$40 Wireless headphones Battle. OnePlus Nord Buds VS OnePlus Buds Z.

TL;DR. Nord Buds win for the wrong reason. The OnePlus Buds Z have a critical flaw that make them infuriating to use.

I was initially going to compare these two buds to the Pro ones, but I think that would be a little unfair. I damaged my OnePlus Buds Pro during the first week I got them so it wouldn’t be very accurate. Long story short, The OnePlus Buds Pro don’t stay in your ears as well, they fell into different puddles of water while cleaning, completely busting out the noise cancelling features.

With those out of the way, let’s compare the Buds Z with the Nord Buds. They’re both in the same price range but with very different features, making you wonder why do they exist? Maybe they exist to make the Buds Pro look better.

Note: I’m no audiophile and wouldn’t differ treble from bass if my life depended on it. I’m just a simpleton describing the experience for other normal people probably deciding between buds.

OnePlus Buds Z

Pros:

• They boast better sound quality and bass from the Nord Buds

• They often go on sale for $1 on the OnePlus website

• Programmable Earbud Controls

• Good desk/office home buds

Cons:

• They have a feature where if you take the earbuds off, it pauses the media playing. YOU CAN’T TURN THIS OFF. While they stay in your ear pretty well, this feature will trigger with any slight movement of the earbud within your ear. It’s nearly impossible to listen to a song without interruptions.

• You can’t take these earbuds for a run, they will fall off with sweat. Not that you’ll notice, you probably already put them away after it interrupted your favorite song enough times on the same sprint.

• Same earbud controls for both buds, there’s only one programmable feature.

OnePlus Nord Buds

Pros:

• They work pretty well. It’s my main pair of buds

• More programmable earbud controls. Single-Tap, Double-Tap, Triple-Tap, Tap and hold. And you can customize it for each bud.

• You can use them to work out and at home

• I find myself using the case as a wrist rest on my desk. It has a nice height to it.

Cons:

• The sound quality is not spectacular. They do the job but it’s not something you want to get if you care about that.

• The earbud control area is too big, you will often accidentally pause. HOWEVER, you can easily work around this one by disabling the Single-tap feature in settings. And still have double tap, triple tap and hold features working.

OnePlus Buds Pro (Bonus)

Pros:

• You can pair multiple devices at a time, and it switches depending on what’s in use.

• Better sound quality than the two previous ones.

• Noise cancelling

• Pinch shortcuts, no accidental triggers.

• Wireless charging (But why would you use this? they charge super fast while wired)

Cons:

• They’re not great at staying in your ear, dropped mine into puddles of water while cleaning. Getting them damaged

• When you connect multiple devices, sometimes your PC will refuse to let your phone audio come through. I find myself disconnecting manually multiple times.

• Noise Cancelling defaults to be turned on while not connected to your phone. I know this because my noise cancelling is damaged and makes a lot of noise.

• Probably worth $60, not $150

Conclusion:

The OnePlus Nord Buds take the win in this case. They’re not great, but they work better for me than the other two options. Sometimes less is more. In my opinion they are all great buds with different shortcomings. The OnePlus Buds Z are near perfect, they’re just too infuriating to use, since you can’t turn that pause feature off. It’s too bad I damaged my Buds Pro too early to really get an accurate view on them, they got a lot of features going on for them.