback), and it shows a little red light while it’s charging so you can tell when it’s finished.

EarFun Wave Life review: Verdict

Yeah, I don’t think anyone should buy these headphones. Maybe if you just want some headphones in a pinch and really don’t care about sound quality, they’d be for you. But then again, would said people be reading a review about them in the first place? I’m not so sure.

Like the EarFun Wave Pro headphones (which sound much better than the Wave Lifes, but still sound bad), these cans are very comfortable. However, that’s pretty much where the positives end.

The sound quality is not just bad, it’s abysmal. It sounds like, as per my headline, the most talented musicians are doing inebriated nightclub karaoke. I actually winced and gasped while listening to my favorite songs through these budget cans — as did everyone else in the office when it was their turn to test.

In short, the Wave Life headphones are not good. Don’t waste your money — definitely check out the JLab JBuds Lux ANC headphones over these.