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Why the OnePlus Buds?
The OnePlus Buds Pro were my second set of truly wireless earbuds. I wasn’t a fast adopter of the new standard in audio. I’ve used a couple of wireless earphones with the neckband in the middle of them back when the airpods had just become the best thing since sliced bread. My first set of earbuds were the Lypertek Tevi’s, a set of earbuds from a virtually brand new chinese company with very poor advertising and shoddy English translations of their product pages however the buds received excellent reviews and were perfectly in my price range of around £100. It was a couple years of using these that led me to getting the itch of buying a new set of buds that specifically had noise cancellation. I was still spending a lot of time in university in shared study spaces where I couldn’t really get a lot of peace and quiet so noise cancelling was the necessity I felt warranted buying a new pair of buds.
If you take a look at my Daily Gear page you’ll see I’ve been using OnePlus phones for the past few years with varying degrees of satisfaction (check out my review of the OnePlus 8 here). OnePlus are no strangers to making audio products however the release of the Buds Pro seemed to be their first attempt at making something truly premium that competed with some of the heavier hitters in the TWS category. Because I’m a cheapskate I obviously didn’t buy these when they first released as I knew they’d drop in price sooner or later and after patiently waiting I managed to get them for around £99 which seems to be the price they’ve been stuck at for some time, even with the release of the new OnePlus Buds Pro 2.
Design
So, the Lypertek’s were relegated to back of a drawer and the OnePlus buds became the new daily standard. I have to say I was impressed. The design of the OnePlus Buds Pro was seriously sleek looking. I’ma huge fan of matte black on all devices. No fingerprints and hides all scratches easily, which is ideal for something like an earbuds case that gets battered about in pockets and bags all day. The soft touch material on the case felt nice and premium and the earbuds themselves had a pretty unique design compared to the rest of the airpods clones. Well, as unique as you can get when you’re making a pair of earphones. The small metallic section that marked the pressure sensitive stem of the earbuds gave them a sophisiticated look that made an otherwise pretty simple design a bit more flashy and sleek whilst also giving your fingers that distiction between the pressure sensitive section of the bud and the non-pressure sensitive section of the bud.
Listening Experience
The buds provided a pretty solid listening experience. In terms of volume they certainly reached a point where it was painful to turn it up higher which I would say is ideal. Bass was nothing to write home about which is a major turn off for some people who just like to cram as much bass into every piece of music they can. I must admit I do like a bit of bass in certain styles of music but overall I found the sound from the OnePlus Buds to be pleasing to the ears. I use the equaliser app called “wavelet” which comes with the ability to tune a huge amount of earbuds to match the “harman target curve”. Now I’m no audiophile so I’ve got no idea why the harman target curve is this magical target that all earphones should aim to sound like but I’ve heard good things about the wavelet app and I’ve tried it with a variety of earbuds and found good results with each of them so something must be working. This was no different with the OnePlus Buds Pro. I found that the sound felt more full after using wavelet’s AutoEq and have continued to use it for this reason.
The noise cancellation is the main reason I bought these buds. Noise cancellation is always a factor in increasing the price of a product. It required fancier technology than your standard earbuds and you are charged accordingly for the luxury. The noise cancelling was actually pretty decent on these buds. I wore them to the gym man times and although they didn’t completely silence the entire gym, the annoying remix tunes that the gym ususally pumped out and the humming of an air conditioning unit were significantly dampened. I’ve used noise cancelling on headphones before, namely on my Sennheiser HD4.50 BTNC which I’ve had for years now and I think overall the Sennheiser’s are more impressive when it comes to blocking out noise however I believe I also got them for almost double the price. It also makes no sense to compare over ear headphones to in ear as the way in which the sound is isolated is completely different but that’s the only comparison I can really make so it’ll have to do.
Controls
The touch controls were very nice. Probaly my favourite part of the buds actually was the pressure sensitive stems on each buds used to control audio playback. Since they needed a bit of pressure to register input there was no incorrect inputs picked up when I was say pressing the earbuds back into my ear canal a little after jostling about a bit too much. When pressing the stem there is a very nice audible click that simulates a button press, which is actually some really nice attention to detail as although you are not actually pressing a button, it creates the illusion that you are and confirms that you have made a proper input. Sometimes these clicks were a bit difficult to hear over music at full volume however. The one thing that I didn’t think was great was the in-ear detection. It was a bit flaky sometimes and would either think the earbuds weren’t in my ear at all or contiued to play audio out of the buds when one of them was sitting on a desk or in the palm of my hand. Not a disaster but still mildly annoying sometimes.
Call Quality
I’ve used the buds for phone calls every so often when I’m out walking the dog so there’s a fair bit of wind noise. Calls come through the buds clearly on my end and generally sounds alright to whoever’s calling although it’s still obvious to them that I’m outdoor although maybe not obvious that I’m talking over a pair of wireless earbuds which is a win I would say.
Battery
The main drawback of the buds has to be battery life. It’s not terrible don’t get me wrong and they charge spectacularly quickly with the case that can make use of OnePlus’s proprietary warp charge technology; but you can only really squeeze around 4-5 hours of battery out of them without sticking them back in the case for a top up which doesn’t get you through some of the longer studying or music listening sessions.
Why They’re not Perfect Anymore
So why “WERE” they the perfect earbuds. I was very happy with the OnePlus Buds Pro. They ticked enough of my boxed and I paid just the right amount of money for them that meant I was happy to live with the minor inconveniences. So they “WERE” the perfect earbuds because some scummy cretin from my local gym must have made off with them when I left them there by mistake recently and since there’s no tracking feature built into the buds, they’re gone never to be seen again. So now the hunt has begun for a new set of wireless earbuds that teeter the line of cheapskate friendly and feature and musically rich. I’ve placed an order for the Google Pixel Buds Pro on amazonas they were on offer for £129 which by the sounds of the reviews is about what they should have been upon release so we’ll see if they can fill the rather large shoes that OnePlus has unfortunately left empty. I’ll certainly not be paying the £179 for the second generation OnePlus Buds Pro 2 that have just come out. Perhaps I’ll buy them when they price makes a nice drop at some point in the coming year.
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