OnePlus has impressed me for years with its reasonably priced earbuds, and the new Nord Buds are no different — except this time, the price is even lower.
I’ve been using the new buds for over a week, and while they didn’t capture my heart like the Nothing Ear 1s, they still stood up to regular use and surprised me with how good they are for $49.
Sound quality
OnePlus actually managed to jam in a 12.4mm speaker driver into each earbud. Even if it’s not the biggest earbud speaker around, it’s still loud enough and larger than the 11mm option inside the Nothing Ear 1s.
The playback isn’t perfect, and the buds do show their limitations when the volume is maxed out, but in most situations, they’re fine, and I really haven’t felt the need to push the volume that loud unless I was biking with only a single bud in. Since these buds are so light, they work well for this.
The tuning is balanced, and it’s not tinny or distorted. There’s even an equalizer in the ‘HeyMelody’ app, so anyone that’s not satisfied with the Nord Buds can try and tune them on their own. Generally, I keep the buds on the ‘Balanced’ preset, but the ‘Bold’ option is pretty fun and offers a little more depth and sharper pitch tuning.
The user experience
As I alluded to above, one of my favourite things about the Nord Buds is how light and comfortable they are. They have a small stemmed design that looks pretty cool and keeps the earbud’s centre of gravity close to my head, so they always feel secure.
The buds themselves offer seven hours of listening and a total of 30 hours with the case. I have yet to kill the buds in a single listening session, and the case has lasted more than a week off its initial charge. That being said, at the time of writing, it’s getting low and is at 30 percent. Of course, OnePlus also added fast charging, so five minutes will give the case 10 hours of battery life and the buds three.
Overall, battery life wasn’t really an issue with the OnePlus Nord Buds.
The OnePlus Nord Buds also feature an IP55 rating, so they can repel a little bit of water which is always reassuring to know that you can wear the buds in a bit of rain. They also offer Bluetooth 5.2 and utilize Android Fast Pair technology.
What I didn’t like about them was the fact that when I was pulling them out of my ears or my pockets, the ear tip would often fall off too. It’s not attached as securely as other buds, so this happens a lot. I haven’t lost a tip yet, but it seems like only a matter of time. Regardless, the tips fit into my ears nicely and blocked outside sound well for earbuds without noise-cancelling.
The other negative is that the touch controls are a bit laggy, so whenever I would tap once, I’d often tap again, thinking it didn’t register me, but it was just being slow.
Unboxing
Good budget buds
I’ve only been able to use these earbuds for just over a week at the time of writing, and while I got an hour or more of listening in every day, the only thing that worries me about the buds is how long they’ll last over time. There’s nothing to suggest that they’ll die over time, but they feel too good to be true.
I don’t think they’ll replace my AirPods or even the OnePlus Buds Pros for me, but without a doubt, I feel comfortable recommending them to people looking to get a solid pair of wireless earbuds on a budget. In a previous review, I said that wireless earbuds typically fall into three categories: decent, terrible and surprisingly good.
When stacked up against other buds in the $100+ range, the Nord Buds are ‘decent,’ but when you factor in that they’re half the price of the nearest competition, they feel ‘surprisingly good.’
The Nothing Ear 1 wireless earbuds are special, but it’s not the sound quality that sets them apart from their competition.
When the earbuds dropped last summer, they faced criticism because the company spoke a big game about competing with AirPods Pros, when in reality, they’re just well-designed mid-range buds. This over-hyped bravado is annoying, but after a few months with the Ear 1s, I’ve mostly forgotten about it.
People don’t love shelling out $240 on AirPods, so something with a little less wallet impact is always attractive. If they sound good and look cool, that’s an added bonus. In those regards, the Nothing earbuds check a lot of boxes.
I’m reaching for the Nothing Ear (1) buds more than I thought I would, and I think many people will feel the same.
Hitting the bar
The Nothing Ear 1s sound fine. They have a reasonable soundscape that holds up well at average listening volumes. If you start to crank the sound, you hear a shallower bass punch, but they’re passable. For $130, I’m just thankful the tuning is balanced at all.
During my testing, I’ve found that the sound quality of wireless earbuds fall into three camps: terrible, normal and surprisingly good. Not a lot of earbuds jump from the ‘normal’ baseline into the ‘surprisingly good’ category without well-implemented new technology like Dolby Atmos or Spatial Audio.
This means that the Ear 1s are fine by my standards. They don’t distract from my music, and I can confidently put them in my ears and know that I’ll get lost in the tunes.
If you care about wireless sound quality, I’d recommend the LG Tone Free FP9s, but I’ve been enjoying the tuning of the Nothing earbuds. After running them through my earbud test tracklist to get a basis for comparison, I don’t have many complaints. Classical music like FKJ’s Last Hour sounds beautiful with these buds. Newer tracks like Remi Wolf’s Liquor Store seemed to have some distortion in the modern 808 bass kicks, but I still found myself rocking out to it just as much as with other earbuds. When I first switched, I noticed slightly more hum in the background of some tracks and less detail than buds that cost twice as much. But compared to their closest competitor, the Beats Studio Buds, Nothing’s Ear 1s sound remarkably similar.
Let’s make tech beautiful again
There should be essays written about Teenage Engineering’s design prowess. The Swedish electronics and design powerhouse was brought into the Nothing fold early on, and that’s probably one of the smartest moves Carl Pei made for his fledgling company.
Teenage Engineering makes headlines in gadget and music press every once in a while with its fun and quirky music-making tools or a limited edition run of other products like a PC case. However, possibly by choice, or the nature of the products the company makes, the company has yet to go truly mainstream. There’s no doubt the OP-1 and the Pocket Operator are popular, but they don’t have the potential to be in everyone’s hands or ears like Nothing products do.
That takes us back to the Nothing Ear 1s. The larger than average case is enclosed in clear, almost seamless plastic that looks something like a vintage sci-fi prop you might find in Alien. It retains this retroism through transparency compounded with subtly textured plastics. It’s incredibly intriguing to look at and hold in your hands. It’s the product that I’ve gotten the most questions about from friends over the past few weeks and one that I wanted to show off. There’s no denying the understated elegance of the AirPod cases, but you can get lost staring at the Nothing Ear 1s.
That being said, this beauty doesn’t come without tradeoffs. Since the case is larger and boxy, it’s less pocketable than AirPods, Beats Fit Pro and Galaxy Buds. The clear plastic also scratches just as easily as you’d expect. I don’t usually mind a few scuffs on my earbud’s case since it’s meant to be tossed into bags and pockets with abandon, but I was sad to see my first big abrasion on the previously pristine Nothing Earbuds case. The company ships the case with a simple, almost unnoticeable, sticker protector on the top and bottom of the case, but to me, it felt silly to obstruct the beautiful design with what’s essentially a tiny screen protector. Therefore, I’ll live with the scratches and my bad choices together.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
As much as I wish the case fit in my pocket a little easier, I wouldn’t trade the good looks for a smaller size so quickly. There’s something nice about the large lid on the Nothing buds’ case. It feels like you’re opening up classy cufflinks instead of the Zippo Lighter feeling that you’d get from popping open the AirPods or the meh-feeling from opening up the Beats Fit Pro. The small square-ish Galaxy Buds case Samsung offers comes close to being as satisfying since it feels like a small a ring box, but Nothing’s springy hinge is better.
Moving inside the case, each bud rests in a small alcove and is magnetized to stay in place. The left bud has a white dot on it, and the right bud is marked with red. These dots coincide with the large magnets on each side of the case. It’s a small thing, but it makes placing the Ear 1s back into the case straightforward. As someone who still puts their AirPods in the wrong ears all the time, this is a nice touch.
Each bud sits atop a transparent stem that says “Nothing Ear (1)” in the dot-matrix font inspired by industrial pipe marking guns. Now is also a good time to mention that the clear plastic Nothing uses has a bit of an iridescence to it. This can cast rainbows in the plastic at off angles, kind of like a pool of oil. It’s an excellent effect and comes across nicely alongside the black backdrop of the earbud stem.
The sharp contrast of the top of the buds being wrapped in glossy white to the stems being transparent and black, is a nice effect too. It makes the buds look significantly different from AirPods, while still retaining that shape that works well in many people’s ears. However, the silicon tip is more like the AirPods Pro than traditional AirPods.
On the inside of each stem, you can see the magnets and the two connectors for the charger to push power through. It all looks very cool and adds to the retro-futuristic aesthetic that Nothing is now known for. I hate to say it, but there’s not a smartphone capable of matching these incredibly trendy buds.
Other Perks
One thing that shouldn’t go unnoted is how well Nothing’s software works with the Ear 1s. Generally, if you’re not getting earbuds from a big-name company, the app that controls them sucks. Luckily, that’s not the case with the Ear 1s.
Like several other modern buds, the buds feature in-ear detection, and it works pretty well. I’d say about 80 percent of the time, it’s perfect at pausing the music when I take a bud, or both, out. However, putting them back in doesn’t always work as well. The touch controls work alright, but I am a little annoyed that Nothing decided to make the double-tap gesture play pause when it’s a single tap on like 80 percent of other buds. The touch and hold to toggle active noise-cancelling, transparency, and no effects worked well enough.
Battery life was fine on these earbuds, and they easily got me through a day of use at work and, with the charging case, almost a whole week of intermittent use. As for sound quality, a lot of wireless earbuds last long enough now, so the Nothing buds haven’t let me down yet. They’re only rated for around five hours and that seemed accurate in my tests. The case adds an extra 24 hours of charge if you use active noise-cancelling and 36 hours without. The case supports wireless charging, which is nice to see.
These buds also support Android Fast Pair tech, so if you use them on Android, your initial pairing setup should be streamlined and straightforward. However, during my review, I did need to re-pair them to my Mac since they wouldn’t connect seamlessly sometimes.
A standard microphone
You can watch the full video above to hear how the Nothing earbuds sound, but my overall impressions are that they were fine in a quiet room, but my friends did complain about some background noise when I tried to use them in louder rooms and even areas with ambient AC noise.
The wireless earbuds which are normally available for $278.99 are currently listed for $249.99 on Amazon, adding up to a $29 discount. For reference, the same AirPods are listed on Apple’s website for $329.
The AirPods Pro feature IPX4 water, sweat and dust resistance along with improvements over the 2nd-generation AirPods, including impressive active noise-cancelling and better sound quality.
The wireless earbuds also offer up to four and a half hours of listening time with one charge and up to 24 hours with the charging case.
Check out MobileSyrup’s review of the AirPods Pro to learn more about the wireless earbuds or bag them for $249.99 here.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.
After testing so many earbuds from reputable brands, I wanted to try a pair from a less known manufacturer.
This is where the EarFun Free Pro 2 wireless earbuds come in. They’re a sub-$100 pair of earbuds sold on Amazon with overwhelmingly positive user reviews. These particular buds have even received honours for being the best budget wireless earbuds of 2021 from CNET. However, I’d argue that all of these accolades should be taken with a grain of salt
During my time with the Free Pro 2s, they showed me that though a lot of features can be packed into low-cost buds, they still don’t compare to higher-end alternatives.
Sound quality
While the sound quality is bearable, the profile is crunchy and leagues lower than pretty much every other earbud I’ve tested. They’re passable, and I used them for a week and lived to tell the tale, but I was glad when it was over. The EarFun Free Pro 2s are either really poorly tuned or just feature a really terrible speaker driver, and for $90 that’s disappointing.
In an attempt to improve their sound quality, I even tried to level out the EQ on an iPhone using Apple Music’s built-in sound profile. This didn’t work very well, leading me to assume that the Free Pro 2s’ sound issue stems from its speaker hardware rather than tuning. I should clarify that I’m not just talking about a slightly higher base kick like you might expect from older Beats headphones; the EarFun Free Pro 2s have a weird sonic crunch that sounds like you’re holding an 80’s boombox up to your ear.
I’ve heard really good things about the AKG N400 earbuds, and they’re only $47 on the company’s website right now. If you’re reading this story and looking for a good pair of budget wireless earbuds, I’d take a chance on those instead. AKG is a legacy speaker company that Samsung bought when it acquired Harman back in 2016. This is also roughly when its earbuds started to get really good.
I’d be remiss not to mention that the EarFun Free Pro 2s’ noise-cancelling is surprisingly pretty decent, but it’s still not enough to improve their sound quality significantly. For some songs, the earbuds are fine though. For example, listening to lo-fi music with the Pro 2s is cool, but that’s not saying a lot.
They’re passable for calls and listening to podcasts. I wish it wasn’t the case but stay away from the Free Pro 2s if you care about sound quality.
Fun features
Regardless of the poor sound quality, the EarFun Free Pro 2s still offer a few excellent features that big-name earbud makers should take note of.
The first notable feature is the Free Pro 2s earbud case is amazing. EarFun says it has 30 hours of battery to top up the earbuds quite a few times before they run out. The best part, though, is that they’re incredibly tiny and even support wireless charging — they’re even smaller than Apple’s/Beats’ tiny Beats Fit Pro case.
The earbuds get about four hours of battery life with active noise-cancelling on and six with the feature off, which is enough for working at a desk. I didn’t have any issues with battery life in my test, but I only wore them for a week. If you plan to make these your road dogs, I’d look for something with a better battery life reputation like OnePlus.
The EarFun Free Pro 2s feature pretty responsive and accurate touch control panels, but the control scheme is unorthodox and often annoying. Since there’s no companion app for these buds, more controls are mapped to the touchpads than most earbuds. For example, a single tap will play/pause on almost every other pair of earbuds. With the Free Pro 2s, depending on which bud you press, a single tap raises or lowers the volume. It’s not difficult to get the hang of, but it’s annoying, and I’d rather have fewer physical controls on my earbuds.
Beyond just a tiny case, the buds themselves are quite minuscule and fit into my ears comfortably. They’re not amazing like the LG Free Tone FP9 earbuds, but the small soft wing tip puts less pressure on my ear than the Beats Fit Pros. I was even able to sleep with them in. However, I didn’t find that they fit securely, so I’d be hesitant to use them for sports or while working out.
The final thing I’ll mention is that the earbuds come with four different ear tip sizes and a cleaning stick, which would be nice to see as a pack-in item with more expensive earbuds in the $200 range as well. These buds prove you don’t need to jump up to high-end Sennheiser’s to get nice ear tips and an included cleaning tool.
Mic test
The mic test begins at 4:46 in the full review video above.
If you skipped out on the video, I can confirm that the mic in the Free Pro 2s is passable. Maybe they’d work for the odd call, but you likely don’t want to be using them with Discord every day.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.
Despite being several years old, the Powerbeats Pro still offer relatively modern specs, including nine hours of battery life (24 with the charging case), Apple’s H1 chip and IPX4 water resistance.
The special edition NBA Powerbeats Pro will release on Saturday, February 19th for $329 (the same price as regular Powerbeats Pro) through the NBA store and the Better Gift Shop in Toronto.
The Beats Fit Pro, Apple’s latest wireless earbuds under the Beats brand, are set to make their way to Canada on January 28th.
The fitness-focused Fit Pro feature a unique fin design that aims to keep the buds securely in your ears while exercising. The wireless earbuds also offer IPX4 water and dust resistance, allowing them to survive a sweaty workout and light rain easily.
Other features include the H1 chip from Apple’s AirPods line, allowing the Fit Pro to seamlessly connect to other Apple products and use Apple Music’s Spatial Audio head-tracking features. This is a feature the mid-level Beats Studio Buds don’t offer, though the Fit Pro still sit below the Power Beats Pro in Apple’s lineup.
Next week, I’ll have a more in-depth review of the Beats Fit Pro on MobileSyrup, but based on my initial impressions, they seem like a decent pair of wireless earbuds that do everything reasonably well.
You can pre-order the Beats Fit Pro from Apple now $249. The wireless earbuds will be available in ‘Beats Black,’ ‘Beats White,’ ‘Stone Purple’ and ‘Sage Grey on January 28th.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.
The Beats Fit Pro, Apple’s latest wireless earbuds under the Beats brand, are set to make their way to Canada on January 28th.
The fitness-focused Fit Pro feature a unique fin design that aims to keep the buds securely in your ears while exercising. The wireless earbuds also offer IPX4 water and dust resistance, allowing them to survive a sweaty workout and light rain easily.
Other features include the H1 chip from Apple’s AirPods line, allowing the Fit Pro to seamlessly connect to other Apple products and use Apple Music’s Spatial Audio head-tracking features. This is a feature the mid-level Beats Studio Buds don’t offer, though the Fit Pro still sit below the Power Beats Pro in Apple’s lineup.
Next week, I’ll have a more in-depth review of the Beats Fit Pro on MobileSyrup, but based on my initial impressions, they seem like a decent pair of wireless earbuds that do everything reasonably well.
You can pre-order the Beats Fit Pro from Apple now $249. The wireless earbuds will be available in ‘Beats Black,’ ‘Beats White,’ ‘Stone Purple’ and ‘Sage Grey on January 28th.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.
The Beats Fit Pro, Apple’s latest wireless earbuds under the Beats brand, are set to make their way to Canada on January 28th.
The fitness-focused Fit Pro feature a unique fin design that aims to keep the buds securely in your ears while exercising. The wireless earbuds also offer IPX4 water and dust resistance, allowing them to survive a sweaty workout and light rain easily.
Other features include the H1 chip from Apple’s AirPods line, allowing the Fit Pro to seamlessly connect to other Apple products and use Apple Music’s Spatial Audio head-tracking features. This is a feature the mid-level Beats Studio Buds don’t offer, though the Fit Pro still sit below the Power Beats Pro in Apple’s lineup.
Next week, I’ll have a more in-depth review of the Beats Fit Pro on MobileSyrup, but based on my initial impressions, they seem like a decent pair of wireless earbuds that do everything reasonably well.
You can pre-order the Beats Fit Pro from Apple now $249. The wireless earbuds will be available in ‘Beats Black,’ ‘Beats White,’ ‘Stone Purple’ and ‘Sage Grey on January 28th.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.
In a surprising move, OnePlus has rolled out an update for the OnePlus Buds Pro earbuds that make it easier to switch between two devices.
Similar multi-point connection tech is part of what makes Apple’s AirPods so desirable. OnePlus says that OnePlus phone users can update the OnePlus Buds Pro through the Bluetooth settings, but other users will need to download the ‘Hey Melody’ app to get access.
When I when to apply the update on my OnePlus 9 Pro, I was able to update the buds at the bottom of the earbud’s settings page. Once installed, I needed to navigate back to the OnePlus Buds settings page and turn on ‘Dual Connection.’
You can’t manually select your secondary device from this menu, but it automatically picked up my iPhone that had been previously paired with the OnePlus Buds Pro in the past.
From there, I was able to get the earbuds to switch seamlessly between the OnePlus 9 Pro and iPhone. I will note that the earbuds will only switch when one device is paused. If you’re listening to music on a OnePlus device, simply playing content on another device won’t transfer it over. You need to pause the content on your current device first and then it moves over to your secondary device if it’s playing audio.
This worked a lot more seamlessly than I expected and added a lot of value to the already well-rounded OnePlus Buds Pro. It might not work as automatically as AirPods, but it’s still very convenient and offers the same productivity boost when working between a phone and a computer that I enjoy with Apple’s AirPods.
OnePlus actually managed to jam in a 12.4mm speaker driver into each earbud. Even if it’s not the biggest earbud speaker around, it’s still loud enough and larger than the 11mm option inside the Nothing Ear 1s.
As I alluded to above, one of my favourite things about the Nord Buds is how light and comfortable they are. They have a small stemmed design that looks pretty cool and keeps the earbud’s centre of gravity close to my head, so they always feel secure.
