OnePlus took the wraps off their new phone, and I have a series of videos out now to see how the OnePlus 11 is performing and competing.
OnePlus ALSO revealed their new true wireless OnePlus Buds Pro 2, and I can share some thoughts on using them WITH the OnePlus 11!
I don’t feel OnePlus really gets enough credit for making nice accessories.
Sure, the watch was a bit of a bust, but chargers, cases, and audio gear have generally been top tier. As an ecosystem of products, OnePlus punches higher than the coverage they usually receive.
Specifically audio gear, I’ve genuinely been pleased with OP earbuds going all the way back to their dual driver neckband.
The OnePlus Buds Pro 2 carry on this tradition, with fantastic tech features, very good audio quality, and a terrific performance for the price.
Design
Immediately, I wish I was using the green buds.
I thought it would look cool having the matching black buds and black phone, but seeing both in person now, I personally like the green color a little better.
The Buds Pro 2 are “cut cable” stalk designs, with a bit of inspiration coming from the AirPods Pro.
These are shallow insertion eartips. Fit is always DEEPLY personal, but this isn’t my favorite style of earbud. I like eartips that wedge in and seal deeper in the ear canal.
I think these will be a fantastic option for people who don’t like that “earplug” feeling. The eartips might go SLIGHTLY into the ear canal, or just press against the opening of the ear, these should deliver a comfortable fit.
There are no buttons, and you’re not tapping the earbuds for controls, instead squeezing the stalk for actions. Another PERSONAL gripe, that I do not think will affect people as much as me, because it takes a bit of twisting to get the earbuds to fit on my ears, I was regularly squeezing the buds enough to activate a control or action.
In operation I like this squeeze better than taps. There’s less of that “impact” sound being directed through the casing and into your ear.
The Buds rest in a nice flat case, with a soft matte finish plastic on the outer shell. USB-C and wireless charging are supported.
It’s all put together in a really attractive package, and feels appropriately premium for the price tag asked.
Tech
OnePlus has always delivered a “tech first” approach to audio gear, and these are no exception. For a premium earbud, we have the “table stakes” covered well.
The case supports fast charging, OnePlus estimating 10 minutes of charging for 10 hours of playback. With buds and case, OP estimates roughly 39 hours of total playback and 9 hours of audio per charge on the earbuds. These numbers vibe with my use, where I couldn’t kill them in a day (without putting them back in the case) and with ANC off. Intermittent listening, podcasts, and a couple calls. Estimates should be shorter with other tech features activated, like Spatial Audio and ANC, but they’re among some of the longer lasting buds I’ve tested recently. They should easily hang with and outpace the Airpods Pro 2 for longevity.
The dual driver design is responsible for expanding the frequency response over the original Buds Pro. Now offering 10Hz – 40KHz range. I’m not as familiar with dual dynamic drivers in an earbud, and we’ll chat about that more in the Audio Quality section.
IP55 rated for sweat resistance [insert joke here about OnePlus rating their buds and not their phones].
Fast pairing is available for newer phones, and the earbuds link to your Google account for dual-device pairing. I’m really happy to see that feature roll out to more audio options, it’s not fun re-pairing earbuds to different gadgets.
Zen Mode Air returns to give you calming ambient audio, but the new health feature touted is head and spine tracking. This will roll out to the buds in a future update, but the tracking hardware in the bud will be able to warn users of poor posture.
Other established features get a refresh, like noise reduction. Multiple modes of ANC can be activated. I generally found the adaptive ANC to be perfectly adequate for cutting environment noise without forcing that “hyper isolation” feeling. Users can dial up more ANC as they need it.
The pass-through mode is VERY natural. Especially in sharper incidental sounds. The earbuds help smooth over the spikiest loud sounds in your environment, but tiny articulated sounds are crisp and clear. Footsteps on gravel, or the clackier attack on my keyboard, this is one of the best pass-through modes I’ve heard, closing in on the performance of AirPod Pros.
The data side is covered by Bluetooth 5.3 LE, and the premium codec of choice is LHDC. Last year OnePlus phones did not support LHDC at launch, but this year mostly everything is communicating correctly. LHDC is a competing codec to APTX Adaptive and LDAC.
Boasting up to a 900 kbps bit-rate, and a LOW latency of 54ms, LHDC is capable of delivering high fidelity at the response time we would need for gaming. Unfortunately, support for gaming on OnePlus phones feels incomplete.
Playing my favorite “audio action” game Thumper, there was noticeable lag between music and action. I tried adjusting quality settings, but nothing seemed to improve that delay. This game requires a ton of precision, and if you’re off the beat slightly, you’re basically dead.
However, firing up the game on a Xiaomi with LHDC support brought audio cues more in line with cabled audio. It seems the Buds Pro 2 are capable of true low latency performance, but that mode isn’t well supported on OnePlus phones.
Ear scanning and hearing tests are on tap to customize the audio to your ears. I have to praise this hearing test for introducing intensity per tone. My pet peeve on “hear the tone” tests, I often CAN hear the tone in a quiet room, but I’m hearing those tones at different intensities based on my hearing damage.
The OnePlus test gives you a slider to dial up and down how well you can hear each tone, and I believe these tests help determine a better customized profile.
Toggling the custom profile does not deliver a radically different tone to my ears, more it’s a subtle tweak to some areas that I’m likely lacking. It felt more “honest” than other tests that produce a significantly different tone from “flat EQ”. I know I have some gaps in my hearing, but I also know that my hearing is pretty good for a guy my age, and with my specific flavor of hidden hearing loss.
Lastly, the big new addition!
Many new earbuds are offering Spatial Audio support. It’s a fun effect to play with, though I often prefer the changes more on videos than on music mixed for stereo.
OnePlus is taking this a step farther, including not just Spatial audio, but also adding head tracking. Setting your phone down, the buds will “remember” that position and playback will shift as if the phone was a speaker “source”.
I’m not the biggest of most spatial audio because I often feel the effect sounds “fake”. When you listen to surround sound audio, the speakers in a room don’t follow your head around.
Adding a “direction” to the effect really helps craft a more realistic illusion of surround sound audio. Only a handful of options are starting to offer this head tracking in earbuds, Airpods Pro and 1More Aero to my memory, so OnePlus is early to market with this kind of tech.
All of this is geeky fun so far, but these are earbuds, so how do they sound?
Sound Quality
Nice and juicy.
In the past, OnePlus earbuds often landed a bit on the lean side of the tuning spectrum. For someone like me, who prefers a lift in the mids for articulation and vocals, that was appreciated.
There’s a “fun” idea of consumer tuning though, where we can add a bit more saturation to the lows for a more colorful bassy sound. The Buds Pro 2 are not QUITE to the same level of detailed rumble as the Pros from SoundCore, but they’re pretty close.
This is a colorful sound, and a bit unfamiliar for me. These dual dynamic drivers are punchy and bouncy. You can tell a lot of attention has been paid to the low frequency range. The EQ options include an even more hyped bass mode, and I really don’t think most folks are going to need it.
Tracks like ‘JU$T’ from Run The Jewels, or ‘Lose Yourself to Dance’ from Daft Punk lean heavy on a sharp attack funk bass guitar, but deliver a lot of decay and rumble in their mix. It’s a BOUNCE with each bass pulse, but the rumble isn’t floppy or uncontrolled.
This punch can sometimes come in sharp, like the kick drum on The Roots ‘You Got Me’ made me blink a little on first listen, but otherwise, I think folks are in for a treat with how well articulated lows are.
Mids ring through NICELY positioned against that low frequency backdrop. I always worry we’re going to lose detail like vocal timbre and tremor, or guitar distortion. Sometimes a bass heavy headphone can sap the life out of vocals.
Firing up some female vocalists, I’m very happy to hear clear and present representation. Lorde and Alicia Keys are immediately accessible in more modern pop tracks.
If I have a (minor) criticism, when vocals are mixed with a little reverb, the bass performance of these earbuds can sometime settle them a little “farther away” than I feel they need to be. Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ and Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ fall in to that trap. It’s a minor distraction if you’re used to reference grade gear, but I think it’s going to be a pleasant (if SLIGHTLY softer) consumer grade representation of those well-known songs.
I’m super sensitive to aggressively mixed pop tracks paired with a lot of bright highs or “sparkle” from the earbud. My torture test is OK GO ‘WTF’, and on some earbuds the shimmer in that track just becomes shrill. The Buds Pro 2 tuck highs away a little more than I would like for IEMs, but it’s a REALLY comfortable sound out of the box. The focus on lows gives us a colorful and mellow tone. The EQ options can help lift that tone a little, but none of the options really hit the sparkle hard. Folks who like a little more “air” or “sparkle” will have to tune their own preset.
I’m very pleased with this overall sound.
As true wireless matures, the critical step is getting a better variety of hardware. Different styles of earbud fit, different tuning, different driver configurations, and higher quality audio codecs. The Buds Pro 2 improve on what I liked from the first Buds Pro, and add some novelty to the mix.
The Wrap Up
I’ve made some mention of AirPods Pro throughout this article, because I think there’s a clear target in OnePlus’ sights. The features on Buds Pro 2 seem to line up and target Apple’s solution specifically.
OnePlus is arriving at comparable performance for features like ANC and Pass-Through audio, adds comparable features like dual device pairing and Spatial Audio head tracking, and still finds a little room to offer up a more vibrant dual driver set up over the AirPods.
If the two were priced the same, I would say that’s a fun fight.
However, the OnePlus Buds Pro 2 are on pre-order, at FULL MSRP, for $70 less than the AirPods Pro.
$179 puts these TWS earbuds in a different price comparison bracket. This is fantastic price to performance. It’s not difficult finding earbuds that might outperform the Buds Pro 2 in a single metric like audio codec quality or ANC isolation. I’d be hard pressed to find a “total package” earbud that beats these across the board, and at the same or lower price.
Beyond just buying the earbuds that match your phone brand, there are a handful of options that audio nerds speak of in complimentary and reverent tones.
I think the OnePlus Buds Pro 2 could be on that list.
More info on the OnePlus Buds Pro 2 https://onepluscom.pxf.io/b34Ndm
OnePlus supplied this product for my review. This post is not sponsored, and the manufacturer has had no influence on the review process or editorial content. Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links that help support the production of content on this website.