OnePlus Buds 4 Review
Our good friends over at OnePlus sent over the OnePlus Buds 4 in mid September, and for a variety of reasons our review of the product has been delayed a bit longer than we would have liked. That said, we’ve been able to use these a lot more than we normally would before publishing a review, and of course we have a ton of thoughts. At a relatively low price of 129.99 USD (or 169.99 CAD), they are not the cheapest earbuds on the market, but do come considerably cheaper than the Pro models of the OnePlus buds. Is the price worth what you get? Let’s take a look.
My initial impressions out of the box compared to the Pro models is that everything just feels a bit cheaper. Honestly, that’s not necessarily a major negative, but where the Pro Buds felt rather premium, these in comparison feel very plasticy and cheap. Obviously, cuts need to be made to produce a cheaper earbud for the market, and it seems that overall component quality here is what takes a hit. That’s not a bad thing unless you are unnecessarily rough with yours buds – I’m not, and the “cheap” feeling I had when unboxing melted away rather quickly after a few days of use. If I went back to the Pro models of OnePlus buds, I’d probably notice again, but using these as my dailies washed away memories of past headphones, at least in the moment.
GamesReviews has been doing tech reviews for almost a decade now, and if you’ve been following along with what we write, you’ll know we never get into the nitty gritty with our reviews. If you want all the technical speak, a ton of other sites are going to offer you that in spades; instead, we like to talk as average consumers, because at the end of the day, that is what we are! To that end, we do recommend the OnePlus Buds 4 if you are looking for a medium range earbud that will perform better than most, but not to the quality of top tear, $250.00+ buds.
Sound quality is pretty good all around. We did have to mess with the setting within the mobile application to fix a few initial bass issues – there was a LOT of bass – but we found a happy medium after messing with the controls. For your average user, that experience might be a bit jarring out of the box, but with the application does a pretty good job walking you through changes to your audio experience.
Noise cancelling here is much better than expected. Prior to this review, I had been using the OnePlus Buds 3 Pro, and the noise cancelling on those earbuds was phenomenal. It seemed like a likely place to reduce costs, and while some outside sounds did seep in here and there, the overall experience was still really, really good.
Above and beyond using these for music, we also synced them up with our Nintendo Switch 2 as we worked on reviews for Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Mario Galaxy 1 and Mario Galaxy 2, and found the sound quality there fantastic as well. I find video game sound effects push the limits of earbuds a lot more than music does – those sharp Yahoo’s from Mario have sounded really bad on other earbud models! – and I had no issues using these while playing those games.
Honestly, the only concern here for me is the build quality, especially the case itself. Obviously, I didn’t do any kind of drop test, but I do have some concerns that dropping this from any significant height – perhaps off the top of a car or SUV – could damage the case if landing on pavement. Again, I’m fairly confident in my ability to keep my earbuds safe and secure, but the thing about life is that you can’t always count on people around you being as predictable as yourself. If you can get past the build quality, though, there is a fantastic set of buds here for an outstanding price.
Article By Adam
