The OnePlus Buds 3 arrive with a very moderate price and a rich feature set, plus a sleek look, comfortable fit, and powerful active noise cancellation. However, the slightly dominant bass, as well as some issues with overall fluidity and user experience, mean that they are not the loans they could be.
Key Features of Budget Headphones
Lightweight design
Impressive noise cancellation
Average battery life
The sound is too deep.
Slow to match
The OnePlus Buds 3 come at a very competitive time for earbuds, as they come from venerable audio brands and smartphone companies. Like other companies, OnePlus produces earbuds that are a tempting pre-order bonus or a convenient extra acquisition for die-hard enthusiasts of the brand; However, looking at the list of features here, they don’t in fact feel like an aftermarket product. cut.
The OnePlus Buds 3 promise active noise cancellation, spatial audio, app-controlled sound personalization and more, for a very affordable price – they offer a solid festival to the best budget earbuds in terms of price. You’re probably considering the OnePlus Buds 3 if you already own one of the best OnePlus phones, but they seem to please beyond being an add-on.
At first glance, the OnePlus Buds 3 bear more than a passing resemblance to their predecessors, the OnePlus Buds 2 Pro. And while that’s true, those really crazy reviews of the 2023 models, they’re more affordable and have some innovations throughout. areas.
In some areas, OnePlus may have gone too far, and the sound quality is something of a sore spot. In our Buds 2 Pro review we said bass was “not especially heavy” and the Buds 3 have overcorrected, taking inspiration from the RWE Bagger 288 (which Google tells me is the heaviest vehicle in the world) because it’s heavy.
The Buds 3’s bass is too strong no matter how much you tap the EQ, causing the treble to reach the corners of the sound mix. You shouldn’t buy them if you like balanced or unbiased sound.
Did I say equalizer? Yes, I did, because it’s one of the many cool features built into the smartphone hookup app. Other features include spatial audio, ear canal scanning for adapted sound, the ability to transfer to other active noise cancellation (ANC) modes, and much more. For budget headphones, the diversity of features on display is important.
You’ll want to enjoy those features in short bursts, however, as the OnePlus Buds 3 will only last 6. 5 hours of listening in a single pass when ANC is enabled. Turning it off brings that duration to 10 hours, but it’s still nothing to write home about; Fortunately, the case is packed with extras.
This ANC is also very good, and it has to be one of the ones I’ve tried with a variety of values under $100/£100/AU$200. There’s a diversity of strength degrees and a transparency mode, so you can completely customize how a lot of sound is emitted, but overall, headphones are a wonderful way to get rid of annoying unwanted noise.
While they’re not fantastic enough to make it into our ranking of the most productive wireless earbuds, the OnePlus Buds 3 have a lot of advantages. If you get them as a gift with a OnePlus phone, you deserve luck, and they are. value them even if you have to buy them alone.
The OnePlus Buds 3 launched in February 2024, after being announced shortly before in January.
The earbuds are officially $99/£89 AU$179, putting them squarely in the range of mid-range earbuds, such as the Nothing Ear(a) or Sony WF-C700N.
The price obviously marks them as the more expensive OnePlus Buds 2 Pro, although they closely resemble that style and share many features.
That said, for a large number of people, those headphones are anything you get as a pre-order bonus or as a gift with a OnePlus phone, rather than as a specific purchase. Still, they have value, so we’re going to judge them on that value compared to the competition.
The OnePlus Buds 3 earbuds have an average battery life: 10 hours with ANC off, which drops to 6. 5 hours when turned on. It’s not surprising, even if some rivals last even less. The charging case reaches up to 44 hours (with ANC off, 28 with it on), which is a much larger stack than what instances offer, so other people on long journeys may depend on this case.
When setting up OnePlus Buds 3, I was annoyed that I couldn’t find similar apps in the Google Play Store. Instead, I was asked (both through recommended tips and through OnePlus’ website) to install a third-party app called HeyMelody that has a pretty low score on the Play Store. It turns out that’s how other people without OnePlus phones control the earbuds: the company’s phones have a proprietary control app.
It’s worth noting that the headphones worked fine without the app, and I only downloaded it to access more features. You can enjoy music and noise cancellation without HeyMelody, you just can’t access your sound or some extras you pay for.
The app will let you play around with an equalizer (more on this later) and adjust the noise cancellation, with an impressive diversity of features in terms of strength and power (a Transparency mode cancels out some sounds but keeps the most vital ones). It’s really quite convenient once you set it up; in fact, it is not necessary.
You can also use the app to set up touch controls: either earbud can have individual controls assigned for one, two, or three taps, as well as a long-press or swipe gesture. That has a lot of potential, although I found that almost imperceptible mastery of the buttons meant I lost the right mastery when looking to use the touch controls.
The OnePlus Buds 3 are some of the most productive earbuds at this price point that I’ve tested in terms of noise cancellation, employing a deft hand at suppressing distracting background noise. I tried in Max mode, there are degrees of intensity if you prefer. to remove only a medium amount of sound.
HeyMelody brings two more features that I would like to point out: the first is Golden Sound, which allows the headphones to scan the ear canal to calibrate the music. The verification commands are poorly worded and it took me a few tries to understand them. I don’t know what I was asking for, but it’s a great added feature, even if the effects are slightly audible.
Then there is OnePlus 3-D Audio, which has had a much more palpable effect. It is necessarily a spatial sound, literally creating a sense of dynamic (albeit artificial) soundstage, actually editing the music. It’s only available in certain apps, so I probably wouldn’t do it later for the music quality section, but luckily, niche music app Spotify (you’ve probably heard of it) is among the supported apps.
One thing I should point out is that the OnePlus Buds 3 had a rather slow average phone pairing time compared to the top of the competition I tested. When I put on the headphones, it takes up to ten seconds to connect to my phone. and at most more than five, which is slower than virtually any other option I’ve tried.
This was also the case when I first installed the headphones and it took a while for my phone to find them.
I must say that I’m a big fan of the look of the OnePlus Buds 3.
The case is a small, lightweight pebble measuring just 5. 9 x 5 x 2. 6cm and weighing 40. 8g; It’s the kind of case you can easily lose in your bag or pocket, it’s slimmer than most of its competitors. It only has the essentials: headphone area and a USB-C charging port.
However, I found that the sleek curtain on the heads made it a bit difficult to get them out of the case – removing them required about 3 hits before the attempt was successful.
The casing is made of plastic, hence its lightness, it breaks if you squeeze it too much in your fist. Our smartest minds when it comes to reviewing devices have one suggestion: Don’t do that.
Like their case, the earbuds are incredibly lightweight, and their 4. 8g register slightly on the scale (or in your ear). As for the wireless earbuds, they’re pretty simple: no OnePlus branding, no apparent sensors or buttons, just a tip and stem.
Of course, there’s a sensor in each earbud, but it’s only indicated via a tangled domain in the stem, so you’d be forgiven for not having it. It is so sophisticated that it avoids detection not only through the eyes, but also through the fingertips; however, I have already talked about that before.
The heads are IP55 certified, which means they will withstand splashes or jets of water, but they don’t deserve to be submerged in liquid.
You can’t exactly expect fine-tuned sound on earbuds that charge so little, and you can’t possibly get it on the OnePlus Buds 3. That said, they also have nothing to complain about for this money.
These headphones will appeal to other people who like their bass-rich sound because that’s precisely what they offer. No matter what type of music I tried, from pop and space to acoustic singer-songwriter tracks, the lower diversity of tools and notes was much more prevalent.
Other people may like it, but in many of the songs she sounded a little bossy; after all, no attention is paid to rock music and only the E bass string of the guitar is heard. The treble almost exploded, which meant that the vocal lines lost their transparent sheen and the harmonies and countermelodies were harder to hear than I would like.
The mids of my reference pieces of music occasionally withstood the brutal bass boost, however, the treble was almost less prominent than I would like. That said, rarely, when it was palpable, did the woodpecker make me wish it were buried even farther away. . .
The in-app EQ allows you to tweak your sound to some extent, with a few presets, a customization option, and also an option to enhance the bass, but honestly, I found all my settings to be useless. The EQ is very smooth, and you may not notice any changes unless you pay attention to them ().
As mentioned above, it’s hard to believe that anyone would buy OnePlus Buds 3 at full price, considering that they’re probably designed to come with a new OnePlus phone.
If that’s how you get those buds, it’s a wonderful little treat; These are forged and flexible wearables that will save you from having to buy a separate pair to use with your shiny new smartphone.
If you pay the full value, the price proposition is different. The OnePlus Buds 3 are smart for the price (and the flagship model has spatial audio compatibility and features), but there are other sub-$100 / £100 / AU$100 rivals that will give you more bang for your buck. Formation
See our full Earfun Free Pro 3 review
See our full Sony WF-C700N review
The OnePlus Buds 3 were reviewed last week, and the review writing era completed the verification era for a few more days. The main device I paired it with was a Xiaomi Mi Note 10 smartphone, but I also checked it with a Windows computer and iPad. I haven’t checked it with a OnePlus phone.
I listened to a variety of musical genres in other places, including my office, my home, and on walks around my neighborhood. I usually opted for the strongest noise cancellation mode and the equalizer set to default settings.
I’ve been devices for TechRadar for over five years, and in that time I’ve reviewed plenty of OnePlus phones and headphones like this one.
Tom Bedford calls TechRadar’s deputy editor until the end of 2022, after moving up from editor. While it has specialized in phones and tablets, it has also ventured into other technologies such as electric scooters, smartwatches, fitness, cellular gaming and much more. He is founded in London, United Kingdom and now works for the online entertainment site What To Watch.
She holds degrees in American Literature and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Prior to working at TechRadar, he freelanced in technology, gaming, and entertainment, and spent many years working as a mixologist.
Hotel Room Key Cards Could Be Threatened by RFID Security Breach
It’s still too easy to damage our valuable phones, and my Pixel 9 already has a nasty scratch to fix.
A Review of BeyondTrust Privileged Access Management Solutions
TechRadar is from Future US Inc, a leading foreign media organization and virtual publisher. Visit our corporate site.