**Image coming soon**
OnePlus has made many earbuds over the years including the pretty great Bullets, Bullets Wireless, and Buds, so it was only natural that they would do a Pro-style truly wireless earbuds. Hence, the OnePlus Buds Pro that came out in August last year.
I’ve been using them since they came out and wanted to give my thoughts on the company’s most premium earbuds yet.
Design
The Buds Pro are designed like many other wireless earbuds but what sets them apart is the colorways. They come in white, black, and a Radiant Silver color that looks really cool in the pictures, but unfortunately, I haven’t gotten to see them in person. What’s great about the white and black colors is that they each have a two-tone design with a more matte finish on top and a glossy finish for the buds. It’s not a color I’ve seen on other headphones before.
The silver ones are a completely glossy silver color which as I said, looks really sleek in pictures, but I worry about how badly they’ll attract fingerprints lol.
I have the black ones and I can honestly say I’m a big fan of the color and overall design. Although I’m pretty sure it’s plastic and not aluminum like I was originally hoping, they still feel great to hold and the subtle design looks cool without being too standout (unlike some other well-known white earbuds that are instantly noticeable lol).
As far as fitting in my ears, I’ve never had an issue. They actually fit a bit better than my AirPods Pros and stay in my ears better as well. They come with some adjustable tips if you need to change it up a bit for your ears.
I use these both when running and when just chilling and working around the house and have never had an issue in either case. They stay snug in my ear throughout my runs (I do have to push them in every now and then, but I’ve had that issue with every set of earbuds like this). I’m also thankful that I can wear them for a while without them becoming uncomfortable, not something I can say of other earbuds.
The case is another great feature. It’s quite small and compact, although, oddly, it can be difficult to open sometimes, especially one-handed, but the earbuds sit in the case well and it’s easy to slip into a bag or pocket without noticing it’s there.
Sound Quality
I’ll be the first to say I’m not audiophile, but I’ve been around enough headphones to be able to at least tell ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ audio quality (at least I hope so lol). For me, the audio quality is pretty great on the Buds Pro.
The closest thing I can compare them to are the Apple AirPods Pro and while I think the AirPods Pro have overall better sound quality, the difference wasn’t hugely noticeable to me. The Buds Pro are known for being a bit heavy on the bass and I could tell it was a tad more pronounced but I don’t listen to super Bassy music so your mileage will vary as they say.
Overall, I am very happy with the sound I get from the Buds Pro, especially for their $99 price at the time of writing.
Noise Cancellation
The OnePlus Buds are equipped with active noise cancellation (ANC) which the company claims is adaptive and can cancel up to 40db of sound. I couldn’t really tell if it was adaptive or not, but I can say that it worked really well for me. They even have different settings for the ANC to let you set it to Faint, Smart, or Extreme.
They certainly won’t work as well as a pair of over-ear cans from Bose or Sony, but I was pretty impressed with how well they did work. Almost all of the audible background noise was silenced even without having to use Extreme. I haven’t really had many chances to test the Extreme mode but once I travel on a plane again later this year, I’ll test it out for sure. I will say that I tried it a few times in a coffee shop, and I was extremely impressed (pun intended). I basically could not hear a thing with them in. Baristas were making coffee and other people were talking and working, there were even a couple kids playing (albeit not loudly thankfully) and I couldn’t hear any of it so there’s that.
Transparency mode is something I’m pretty sure Apple pioneered on the original AirPods Pro, but OnePlus did a really fine job with theirs. If you read my review of the Nothing Ear(1)s, you’ll remember that I said that I couldn’t really tell a difference between their ANC mode and Transparency mode.
That’s certainly not the case here. Transparency mode on the OnePlus Buds Pro is pretty great and I never feel nervous or anxious when running on a busy street or trying to hear around me in a crowded space. I am very happy with how well it works.
Multi point pairing
This was a pretty big deal when the Buds Pro were announced as this was somewhat unusual for earbuds at the time. Only Jabra was really doing this, so it was nice to see. Unfortunately, this feature was pulled right around launch time so while my unit has had this feature since I’ve had them, others had to wait a while for this to be enabled via software update.
This feature worked so well and was so useful, that I refused to update my Buds Pro until they brought back support for multi-point pairing via software. Basically, you can have these guys paired with and connected to two different devices at the same time. Like, if you’re listening to music on your laptop and a call comes in on your phone, you don’t have to manually switch the connection between the devices and you can just answer the call and start talking.
It works, and it’s kinda magical to be honest lol. I’m hoping that this becomes a standard feature, at least on pro style earbuds going forward.
App and settings
So this is a bit of an odd one. On OnePlus phones, all the settings and everything for the Buds Pro are actually hidden in the Bluetooth settings. Under Settings>Bluetooth>OnePlus Buds Pro>Headphone controls, is where you find all the normal stuff you’d expect to find in like an app for them.
For any non-OnePlus phone, you have to download and app called Hey Melody, which is actually an Oppo-made app (the whole OnePlus/Oppo thing is like a whole series of articles that we don’t have time for here and I might get into later lol), which is a bit odd to me, especially for people who don’t know about it and are searching for a OnePlus app to manage the settings.
Strange.
I will say that the app works just fine on iPhones, and you get all the same options and settings as you do on OnePlus phones which is nice.
Now that I think about it, Apple hides all the stuff for their AirPods behind the Bluetooth settings so maybe that’s what they were going for? Who knows? It’s just weird that they’d do both instead of one or the other, if that makes sense.
That being said, like with the multi-point pairing feature, there was no option to customize the EQ at launch, but that has since been provided via software update – although it came several months late, only arriving early this year. There are 4 default EQ settings to choose from and you can create as many of your own custom settings as you want (I assume you can make as many as you want, I didn’t try to find a max number).
Side Notes
Battery life
This was perfectly fine for me. OnePlus claims 5 hours of playtime with ANC on and 7 hours with it off. Plus, an extra 28 in the case with ANC on and 38 with it off. I never really tested those claims specifically but that seemed to hold up for me. I never ran out of battery in my day-to-day usage.
One fun thing to note is that the case uses OnePlus’ really awesome Warp Charging so 10 minutes of charging gets you 10 hours of playtime. Perfect for topping up in the airport before a long flight, or quickly charging up in the morning before heading out for the day.
Connecting/Pairing
As expected for pro-level headphones, connecting and pairing initially to devices is seamless and straightforward. For OnePlus phones, simply open the case and they’ll connect much like AirPods do (you almost exactly the same animation and such as well). One little quirk I’ve noticed is that if you’re wanting to connect to a different device than the last one they connected with, it takes about 5 or 6 seconds for them to connect to the new device so just tap “Connect” then dismiss the “can’t connect” dialogue box and try again. After a few seconds, it will connect.
Call quality
I never had any issues with calls while using the Buds Pro. I could hear callers just fine and they never complained about not being able to hear me so win-win.
Overall, these are a pretty impressive pair of headphones for $99 and I’ve often seen them for cheaper so I can absolutely recommend them.
