OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro Review: Low Price, High Value, No Regrets

OnePlus has served some terrific audio gear over the past few years across different price brackets. On the flagship end, the OnePlus Buds 2 Pro delivered an unexpectedly refined experience that put the far pricier Samsung and Apple earbuds to shame. The OnePlus Buds 3 also proved to be a surprisingly good value not too long ago. The latest from OnePlus targets the entry-level segment where it has made a name with Nord series devices.

I recently got my hands on the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro, provided by OnePlus to test for this review. Priced at $79.99, the OnePlus Nords Buds 3 Pro tries to cram as many goodies in a relatively affordable package as possible. In India, these earbuds sell for the equivalent of $40, which is ludicrously inexpensive. For the most part, the strategy has paid off handsomely, talking solely from a sonic grunt perspective. In a few other areas, they exceed expectations.

What follows is a detailed breakdown of my experience of using the OnePlus Nord Buds for over two weeks, pushing them everywhere from a quiet library and a crowded metro to a jazz-themed coffee shop. If you've been eyeing a pair of affordable true wireless earbuds, these just might be up to the task, with some unexpected perks and a few frustrations, too.

Technically speaking, the product named "OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro" is new. However, these are (effectively, though not in name) Oppo Enco 4 Pro TWS earbuds, under a new name with a slightly different exterior. That's not a bad thing, and neither is it unexpected, as both companies share a healthy portion of their supply chain as well as development resources.

The build quality appears to be hard-bitten, and the design is easy on the eyes, as well. OnePlus says the earbuds are IP55-rated for dust and water resistance. It's not the best, but OnePlus says they can endure "low pressure water jets and dust," so there's that assurance. Of course, if you are worried about sweat exposure, these earbuds can shrug them off just fine without frying the internal circuitry.

The pebble-shaped charging case has a beautiful two-tone finish where the lid goes for a chrome-like luster while the rest of the body serves a nice matte texture with white specks for a rock-like look. The earbuds are offered in Soft Jade and Starry Black colors. The earbuds have a rather peculiar stem, which is tapering, somewhat like an elongated water drop.

It adds some personality to the earbuds but does not serve any functional purpose. There's a thin vertical stripe that has a glossy finish and a bit of recessed groove to it. This one is the touchpad for gesture controls, but it only accepts finger taps and not swipes. The overall feel is quite premium, as there are no creaking elements and the case also shuts tight with a single hand easily.

The earbuds are light, and thanks to the angular design, they fit comfortably within the ear canal in a fairly confident fashion. During my workouts, which involved running, a bit of yoga, and some strength training exercises, the earbuds never popped off. As far as the seal goes, it's acceptably tight.

However, there is some sound leakage from the upper portion, which keeps the ANC mode from truly shining if all you want is to block external sounds without blasting loud music to drown the noise. OnePlus supplies rubber ear tips in three sizes in the retail package. For me, the M size struck the best balance between a tight fit and comfort.

The touch-sensitive strip, despite appearing thin, has been fairly well executed. It's somewhat of an unexpected blessing that OnePlus didn't attempt any swipe-based gestures as that would have been a nightmare owing to size constraints. For taps, it works well.

Thankfully, you can customize the tap gestures on each earbud for a variety of tasks, from basic music playback controls and volume adjustment to invoking Google Assistant or toggling between transparency and noise cancellation modes. Multi-tap and long-press functions worked flawlessly, and there was rarely any occasion where the earbuds did a flub at multi-tap gestures.

The OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro relies on the latest Bluetooth v5.4 standard for establishing a wireless connection. They also offer simultaneous multi-device connectivity with support for two devices. Hand-off for calls and music playback between two devices worked seamlessly during the review spell.

Another bonus is support for Google Fast Pair, which means you won't have to deal with the hassle of navigating to the Bluetooth settings every time you need to pair them. However, there is no support for Microsoft Swift Pair, which means you need to fiddle with Bluetooth pairing on your PC for pairing.

Nadeem Sarwar / SlashGear

If you have a OnePlus phone in your pockets, all the fancy controls are accessible right in the Bluetooth section of the Settings app. For other Androids and iPhones, you will need to install the "Hey Melody" app. It offers all the core goodies as the native OnePlus ecosystem experience, save for 3D audio and camera shortcuts.

The latter lets you get an immersive surround listening experience, while the latter turns the earbuds' touchpad into a shutter button, letting you click pictures from the paired phone's camera. The app's interface is fairly straightforward without any janky controls or poor interface. I just hope OnePlus doesn't engage in the kind of gatekeeping that Apple has gained infamy for over the past decade.

It's a tad shocking that earbuds that cost as little — especially what OnePlus is asking from its Indian audience — would deliver something like active noise cancellation and transparency modes. But here we are, and they work fairly well. In a cafe with John Newman songs on loop, I was able to drown it with noise cancellation set to "Max" and music levels above the 80% mark. The transparency mode also does a neat job of letting in the ambient sounds.

All of it comes to life courtesy of a triple-mic system that not only paves the way for clear calls but also promises up to 49dB worth of noise isolation covering a frequency range of up to 4,000 Hz. Now, I wouldn't fully trust the ANC on these earbuds to give me pristine silence for focused work in a public space, but they still do an acceptable job. You would still hear the tunes and chatter outside, but to a much lower intensity, enough to not feel aurally disturbed by them.

Expectedly, for the asking price you don't get support for the LHDC audio codec. These earbuds from OnePlus only support the SBC and AAC codecs. Now, I have not seen buyers discussing details like audio codec in this price bracket, which predominantly caters to an audience looking for a pair of affordable earbuds that can get calling and music streaming done without hurting their ears, making them sound like a robot, or testing their patience with battery life. The lack of LHDC codec support might sound like a bummer, but the raw audio output more than makes up for it, especially considering the premium you pay for these earbuds.

The OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro is a classic case of punching above their weight class. Once again, a bass-first approach is evident, but that doesn't mean the rest of the frequencies go for a toss. Be it commuting or Lo-Fi beats for work, you won't find the output jarring by any means, unless you go hunting for specific tunes in a crowded symphony.

The best specimens of the earbuds' bass-loving personality came out when listening to "Moon Man" by Young Stoner Life and Young Thug. With "Bass" mode enabled and BassWave set all the way to the max, you can feel the lingering thumps in your ear canal. In "Balanced" mode, the bass is preserved but doesn't quite leave an impactful sensation. Leaning too much into the bass takes away some instrumental depth from the track, and some songs start sounding a tad flat.

"Playing By The Ton" by Meshuggah, the earbuds get overly ambitious. The tearing mid-screams by Jens Kidman sound solid, but they're best served with a bit of customization. For example, the vocals are a bit subdued if you are listening to the track in the "Bass" profile and have enabled the "Basswave" system. Moreover, if you are expecting to enjoy the electrifying guitar tunes with its signature tone, go with the "Balanced" preset.

But if you seek to really enjoy the one-minute-long guitar riff that can otherwise melt your face on a pair of high-end cans, you should preferably enable the 3D audio feature. With this synthetic surround sound rendering, the riffs really come alive, but with a bit of shrill texture to them. It doesn't ruin the song, but makes it sound a lot different by pushing the vocals to the background and emphasizing the good part of that portion.

Moving away from Bass, and into the side where strong vocals meet soothing instruments, I tried "Elevate" by St. Lucia. Things get a bit interesting here. This song is best experienced in the Serenade profile, where Jean-Phillip Grobler's vocals really come to life. Listening to the same song in Bass mode shrinks the depth and muddies the percussion tones. Thankfully, directional stereo separation was dynamic and not lopsided.

However, these Sound Master EQ profiles — as OnePlus likes to call them — show their budget status when you start looking for subtleties in tracks that feature a wide range of frequencies. For example, the guitar harmonics in "Wilderness" by Explosions In the Sky are well separated, but the rest of the background elements sound quite polluted.

I then moved to the instrumental side of music listening to "Only the Winds" by Olafur Arnalds. The weeping violins and smooth piano keys played much better than I expected, but as expected, these drivers aren't made to handle such refined tracks. The biggest miss, in this case, was that the OnePlus Nords Buds 3 Pro can't quite do justice to the flowing tempo, even though it tries to retain instrumental clarity.

Another pitfall is the lack of vocal signatures. For artists like A. R. Rahman, their distinct vocal tone and tempo, while preserved, don't quite show their finesse, assuming you've experienced them on more premium headphones with bigger drivers. When such vocals are given a modulated synth treatment, the "Serenade" profile on the earbuds makes these vocals unnecessarily screechy at volume levels over the 70% mark.

OnePlus claims the earbuds can last 5.5 hours on a single charge with noise cancellation enabled. In my most recent run, the earbuds went close to five hours with ANC, intermittent dual-device pairing, and sound levels consistently set above the 80% mark. That's an impressive single-charge longevity. Without ANC, the number climbs to 12 hours, but in my experience, they go as far as 9 hours before you see the first low-battery warnings.

Combined with the charging case, you get 44 hours of battery life. None of the figures mentioned above are conservative, and the real-life mileage is also on the positive end of the scale. With full juice on the whole kit, you can expect the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro to last about three days, depending on how frequently you push ANC and rely on multi-device pairing. Fast charging is another sweet surprise.

With 10 minutes of plugged-in time, OnePlus claims 11 hours worth of listening time. I couldn't verify the figures explicitly, but I can say the earbuds would last you around 4 hours of multi-device connectivity with that kind of charging spell when you're running short of time. To get the tank from empty to full, you'll wait just over an hour.

It's hard to dissociate what the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro has to offer from what they command on the bill. At $80, you'd be hard-pressed to find the combination of features and raw listening standards as these earbuds. Once again, OnePlus' audio team has approached a bass-heavy audio output. Now, that's an ambivalent status quo, but for the most part, it's a perk, especially given the pocket-friendly status of these earbuds.

If you prefer a thumping bass, these earbuds will leave you a happy person. For those with a taste for delicate basslines and refined soundstage, there's a bit of bad news here. While listening to the Brick + Mortar cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" at peak volume, some tearing is evident. I feel like I'm getting a tad too nitpicky here, because getting the bass output right on a pair of budget earbuds seems like a perennial struggle for OEMs, and OnePlus is no exception.

But if you're an LHDC purist, don't quite like OnePlus' feature gatekeeping, and want to put your faith in another brand, you might want to spend up and look at 1More ComfoBuds, Samsung's Galaxy Buds FE, Anker's Soundcore Liberty 4 NC, or Apple's Beats Solo Buds. But on its own, the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro is a strong contender and won't leave with yet another case of "I regret my impulsive habits" purchase. That's a luxury, not many gadgets can claim to offer.

You can purchase OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro from the official OnePlus store online now for $79.99 (or if you're still reading this review in mid-July, 2024, you'll find the buds on temporary sale for around $59.99 instead.)