Honor Earbuds 2 Lite Review – Great for the price

Honor launched their latest affordable Earbuds 2 Lite earlier this month. With an RRP of £69.99 they were cheap for ANC TWS earbuds to start with, but you can already pick them up for under £50 on Amazon.

Most earbuds at this price offer quite a good sound quality nowadays but fail in many other places, especially active noise cancelling. The Honor earbuds 2 Lite buck this trend and offer a surprisingly impressive performance.

Specification

• 10mm High Quality Sound Driver
• 10 hours music playback
• 32 hours including case
• Pop up and pair
• Wear detection
• IP54 rating
• Bluetooth 5.2 with SBC/AAC

Design and Fit

The Honor Earbuds 2 Lite come in a relatively generic design, not dissimilar to the Apple AirPods Pro or many other options out there. It is a design that works, they look nice and fit comfortably in your ear.

You get three sets of eartips, though there is not a massive difference between medium and large. I found that they fit securely in my ear with no significant movement during vigorous exercise. I did feel like the overall passive seal wasn’t quite as good as some other options. I am cursed with quite large ears and this can affect both the bass and active noise cancelling performance.

The IP54 rating and the overall decent fit mean these work quite well for sports/fitness earbuds. This is especially true with the low price, as I am quite cautious about using very expensive earbuds for the gym and other activities where I might lose them.

Sound Quality

You only get SBC and AAC with these, which is relatively normal for this price, but aptX is always an added bonus and is available on many budget earbuds now.

The Honor Earbuds 2 Lite offer a decent sound quality. They don’t offer quite the same level as bass as many consumer-focussed earbuds, this could partially be due to the fit in my ears.

They offer quite a pleasant, easy listening experience. In comparison, I previously found that the Nothing ear (1) was quite harsh to listen to when listing to punk and metal tracks for extended periods of time, but I have not experienced the same issue here. The highs don’t go quite as sharp, but this is something I am sensitive to and will be different for others.

Mids and vocals sound good offering excellent detail and clarity.

The overall sound profile is quite neutral, in my opinion.

Active Noise Cancelling

Hardly any affordable earbuds offer good active noise cancelling. The Nothing ear (1), Elevoc Clear Earbuds and Edifier TWS NB are about the best options I can think of for under £100 that I have reviewed.

So, it comes as no surprise that the £50-ish Honor Earbuds 2 Lite doesn’t have the best ANC.

It is not awful, though, and is better than the Cleer Roam NC that I have been using recently (review tomorrow) and are priced about the same.

Using my standard airplane cabin noise on YouTube, the ANC provides a moderate reduction in the low-end engine hum. With it feeling like I don’t have a fully sealed fit from the ear tips, it is quite likely that people with smaller ear canals will be able to achieve superior performance. Even with the fit I achieved, the performance is significantly better than other earbuds at this price.

App

The Honor Earbuds 2 Lite use the AI Life app, similar to all the Huawei earbuds. If you are already running a Huawei or Honor phone, the phones built-in Bluetooth settings menu offers all the functionality from the AI life app.

From here, you can control the ANC, gestures and view the battery levels. Sadly there is no EQ function but having any app control at all at this price is quite rare.  

With the AI life app, you will likely need to download this from the Huawei App Gallery, as the one in the Play Store is out of date.

Battery

These are rated at an impressive 10 hours, with an additional 22 hours from the case. During my time with them, I never managed to run them down in one go, with the best I could do is around 50%. I’d say you should be able to squeeze about 8 hours or so out of them. This is above and beyond what most other earbuds can offer.

Price and Alternative Options

The Honor Earbuds 2 Lite appear to have an RRP of £69.99, but in the 40 days these have been on Amazon, you can already buy them for under £50

At the RRP, it wouldn’t be a huge leap up towards the Nothing Ear 1, which offer better ANC. However, I am not sure they are worth twice the current retail price of the Honor earbuds.

The £50-100 price is a bit of a saturated market. Earfun and Anker Soundcore all have excellent options at this price all of which tend to be quite good.  

Overall

The Honor Earbuds 2 Lite offer excellent performance considering you can buy them for around £50. I would say they have superior performance than most earbuds in this price range and can compete with many others more expensive.

These will be particularly appealing to anyone with an Honor or Huawei phone as you have native integration.

While the ANC can’t compete with premium-priced products, there is a significant reduction in low-end frequencies, which is good to tone down engine or air-con noise.

Overall, for a budget set of earbuds, they are excellent.

James Smythe( Editor-in-chief )

I am James, a UK-based tech enthusiast and the Editor and Owner of Mighty Gadget, which I’ve proudly run since 2007. Passionate about all things technology, my expertise spans from computers and networking to mobile, wearables, and smart home devices.

As a fitness fanatic who loves running and cycling, I also have a keen interest in fitness-related technology, and I take every opportunity to cover this niche on my blog. My diverse interests allow me to bring a unique perspective to tech blogging, merging lifestyle, fitness, and the latest tech trends.

In my academic pursuits, I earned a BSc in Information Systems Design from UCLAN, before advancing my learning with a Master’s Degree in Computing. This advanced study also included Cisco CCNA accreditation, further demonstrating my commitment to understanding and staying ahead of the technology curve.

I’m proud to share that Vuelio has consistently ranked Mighty Gadget as one of the top technology blogs in the UK. With my dedication to technology and drive to share my insights, I aim to continue providing my readers with engaging and informative content.