The OnePlus Buds 3 are the corporate’s newest really wi-fi earbuds. The firm launched its first TWS earbuds again in mid-2020 with the unique OnePlus Buds. We by no means noticed a OnePlus Buds 2 however there have been the Buds Z and the Buds Z2 in late 2020 and 2022, respectively. The Buds 3 appear to mix the unique Buds and the newer Buds Z vary as the corporate could have realized it has one too many earbuds collection available on the market proper now.
The new Buds 3 sit between the Buds Pro collection on the prime and the Nord Buds collection beneath. You get a number of the extra premium options from the flagship mannequin, reminiscent of ANC, twin drivers, and LHDC 5.0 whereas sustaining a extra pocket-pleasant price ticket of round $100.
Design
The design of the earbuds and case of the Buds 3 is similar to that of the Buds Pro 2. The case appears to be like almost equivalent at a look however in actuality, the scale are all totally different, giving the Buds 3 case a narrower however taller look. The newer mannequin’s case can be a bit lighter and lacks the shiny aptitude on the hinge.
(*3*)
Despite being cheaper, nonetheless, the Buds 3 case has a really good end and construct high quality. The hinge feels sturdy and has little to no sideways motion. The exterior has a matte end with a chrome OnePlus brand that tends to collect lint.
Pop open the case and the insides have a really subtle matte end, with the one shiny bits being the receptacles for the earbuds. OnePlus retains discovering new and modern methods of hiding the regulatory markings, and this time they’re barely seen being printed on the internal sides of the receptacles at an angle the place you will not usually have a look at the case. A single button is positioned inside to provoke pairing.
The earbuds have the identical two-tone end because the Buds Pro 2 or certainly the unique Buds Pro. This time, nonetheless, the shiny half encompasses extra of the again of the earbuds and almost covers the whole exterior. You’ll solely actually see the matte end on the internal facet and the underside.
Unlike the Pro fashions, the Buds 3 earbuds haven’t got stress-delicate stalks. Instead, you merely faucet on the skin for play/pause and monitor skipping. You may also faucet and maintain to change between ANC modes. New for this mannequin is a quantity adjustment, managed by swiping your finger up or down on the stalk. Very handy.
The earbuds function mushy silicone ear suggestions and three sizes are offered within the field. The earbuds had been very snug in my ears utilizing the default medium measurement, and I used to be in a position to put on them for hours with out feeling any discomfort.
The Buds 3 earbuds have an IP55 ranking for mud and water resistance, defending them in opposition to sweat and splashes of water.
Software and options
The Buds 3 help Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity with SBC, AAC, and LHDC 5.0 codecs. They function a twin-driver design with a ten.4mm dynamic driver for low and mid frequencies and a 6mm tweeter for top frequencies. The drivers are stacked vertically in a coaxial sample.
The software program help is offered through the HeyMelody app for Android and iOS. On OnePlus units, the performance is constructed into the system settings however is a bit tougher to search out because it’s buried pretty deep. Regardless of which app you utilize, the performance is frequent.
Through the app, you possibly can change between the ANC modes and regulate the depth of the noise cancellation. You can select between three ranges of noise cancellation or set it to Smart so it might probably regulate in accordance with background noise.
HeyMelody app
The Sound Master EQ options 4 presets and a six-band customized EQ that permits you to create a number of customized presets. BassWave is a bass increase dial that permits you to enhance and, counterintuitively, lower the bass on prime of no matter preset you’re utilizing.
The Hi-Res mode, disabled by default, allows larger sampling charges and bitrates on LHDC when enabled. The earbuds have to restart once you toggle this setting.
Golden Sound function performs a set of tones to find out your listening to and creates a customized EQ profile that is tailor-made on your ears. This runs alongside the presets enabled in Sound Master EQ mode. I’m personally not fond of those choices as they require a good quantity of trial and error and a wonderfully quiet room to calibrate, and the outcomes can usually differ even should you take the check again to again. It’s not a very constant or dependable approach to calibrate on your listening to and the outcomes are sometimes too vibrant sounding.
The OnePlus 3D Audio menu enables you to allow 3D audio processing for all audio. There isn’t any head-monitoring {hardware} on the Buds 3 so the audio is locked to your head. OnePlus’ 3D Audio merely would not sound nearly as good because the Dolby Atmos processing discovered on most telephones nowadays, together with OnePlus’ personal. It additionally can’t maintain a candle to music truly mastered in spatial audio. It’s like a pretend encompass sound function from 90s cassette gamers and never significantly good or convincing. At least OnePlus is not falsely claiming Dolby Atmos help this time round prefer it’s a part of its earbuds fairly than the telephones.
You can management the faucet gestures for the earbuds. Single, double, and triple faucets can be found to customise, with single faucets disabled by default. You may also customise the slide gesture in addition to the contact and maintain gesture for ANC modes. One cool function of the Buds 3 is that should you had been to take away them throughout a name, the audio robotically routes to the earpiece or loudspeaker on the cellphone, which is helpful as on most different earbuds it continues taking part in on the earbuds except you manually change.
Gesture controls
The Buds 3 additionally help twin connections and may keep linked to 2 sources on the identical time. One or each can help LHDC however the sampling price and bit charges accessible drop significantly with twin connection enabled. If you need the total vary of bit price choices then you need to join to 1 machine at a time.
And lastly, you get the choice to replace firmware. Our review unit was operating v121.121.101 on the time of testing. OnePlus normally points updates to its audio merchandise for months after their launch, with some fashions getting updates even after a yr.
Performance
Audio high quality
The OnePlus Buds 3 have nice, largely inoffensive audio high quality. I really feel the necessity to specify that as earlier OnePlus fashions tended to have an excessively bass-heavy audio signature, which is not the case with this mannequin.
Make no mistake, the default ‘Balanced’ preset remains to be pretty v-formed, with a wholesome emphasis on bass and treble frequencies. However, at no level does the bass or treble really feel overwhelming, which was a frequent criticism with earlier fashions. This time round, there may be some fact to the title ‘Balance’ that OnePlus likes to provide its default profiles, no matter how they sound.
However, whereas neither the bass nor the treble frequencies are offensive, the sound does drop the ball a bit in relation to higher mid-frequencies. There is not sufficient element and power on this area, which makes the sound a bit stuffy and congested.
Thankfully, there may be a straightforward method to enhance on this, and that is with the Serenade preset. It helpfully brings down a number of the high and low frequencies whereas including a wholesome dose of higher mid-vary emphasis. In actuality, that is what they need to have referred to as Balanced as a result of that is about as balanced and near reference as you will get on these earbuds with out delving into the customized equalizer.
The Bass preset does what it says on the tin. It sounds just like the default preset on lots of OnePlus’ different earbuds with a thumpier mid and low bass. The Bold preset is just like the Balanced preset however with an much more suppressed mid-vary for an aggressive v-formed tuning.
The BassWave function is an attention-grabbing factor. Not solely does it allow you to flip the bottom up a number of notches however it’s also possible to dial it again fairly a bit. It does make the sound a bit muffled although even when it is set to the default zero worth.
For that purpose, I’d suggest utilizing the customized EQ as an alternative. The default for customized EQ is the Balanced preset, so any changes you make are to that particular profile. It would have been good to have the ability to edit the opposite presets as having to edit the Serenade preset, for instance, could be nice because it’s already near very best and also you’d solely have to make minor changes.
Wrapping up the frequency response dialogue, the Buds 3 are among the finest-tuned pair of earbuds that OnePlus has launched to date and positively higher than the dearer Buds Pro 2, which sound boomy and muddy compared. It appears the corporate has taken earlier suggestions relating to its tuning to coronary heart and has taken nice strides in the precise path.
As for the general audio high quality, the Buds 3 does nicely. The sound is not particularly detailed regardless of utilizing the very best high quality LHDC bit and sampling charges however that is about what we’ve got come to anticipate from Bluetooth audio in addition to the standard of drivers at this value level. Regardless, over the previous week of utilizing these earbuds, I discovered them straightforward to take heed to for hours with out too many complaints, and with a little bit of tuning making them nearly as good as it might probably get on this phase.
Microphone
The OnePlus Buds 3 have adequately good microphone efficiency. It’s not essentially the most pure or full-sounding voice but it surely’s normally very clear and artifact-free. It additionally does an distinctive job of masking background noise even in very noisy environments. Just like with the audio high quality, I discovered the general microphone efficiency to be higher in comparison with the Buds Pro 2.
Noise cancellation
The Buds 3 function energetic noise cancellation and it really works remarkably nicely. On the max setting, you get a really spectacular suppression of low-frequency noise patterns with good mid and excessive-frequency suppression. The dearer Buds Pro 2 do higher with the mid and excessive frequencies however general the Buds 3 get fairly shut.
You can manually regulate the extent of ANC, with Max, Moderate, and Mild being the accessible choices. Switching from Max to Moderate allows a good bit of mid-frequencies and Mild is not a lot better than having no ANC enabled. Having the choice to scale back the ANC effectiveness can come in useful when you do not wish to be fully remoted out of your environment and will wish to hear, say, airport bulletins. It’s not clear if the decrease settings supply any energy financial savings.
Latency and connectivity
The Buds 3 have good latency efficiency even with out assistance from latency-bettering modes. When paired with a PC, for instance, you possibly can discover some lag within the audio but it surely’s not sufficient to distract you. When paired with a cellphone or a pill, the machine will robotically sync the audio for video content material to keep away from a delay.
You can manually allow a Game mode within the HeyMelody app to scale back latency. On OnePlus telephones, there isn’t any guide setting for this however is enabled robotically when the cellphone detects a recreation being launched. In this mode, latency is decreased even additional to some extent the place no less than I could not discover any lag between the contents on the display screen and the sound. OnePlus claims 94ms minimal latency, which is nice sufficient for cellular gaming.
The Buds 3 had very secure connectivity efficiency utilizing out-of-the-field settings. However, pushing them to their limits utilizing guide bit price controls do carry up some points.
The firm claims 24-bit, 96kHz max bit depth, and sampling price with as much as 1Mbps bitrate when utilizing LHDC. You can management the bitrates in 400kbps, 500kbps, 900kbps, and 1000kbps steps. 400 and 500kbps modes are fairly usable do you have to select to allow them manually. 900kbps can be usable for essentially the most half in case you are sitting near the cellphone, though sometimes you’re going to get a hiccup, which may take a number of seconds to resolve.
However, the claimed 1000kbps or 1Mbps bitrate is unusable. You can’t go even a number of seconds with out the sound fully breaking up. At one level, the sound simply slowed down as that was seemingly the one method it may push all these bits in time.
Unfortunately, the Bluetooth radios on the earbuds are merely not geared up to deal with this a lot knowledge each second, and that is with the machine inside an arm’s attain. In on a regular basis use, with the cellphone inside a pocket or a bag, 1Mbps and even 900kbps are merely not usable.
Of course, that is solely accessible via the developer settings on Android, which most individuals will not trouble with. By default, the cellphone will robotically select a bitrate with essentially the most stability, which normally is the bottom worth. This means as a rule you’re getting 400kbps when utilizing LHDC, and that is frequent for nearly all Bluetooth headphones. The level is, do not be swayed by fancy codecs and their giant bitrate numbers. Most of the time it is irrelevant.
Battery Life
OnePlus has a complete listing of battery life figures on its web site, with ANC on and off in addition to ANC and LHDC outcomes, which is extraordinarily uncommon to see and commendable.
For this check, solely two figures are related, and people are testing with ANC off utilizing AAC and LHDC. There will not be any ANC-enabled testing right here as ANC shuts off as soon as the earbuds are eliminated so it might probably’t be enabled throughout our check run.
| Codec | ANC | Claimed | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|
| AAC | Off | 10 hours | 11.5 hours |
| On | 6.5 hours | – | |
| LHDC | Off | 7 hours | 8.5 hours |
| On | 5.5 hours | – |
With ANC disabled, the Buds 3 lasted for 11.5 hours whereas utilizing AAC, which is a good bit larger than the ten hours claimed by OnePlus. While utilizing LHDC locked to 24-bit/48kHz and 500kbps, the earbuds went for 8.5 hours, which is once more larger than the 7 hours claimed by OnePlus.
OnePlus additionally individually claims 2 hour run time after a fast 10-minute cost, a declare oddly buried within the footnote. In my testing, this was additionally right whereas utilizing AAC, because the earbuds performed for two.2 hours. While utilizing LHDC, I acquired 1.6 hours of playback time.
Considering actual-world testing usually exceeded the corporate’s claims, I really feel snug placing inventory within the ANC-enabled figures, which are not too unhealthy. Do be aware that utilizing bitrates larger than 500kbps with LHDC has a significant toll on battery life.
Conclusion
The OnePlus Buds 3 are fairly merely one of the best audio product the corporate has launched so far. The enhancements to audio high quality and tuning are appreciated and whereas the corporate is not fairly there but it is heading down the precise path. The ANC works rather well, the microphone high quality is nice, the earbuds are very snug, and the battery life is commendable. Complaints about LHDC apart, there actually is not a lot else to criticize. At the present asking value of $100/€99/INR 5499, the OnePlus Buds 3 are extremely really helpful.