Storied Chinese company Huawei may still be struggling to win friends in the phone and tablet worlds, with its lack of access to the Play Store still making the company's hand-held products impossible to recommend, but the brand's been a surprisingly reliable maker of admirable earbuds.

We gave the Huawei FreeBuds 5 Pro a perfect score earlier this year, and I maintain that the Huawei FreeArc are the best hook-style open earbuds I've ever tested. But now, instead of doing something better than everyone else, Huawei is doing something different.

The Huawei FreeBuds Neo seem to be the result of someone thinking the AirPods Pro 3 are perfect except for being too big; the brand continues its mission of all-but imitating Apple, while slyly improving the formula. That is to say, these are wireless in-ear buds which are ice-white (note: other finishes are available) but really small.

We've seen small earbuds before (see the JLab JBuds Mini for something really diddy) but they often tend to be cheap and feature-light. Not the FreeBuds Neo, which don't ask you to make compromises and are still affordable, compared to the FreeBuds 5 Pro or AirPods.

The carry case is a slender pill, which was second to none when it came to how easy it was to slip into my pocket and forget about. The buds are light, with shortened stems which make them look truncated.

It's not all about the design. These buds sound fun and energetic, with a V-shaped sound profile that adds some zest to your music.

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