OnePlus Buds Pro 3 first impressions

Pushing further, one step at a time

Smartphone brands getting into the wireless audio business is nothing new, but only a handful of brands have handled it well and really built a reputation for earphones beyond just the smartphones. OnePlus has moved into various new product segments beyond smartphones, but it’s the audio segment that it’s really excelled at. Regular new launches, frequent improvements, and a product range that covers different price brackets - without going too high or too low - has made it what it is.

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 is the latest audio launch from the brand, takes its place at the top of the range priced at Rs. 11,999 in India. Here’s what I think of the new earphones, after a few hours of use.

OnePlus Buds Pro 3 first impressions: Design

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 don’t heavily deviate from the established style of the product lineup, sticking to the stem design with a reflective finish. Usefully, the gesture controls on the stems return, relying on you squeezing the stem to control playback and ANC, or swiping up and down along it for the volume controls. Of course, you get a proper in-canal fit as well, which helps with noise isolation.

On the other hand, the charging case gets a complete overhaul. The pebble shape reminds me of the Oppo Enco X2, the successor to which is nowhere to be seen, suggesting that the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 could well be the way forward for the company’s flagship audio lineup. You get a nice dual-texture finish, big OnePlus and Dynaudio logos, and a nicely disguised pairing button that admittedly took me a minute to find.

OnePlus Buds Pro 3 first impressions: Performance

While my detailed thoughts on how the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 sound will be in my full review, initial impressions are largely positive on the new earphones. The pairing process with my OnePlus 12 was straightforward and quick, and detailed settings for the earphones are integrated into the Bluetooth settings menu itself. Here, you can set the EQ preset or create a custom EQ setting, set up features for the earphones, and customise the gesture controls, among other things.

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 has a dual-driver setup, with twin DACs in each earbud to handle each driver. Connectivity is through Bluetooth 5.4, with support for the SBC, AAC, and LHDC 5.0 codecs. All of this is impressive, and sound quality is decent across various genres and tracks.

There are a handful of equaliser presets, and I found that the default ‘Balanced’ equaliser preset was the best for sound among the options. The 'Dynaudio featured’ preset was surprisingly bad, but fortunately you can pick from any of the others or even set up the custom EQ to your liking.

Intitial impressions

The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 are the latest, and arguably the best true wireless earphones from the brand yet. While there seem to be minor gripes, the headset does also come with big improvements, particularly in the design of the charging case and the ease of use with Android devices thanks to support for Google Fast Pair.

The LHDC Bluetooth codec support might be a limitation depending on your source device, since not all Android smartphones support this codec. Expectedly though, if you’re using a OnePlus smartphone, you’ll get access to all of the features and capabilities of this headset. More details on the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 will be coming in my review.