We were instantly smitten with the sound produced by the OnePlus Buds Pro 2. We obviously went all out here with great design stuff like “Pure Harmony”, “Melody Boost”, dual 11mm and 6mm built-in speakers , all overseen by film score composer Hans Zimmer.
All these technical marketing specs often don’t mean much. But you have to admit, these OnePlus Buds Pro 2 sound beautiful, smooth yet precise, with enveloping bass and crystal-clear highs. Hard to find better in-ear headphones.
The connection with an Android phone is instantaneous, the headphones appearing on the screen as soon as they are taken out of their case. Once paired to a phone, they automatically appear on other Android devices. With an iPhone, you don’t have all these favors, but you can pair them in Bluetooth manually.
The OnePlus Buds Pro 2 have a design similar to the AirPods Pro, shaped like a golf club head with a long lug. They fit well enough in the ear, enough not to worry about losing them in physical activity. There is an ambient noise cancellation function, ANC in English, which can be configured in four variants, from “soft” to “max”. It does a very satisfying job in the middle of town, drowning out continuous traffic noise, but letting short, high-pitched sounds through. In the subway, the level of the rumble is greatly reduced, but you will not be comfortable holding a telephone conversation.
The configuration on iOS is done in a home application, HeyMelody. On Android, the application is only used for connection, and the settings are made in a submenu of the Bluetooth settings. All the control of the headphones is done by pinching, briefly or long, the legs to answer a call, forward or backward a song, activate or deactivate the ANC. You can configure one of the headphones to call a voice assistant to the rescue, the Google Assistant or Siri.
The music stops when you remove the headphones. Funny little gift, we have by pressing for three seconds a mode called Zen Mode Air. You will hear soothing sounds, like birdsong or a crackling fire.
The sound can be adjusted with a feature called Golden Sound. And that famous spatial audio, popularized by Apple? Essentially, the sound is balanced between the two headphones depending on the position of your head. If you look at a compatible phone straight ahead, you have the classic stereo effect. By turning your head, the sound moves as if it came physically, and not via Bluetooth, from your phone, your computer or your TV. We admire the ingenuity of the function, while questioning its usefulness.
Battery life for each earbud is six hours with ANC, nine hours without. At maximum, the case-headphone combination provides 39 hours of listening time. The headphones have an IP55 sweat and dust resistance rating: they cannot be submerged in water, but they can withstand 1 bar water pressure for 55 minutes.
OnePlus is dangling “dual connection”, which allows “switching between two Bluetooth devices with ease”. We are not really dealing with a double connection. Despite their use of Bluetooth 5.3, the headphones must disconnect from one phone to connect to another, whether between Android devices or with iOS. And we had to unpair them and then re-pair them with one of our Android phones, a Pixel 7 Pro that wouldn’t reconnect.
It wasn’t until the end of our trial that we found the HeyMelody app to be especially useful for an iPhone. The mention was rather discreet on the OnePlus site.
Well, spatial audio isn’t a very compelling selling point and these headphones can’t stay connected to two devices at the same time. But they produce what is most important, very good sound with above average battery life. For the iOS user, the only thing missing is the possibility of summoning Siri by voice and the availability of headphones throughout the Apple ecosystem. The Android user now has this last possibility with Android 13.
The purchase is highly recommendable, no doubt.
Manufacturer: OnePlus
Price: $269
Rating: 9 out of 10
