The OnePlus Buds Pro covers all the proper bases but lacks a critical function that many other true wireless earbuds have, allowing you to fine-tune the sound. These earphones don’t segregate, but do everything well enough to satisfy most people’s demands. If you are a OnePlus fan and want true wireless earbuds, you’ll like the OnePlus Buds Pro.
They’re so limited and offer little support for enhanced sound that we need help suggesting these OnePlus Buds or OnePlus Buds Z to anyone. Despite those mishaps, the company believes the OnePlus Buds Pro are the perfect wireless earbuds for everyone. The OnePlus budgeted its portion of obsessiveness toward wireless earbuds. Its attendant app, Hey Melody, works for non-OnePlus handsets and iOS devices. It adds a few customization options and the capability to upgrade earbuds over the air when they appear in new colors, which is more common than you might think.
OnePlus Buds Pro has a 7-hour battery life without the case and with ANC turned off. Given that I turned on ANC, unfortunately, it drops to 5 hours--still respectable, if not class-leading. It provides a playback time of up to 10 hours with just a 10-minute charge, which is quite convenient, though there's also support for Qi wireless charging. With the charging case, the brand offers 28 hours with ANC and 38 hours with ANC off.
For its part, the OnePlus Buds Pro offers many great features. Like all active earbuds, it has adaptive noise canceling and transparency modes. These are accompanied by a sound ID feature that customizes the sound to your hearing.
They also offer IP55 water resistance ratings; the case has IPX4 waterproof ratings. We’re covering half of everything from features to sound quality.
Earbuds Reviews
Overview of OnePlus Buds Pro
Unveiling the OnePlus Buds Pro—a sophisticated blend of cutting-edge technology and design finesse.
- Smart Noise Cancellation: Elevate your listening experience with up to 40 dB hybrid noise canceling, dynamically adjusting to your environment.
- OnePlus Audio ID: Personalize your sound profile by compensating for mild hearing loss, ensuring an optimal and tailored listening experience.
- Worry-Free Battery Life: Revel in up to 38 hours of music playback, complemented by a 10-minute Warp Charge for 10 hours of playtime.
- Extended Usage: Fully charged earbuds offer up to 5 hours of music playback with ANC on or 7 hours with ANC off, making them ideal for long journeys.
- Powerful Bass: Enjoy a rich audio experience with dual 11mm dynamic drivers, delivering a precisely boosted sound profile designed to move you.
- Sleek Design: The Buds Pro boasts a sophisticated, ergonomic design, combining style with comfort for extended wear.
- IP55 Water, Dust, and Sweat Resistance: The earbuds are designed to withstand challenging conditions, making them suitable for workouts or outdoor adventures.
- 3-Mic ENC Call Noise Reduction: Enjoy crystal-clear calls with three microphones working harmoniously to reduce background noise during phone conversations.
- Adaptive Noise Detection: The earbuds intelligently detect and adapt to environmental noise, ensuring an uninterrupted and immersive audio experience.
- Warp Charge Capability: A mere 10-minute session provides a swift boost, ensuring your earbuds are always ready for your on-the-go lifestyle.
- Broad Device Compatibility: Seamlessly connect with all Bluetooth devices, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, PCs, smart TVs, iOS, and Android.
- Zen Mode Air: Unwind with five presets of white noise alongside adaptive noise cancellation, offering calmness for various scenarios like meditation or nighttime camping.
- Intuitive Touch Controls: Effortlessly manage music playback, calls, and more with user-friendly touch controls, adding a layer of convenience to your experience.
Features of OnePlus Buds Pro
Hear the unheard with Buds Pro as they support 40dB Smart Adaptive Noise Cancellation for a personalized audio experience. Here below are the significant features and qualities of these earphones.
| Brand | OnePlus |
| Model | OnePlus Buds Pro |
| Form Factor | In-Ear |
| Connectivity Technology | Wireless |
| Noise Cancellation | Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation |
| Playtime | 5 Hours (7 Hours with ANC Off) |
| Playtime with Case | 28 Hours (38 Hours with ANC Off) |
| Waterproof Ratings Earbuds | IP55 |
| Waterproof Rating Case | IPX4 |
| Wrap Charging | Up to 10 hours of Playtime with Just a 10-minute Charge |
| Wireless Charging | Qi Wireless Charging |
| Country of Origin | China |
| Price | $150 |
Design and Comfort
The earbuds and charging case have an attractive design, and the case is small and roughly the same size and shape as a box of mints. The texture is matte velvet, with a OnePlus logo embossed. There is no other text or markings on the rest of the outside. There’s a spot for an LED on the front and a USB-C port on the back for charging.
The earbuds need to be thoughtfully embedded deep inside, as you might have supposed, while they’re even surfacing right on top. Linuz presents a matte finish to the inside of the case, and the earbuds have a glossy finish. You will also find the pairing button between the two earbuds inside the case.
The matte finish on the outside of the case comes off surprisingly well when you hold it in your hand and brush against it with your bum hand (or any other greasy object), then quickly run your index finger along over its matte plastic interior, and find that this way even a small amount of dust and lint on hands will create quite obvious.
And both sides of the earbuds are pretty stylish. The surface was offered in two-tone colors with matte plastic on top and glossy below. This design is rather startling. While the overall outline is similar to AirPods Pro’s, it’s still a very unusual design. Polished white is the other color option besides the black.
Noise Cancellation
Two levels of ANC are available on the OnePlus Buds Pro. There is a normal noise-canceling mode and a higher max noise-canceling model. Its default is an intelligent mode (SmartMode), automatically adjusting noise cancellation according to ambient noise. As for the noise-canceling capability, it’s okay for such an affordable model. Rather than low frequencies, earbuds greatly filter out midrange sounds. The hum of passing vehicles, the running air conditioners, and all that chattering in public places is reduced to a passable degree.
The problem is that the mid and high-frequency range will be cut off. These high ranges need to suit active noise canceling better. They tend to sneak in and remain audible. Moreover, this is more of an issue with in-ear headphones than full-size ones; the former can quickly physically seal off your entire ear, and it’s much harder to fit high frequencies through to others.
As for the OnePlus Buds Pro, ANC is another problem. The high-frequency hiss produced by the earbud is not entirely alone in isolation, and when wearing the earphones, it can be felt even with ANC turned off. Most users will likely hear a slight difference in ambient noise mode when switching ANC on or off but barely detect that high-pitch hiss coming from inside their ears when they do so.
See More: Best Sleep Earbuds for Side Sleepers
Audio Quality
The OnePlus Buds Pro provides pretty hefty bass. The gain is kept bass-heavy in the first several hundred hertz of the frequency range, giving a surprisingly forceful bottom end. The bass on the OnePlus Buds Pro is coarse-grained, with little to no detail, and overwhelms. The sound contains many rumbles, which in a video is fine (in fact, it’s usually an essential part of the effect).
But when you get it on music too much, it becomes noisy and distracting. It can also wear you out, in a good way or bad–depending on your choice of music. The descendant of Buds Pro, the OnePlus Buds Pro 2 offers Google Spatial Audio, making the content more realistic and immersive.
The mid-range is more precise, but it gets defeated by bass. However, the upper range is too bright. Treble duties are slightly on the bright side, avoiding harshness and sibilance. The bass finds its way into the overall tone of the earbuds a little too much. It should be tailored to match particular genres and material, but it isn’t a magic formula that will work for everything or everyone. As for the technicalities, though the bandwidth of Low Latency High-Definition Audio Codec (LHDC) was broad, it was more or less average regarding detail retrieval. Mid-range imaging was good, but the soundstage could have been more interesting.
Crystal Clear Calls
The call quality of the Buds Pro is excellent, and they have a telephony performance during conversations. Callers on the other end praised the sound and microphone quality. Due to the AI-powered noise reduction algorithms and microphones, one can experience loud and clear calls.
These earphones automatically adapt to the ambient environment with peak ANC at 40dB to ensure the most profound sounds. During the calls, three ENC noise-reduction microphones deliver precisely standardized voice isolation. These earpieces’ functional, elegant, curved design cut wind and residual noise pickup. In short, the Buds Pro dominates the conversation for crystal-clear calls. The battery health of the buds lasts for three hours for a phone call.
Playtime
With Active Noise Cancellation, it has a 5-hour battery life, and without ANC, it can go up to 7 hours. In either event, the encoder is AAC. I turned it on to test the effects of ANC (I also set it on Max for consistency) after running the above test twice, with AAC and LHDC, respectively.
In the AAC mode, a OnePlus Buds Pro playlist ran for about 4 hours and 15 minutes. It’s a fair way off from OnePlus’s claim, but it did not use the max setting for ANC when making its measurements for testing. Running in the LHDC mode, one pair of OnePlus Buds Pro lasted about 3 hours and 45 minutes.
Because we have no figure for comparison, pass it around. Moreover, since it wasn’t obvious if you could reach the flat by carrying them with plenty of balls to spare, OnePlus also didn’t make any claims about how long they would last if you were to charge them for 10 minutes from the flat. For example, I got 2 hours and 10 minutes of playback out of an AAC album with a quick charge of only 10 minutes. It was about one hour and 50 minutes in LHDC mode. Even with max ANC and LHDC, it should be enough for most listening sessions at about four hours of continuous use. But if you want more hours of life out of your battery, try disabling the ANC.
Water Resistant
The earpieces have an IP55 rating, protecting them against dust and water. This rating refers to their water-resistance level. The earbuds can withstand mild water pressure, water projected from any direction but not submerged underwater. Water-resistance, although not exceptionally high by today’s standards with an IP rating of only 55 (plenty dust resistant and just enough water resistant), nonetheless puts the Buds Pro in the near first place compared to most noise-canceling true wireless earphones that have proven susceptible to water damage.
The case is also water-resistant inside and out, with an IPX4 rating. The IPX4 rating is relatively low, but the charging case can withstand splashes from jets or droplets of water. However, exposure to water for a long time may be harmful. It would be best if you also considered factors such as humidity.
Touch Controls
The earbuds are produced in matte black or glossy white varieties with a stem-like design. Ear inserts have three sets, one small, a medium, and one large, but no ear fins. These workout-specific designs may not stay in their proper place during a hot sweat, but they do fit fine for everyday wear.
Now, touch-sensitive controls have three responsiveness problems. A common problem in touch-based interaction is that it is too easy to press the wrong thing accidentally when you press on an object. People use their fingers for exchange in many ways: tapping, dragging trailing points, hitting sandwiched areas between lines of text, and dividing.
The controls are on both sides, so a single tap on either earbud is to play or manage calls; after a raised hand and double tap on either side, go forward track (or reject inward calls), two taps back. Also, you can change the controls in the application.
Seamless Connectivity
Bluetooth 5.2 is a decent enough version in terms of connectivity to cover the nearby 10 meters of area. You can use the OnePlus Buds Pro anywhere within 10 meters of the range limit. Additionally, users with OnePlus smartphones or other devices will enjoy low latency support from the device. The latency mode brings down latency mode to 94ms on select OnePlus devices.
Based on the connection strength, switching on the buds will automatically connect with the last connected device. In my testing, the connectivity quality was perfectly stable. Even though I set it to the maximum 900kbps mode with LHDC, they worked perfectly at over 30 feet of distance with no obstructions. These earphones support codecs like LHDC, AAC, and SBC to ensure steady connectivity and the best bass frequencies.
These earphones are also compatible with Bluetooth 5.3 and support LHDC 4.0, LC3, AAC, and SBC codecs. In short, they are compatible with a wide range of codecs, specifically because LCS is the successor to SBC, and it remains rare to see, and LHDC is just about as capable as LDAC. OnePlus claims that Pro earbuds will finally get LHDC 5.0 through an over-the-air update.
Plenty for the Price
The OnePlus Buds Pro hits most of the big ticks on our list. It has a firm yet comfy fit and an idealistically minimal design favored by Android heads exclusively. They are water-resistant and IP55-certified, just like much of the noise cancellation competition’s best headsets (and better in degree). The sound signature of these earphones reinforces the impression of an instrument with flexible tones. Even if we didn’t see adjustable EQ, this is still a better alternative to the AirPods Pro.
Our selection of the most recommended noise-canceling true wireless earphones under $150 is still resolved by the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro. Although that gives you less than comparable ANC performance and a soft sound signature, it only costs about more when sold with an offer. However, if you want the best noise cancellation in this category, then you can spend a lot more and have to come out shelling out 0 for Sony’s WF-1000XM4. If you’re looking for the pair most resistant to water, though, then One-Plus is the one.
What is in the Box?
You can find the following things in the Buds Pro box:
- Pair of OnePlus Buds Pro Earbuds
- Charging Case
- Silicon Ear Tips with Three Sizes (S, M, L)
- USB Type-C Charging Cable
- User Guide
- Safety and Warranty Card
Pros and Cons of OnePlus Buds Pro
You can find here the details of what we like and what we don’t like about the product:
Pros
- 40dB Adaptive Noise Cancellation
- IP55 Water Resistant Ratings
- 10 Minutes of Warp Charging
- Powerful and Punchy Bass
- High-Quality LHDC Codec
- Small and Portable Charging Case
Cons
- Some Features Locked to OnePlus Phones
- No Custom EQ
FAQs About OnePlus Buds Pro
Are you curious about the product? Please review our Frequently Asked Questions session to clarify your mind before buying it.
