The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 blew me away

I’ve tested every pair of earbuds OnePlus has ever made, and I’ve never fallen in love with a pair as much as the new Buds Pro 3. It started off because of how gorgeous these buds look in the ‘Lunar Radiance’ colour, but the more I used them, the more they revealed themselves to be some of the best buds around.

Sound quality is excellent, especially when paired with a phone that supports LHDC, and the on-bud controls are responsive even when you use them to control volume level. Battery life and active noise cancellation (ANC) are a lot better this year, too, making these the best buds OnePlus has ever made and likely some of the best on the market going into 2025.

If you’re on Android and you like buds that are designed with stems, these are going to be hard to beat over the next year.

A killer new design

The new OnePlus Buds Pro 3 comes in two colours: ‘Lunar Radiance’ and a black version called ‘Midnight Opus.’ I’m a huge fan of the golden Lunar colour, and the glossy, almost platinum-looking buds pop in my ears in a way that AirPods just don’t anymore. When you open the newly designed case, you’re greeted with easy-to-read ‘L’ and ‘R’ symbols and a small light which gives you some info about the case’s charge level. The buds pull out pretty easily, and they’re pretty well magnetized in the case, which might help them stay in the case if you accidentally drop it.

Like last year’s pro OnePlus earbuds, the new models have squeeze controls on the stems. However, to take it up a notch, you can also run your finger up and down the squeezable area to control volume playback. At first, I didn’t give this much thought because, usually, on-bud volume controls are quite finicky, but I found these to be surprisingly responsive. The subtle texture in the touch area also helps a lot with knowing where to squeeze or control volume.

The case itself has been redesigned to be more of an egg shape, similar to the OnePlus Nord Buds Pros that also came out earlier in the year. This doesn’t make a huge difference in your pocket. I like the smooth round design more than the flat ring-box design OnePlus used in the past. The case also has a similar leatherette design that OnePlus used on the Open foldable phone, and it feels nice here, too, but this time, it’s just a leather design embossed in the plastic, not an actual material covering it. Still, it gives the buds a nice grit and texture that looks and feels nice.

There’s a pairing button on the right of the case, a USB-C port for charging and you can also wirelessly charge these buds on any regular Qi pad. It would have been nice to see a hole so people could add a wrist strap, but that doesn’t take away from how good these look, it just would have been nice to have.

Wait, the sound quality is killer too?

When it comes to specs, OnePlus is still using a dual speaker design with a woofer and tweeter, which allows for a really nice all-encompassing soundstage with a good amount of depth for Bluetooth earbuds. OnePlus even says that each speaker in each earbud has its own digital-to-analog noise converter, which should help the buds retain perfect sound even in hardcore environments like gaming or watching a movie.

To help envelop you in the sound, the company has also improved its ANC tech this year to block out even more than before and it’s been great so far. OnePlus stepped its ANC up last year, and this year, the tech still feels up to the challenge of riding on a noisy airplane, which is the highest compliment I think you can give ANC earbuds.

That said, when you use the ANC, it will bring the battery life of the buds down to six hours of listening and 25 hours total with the case. Without ANC, they’ll last for 10 hours of listening and extend up to 43 ludicrous hours. If you turn on the high-end LHDC, the sound quality goes crazy if you can play lossless audio from something like Apple Music or Deezer, but the battery life drops down to 5 hours and 21.5 hours with the case. Take note though, the LHDC tech is only on newer phones from Chinese brands right now, but that does include the OnePlus Open, OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 11. You can see a full list of supported phones here.

While I’ve never really messed around with LHDC in the past, I’ve started using Apple Music this year, and honestly, lossless audio sounds insanely good when I’m using the OnePlus Open and the OnePlus Buds Pro 3. Once LHDC is enabled, the sound stage opens up substantially, and it feels like every tone of every note is perfect. For years, I lived under the assumption that wireless earbuds were stunted by Bluetooth’s limitations, but I was wrong, and this codec really pushes Bluetooth audio extremely close to the quality of wired headphones. You can also dive into the developer settings to ensure that your phone provides the maximum bitrate of 1,000Kbps so you know you’re getting the most out of these headphones.

You can use the Hey Melody app or dive into the OnePlus settings and tune the earbuds specifically to your hearing. This is done by spending a couple of minutes listening to various sounds and using the app to let the buds know when you can’t hear the sound anymore. This lets the OnePlus Buds Pros build a profile based off of your hearing range and I found it helps the buds sound a little better so it’s worth spending a few minutes to set up.

Other notables

Other cool features include built-in Google Fast Pair tech that makes these work seamlessly with Android products. Unfortunately, there is no Windows Quick Pairing, so you will need to pair them to your computer the old-fashioned way. However, there is a dual-point connection, and in my testing, it has worked out pretty well. You can’t stress it by going back and forth a bunch of times really quickly, but most of the time, when you use it normally, they do a decent job of following wherever your audio is coming from. This is something you will need to enable in the Hey Melody app or via OnePlus’ settings.

If you’re a fan of Spatial Audio, these buds also support that. They can do regular surround sound or head-tracked, depending on which one you like more. But like multi-point, you need to enable it since it’s not on by default.

One thing I liked about these buds was also their microphones. OnePlus injected a bone-conducting microphone inside of each bud plus three regular mics on the outside, and it really helps bring some bass and clarity to phone calls. At first, I was worried it was going to be gimmicky, but after testing it against a few other pairs and even Apple’s AirPods, I came away really impressed with the quality of the OnePlus Buds Pro 3.

Another feature I’ve been happy with regarding OnePlus earbuds for years is the company’s Zen Mode Air. Once you turn this setting on, you can triple-squeeze the earbuds to start playing relaxing spa sounds like crashing waves, camping outdoors, light rain and more. This sounds like an inconsequential feature, but I find myself using it every once in a while when I need to focus since it very quickly blocks out the rest of the world.

The one thing that still annoyed me, and I’ve brought this up before, is that OnePlus doesn’t have a quick way to access the earbuds’ controls from your OnePlus phone. Instead, you need to open Settings>Bluetooth, tap on the ‘i’ icon beside the name of your buds and then tap on ‘Earbud functions’ to access the settings and controls. Ideally, I’d love a notification quick tile that lets me jump to the earbuds settings or maybe something tied to the volume rocker.

I expected these to be good, but not this good

As I said in the intro, these are some of the best buds around, and I really think anyone would be happy to use them. OnePlus owners get a little extra sound quality, too, but since you need to use a lossless audio streaming service, this extra power, while phenomenal, is a bit niche.

That said, even without LHDC, the sound quality is above average, the ANC is solid, and the buds themselves look really stylish with their chromatic shine when they’re in your ears.

If you want to get these buds, OnePlus sells them on its website for $269, but as of the time of writing, they’re on sale for $229.