Designed for everyday use, these entry level earbuds from Xiaomi offer practical features at an affordable price point. For only P899.00 on Shopee, the Redmi Buds 8 Lite already has a lot to offer. For starters, I love the cool blue color that I got to try. It’s a fresh take from the usual black or white colored earbuds.

Upon downloading the Xiaomi Earbuds app, and exploring it, I was glad to see that you could personalize the gestures on the earbuds. For example, Tap left earphone once for: Next song, Previous song, Volume up, Volume down, etc. Other gestures include: Tap right earphone once, Double tap left earphone, up until Triple Tap and Press and hold. This is a good thing as the gestures would adjust to you, instead of the other way around. Just a reminder though that you should tap the base of the earbud, instead of the earbud itself. Took me a while to figure that one out.

Another feature that I was excited to try was the “Find my earphones” and again it was so specific that you can indicate which earbud (left or right) to ring. For someone who often changes my bag, and with it my earbuds tends to travel from one bag to another, oftentimes I forget that I left it in this bag, so having a find feature was something that would be useful. Although, when I went ahead to try it, I noticed that it was difficult to connect to the earbuds, and that they would only connect when the case was open, and you would need the earbuds connected to the app, for the find feature to work.

When I did try connecting them, I noticed that the case had to be flipped open, the alarm for the find feature was a bit soft. So it might be hard to find when you need to.

Fast charging can give you up to 2 hours of playback in 10 minutes, and the charging case delivers up to 36 hours of battery life. You can check the battery status through the app, which I found to be very helpful, it was so specific that you can see the battery for each earpiece and even the charging case. I don’t remember ever seeing it go below 50% even if I use it on my commute. I travel roughly two hours one way to work. An office day would mean four hours travel time and the Redmi Buds 8 Lite are right there with me.

As a Filipino I’m sure many can agree with me that the daily grind and commute can be brutal, that is why it is such a relief to get to lose yourself in the music, as you travel the metro. Which is why a trusty pair of earbuds can really help you get through your day, and for its price point, the Redmi Buds 8 Lite could be just the pair that you need.