The Nord Buds 4 Pro are another pair of wireless earbuds in OnePlus’ growing and confusing lineup. These are the most premium earbuds in the company’s low-end lineup, but are below the non-Pro numbered lineup, and below the Pro numbered lineup, and even below the non-numbered Pro lineup…. Anyway, it is better not to give too much information about it, because at this point it is doubtful whether the people at OnePlus can even keep an eye on these.
The Nord Buds 4 Pro still aim to be an affordable pair of wireless earbuds, but with many of the niceties you now expect in more premium earbuds, like active noise cancellation, high-resolution audio, touch gestures, AI translation, and more. All for INR 3,999 ($42).
Design and comfort
Starting with the design, the Nord Buds 4 Pro have a new case design with the familiar shape of the earbuds. The case resembles OnePlus’ older Pro series models, but instead of opening horizontally, it’s just the top that comes out. The earbuds come in two colors: Radiant Gray and Raven Black.
The build quality and finish of the case is good for the price. It has a smooth matte texture that resists fingerprints. Matte texture has also been included in the earbuds. However, here, it sounds a bit cheap and gives an unpleasant sensation in your ears.
This unpleasantness is further compounded by the cheap ear tips used here. They feel like plastic (and also just sticky), and don’t form a good seal like high-quality ear tips.
That said, the earbuds are otherwise quite comfortable. I was able to wear them for several hours continuously without any fatigue.
The earbuds are IP55 dust and splash resistant. However, this does not apply to the case.
Software and Features
The software experience is straightforward. You can access things through the HomeMelody app for either Android and iOS, and the latter version can also be installed on Mac.
There’s a good amount of customizability here, including ANC, audio, and touch gestures. You can also do things like turn off audio prompts if they bother you. Game Mode switches the earbuds into low-latency mode, Spotify Tap lets you start playing from Spotify instantly with a dedicated gesture, and Sound Spaces plays various ambient sounds from the app.
hemelody app on android
There’s also an option to toggle hi-res mode. This is off by default when using LHDC, and limits the earbuds to 24-bit/48kHz and lower bitrates. When enabled, the earbuds can go up to 24-bit/96kHz and 900kbps (not 1000kbps, as OnePlus incorrectly advertises), though this needs to be done manually via Android’s Developer Mode settings, as the default is still 24-bit/48kHz even in Hi-Res mode.
Display
audio quality
The Nord Buds 4 Pro support SBC, AAC, and LHDC codecs over Bluetooth 6.0. These feature 12mm dynamic drivers with titanium coating. OnePlus claims that these drivers deliver 100% more power than the previous generation Nord Buds 3 Pro. The company also advertises these as bass boosted, so there should be no real surprises when you listen to these.
That said, I was really impressed by what I heard when I wore these for the first time. There is a moment of truth here – and it really is the hard truth – but with a few exceptions, I wouldn’t willingly listen to OnePlus’s audio products for longer than it takes to review them. There’s almost always been a rawness to the way they’re tuned, as if it was a complete afterthought. You can feel complete confidence in the assumption that whoever buys them won’t care or know any better, so there’s no need to worry. This is different from Oppo or even Realme Audio products, which are generally better tuned.
The Nord Buds 4 Pro broke that mold for me. Leaving aside the bass for a moment, I was pleased with how refined and tasteful the rest of the frequency response tuning was. The mid range comes through wonderfully and has a lovely sweet tone. The highs often sound just right without too much piercing detail or ambiguity. You feel like you’re getting more than just the gist of what you’re hearing, and there’s a real effort to present the information in a restrained but sophisticated way.
I say restrained because often producers get caught up in the idea of ​​highlighting one aspect of the sound or the other. This way you end up with ridiculous peaks or troughs in the frequency response, and a sound that is completely unnatural because it is not at all the way your ears expect to hear things. The Nord Buds 4 Pro don’t introduce any major audio deviation that one could arguably call ground truth, so it’s far more pleasant to listen to than some of the company’s more expensive models.
Yes, there is a lot of bass in the sound, and that is the elephant in the room. However, the bass never encroaches much on the rest of the frequency spectrum and is mostly isolated in its own zone. This is also kind of funny; There’s so much of it that it always takes you by surprise when it comes out in certain tracks, and you can’t help but be happy with it. It was never too distracting, and knew how to work with the rest of the sound rather than drown it out.
I was also surprised by the spatial characteristics of sound. Imaging performance is good, so sound often feels three-dimensional, with different elements positioned differently. It’s not huge, but you can enable the Spatial Audio setting if that’s what you really want.
Overall, I was very impressed with the sound of the Nord Buds 4 Pro. It’s equal parts fun and restrained, and knows how to maintain that balance. It’s interesting to think that this should come from one of the more affordable models in the company’s lineup. One would hope that this was not a mere toss of the coin and perhaps there were active efforts to move things in the right direction.
microphone quality
The microphone performance in Nord Buds 4 Pro is good. The sound is clear and high enough quality for audio and video calls in quiet rooms.
In noisy environments, the Nord Buds 4 Pro impress with their background noise reduction, and the sound remains distinct, if a little quiet.
noise cancellation
The Nord Buds 4 Pro have active noise cancellation, and the company claims up to 55dB of noise cancellation in the 5000Hz range. It is said to be 200% better than the Nord Buds 3 Pro.
In my experience, the ANC on the Nord Buds 4 Pro wasn’t that good. Not because it is not effective, but because of the way it works.
You get three levels of ANC along with auto. The first two settings provide a constant level of cancellation, while the highest mode can vary its intensity depending on ambient noise.
All three modes work by shifting some noise into the higher frequency bands, but this is most noticeable at the High preset. Switching from medium to high results in a significant increase in high-frequency noise, even though the low frequencies become quieter. This can actually sometimes make High mode less effective than Moderate mode, as the extra noise in High is easier to notice and distracting. This is true for most moderately noisy environments.
It’s only in extremely loud scenarios that the High preset switches gears into more powerful forms of noise cancellation, at which point some of the high-frequency noise fades away. At this point, the High preset may seem impressive, but it can only really do so in very loud environments, and if the noise level drops below a certain level, it once again becomes somewhat ineffective.
This annoying variability is what makes it hard to be satisfied with the ANC on the Nord Buds 4 Pro. The High preset should actually offer the highest level of ANC it’s capable of, rather than turning it into another auto mode. If one wants less separation, they can always use the lower two presets or use the actual auto modes available. Making wide range adjustments of the highest preset, to the point where it may be worse than the lower preset, is just bad design.
It’s also worth noting that cheap ear tips do impact ANC performance, and ANC effectiveness could have been much higher if the ear tips were of higher quality.
Finally, the transparency mode works reasonably well. It’s not the most natural or sleekest-looking method we’ve tested, but it gets the job done.
delay
The latency performance of the Nord Buds 4 Pro is good. By default, this works fine for video content, as modern devices adjust for delay. Gaming was also good and things can be improved further with game modes.
Oddly, Game Mode also affects audio quality and enables a sort of spatial audio effect. There is a setting to disable it, but it appears to be doing nothing.
relationship
Connection performance on the Nord Buds 4 Pro was very good. However, there is one thing I would like to bring up on top of the things mentioned in the software section.
As mentioned earlier, the earbuds don’t go up to the full 1Mbps bitrate with LHDC, no matter which device I tried them with. The highest possible is 900kbps, and even lower if you don’t enable Hi-Res mode. Of course, you have to do this through developer mode as well, not something that happens automatically.
I wanted to highlight here that none of OnePlus’s devices can maintain high bitrates with LHDC or LDAC, even with its earbuds. All the devices I tried, including some flagship models, could do up to 500kbps with these earbuds. To review these earbuds I had to rely on a trusty old nothing phone (2) that I know has good enough Bluetooth to consistently hit the highest bitrate with LHDC and LDAC with every device I tested. And then I realized that the earbuds also don’t reach the advertised maximum of 1Mbps.
OnePlus seriously needs to pay attention to the Bluetooth performance of its phones and tablets. Not being able to handle speeds of more than 500kbps at a distance of a foot from the paired device is embarrassing. Needless to say, they still don’t support true lossless codecs like aptX Lossless, probably because of how poorly their Bluetooth works with existing codecs.
battery life
The Nord Buds 4 Pro have a claimed battery life of 7 hours when using AAC with ANC on and 13 hours with ANC off. With LHDC, ANC on the number reduces to 6 hours with no claim of ANC off.
Testing here focused on LHDC set to 24-bit/96kHz, 900kbps. With these settings, I got 9 hours and 17 minutes with ANC off, and a little over 6 hours with ANC on. The earbuds can be fully charged approximately three times in the case, giving you about 30 hours of usage with a full charge.
conclusion
The Nord Buds 4 Pro are a relatively affordable pair of earbuds, which is why it’s difficult to judge them too harshly. Thus, some flexible build quality and cheap tricks can be forgiven. The ANC is nothing to write home about, not because it’s incapable of being good, but because it’s poorly configured. If OnePlus can fix the High preset, we might have reasonably good ANC at least for the segment.
What I really enjoyed was the audio quality. The sweet, soothing vocals were a pleasure to listen to, and this time I didn’t have much trouble with the bass. I still think the cheaper Realme T200, which we reviewed earlier, sound significantly better, but they’re also significantly worse in every other way.
Apart from the sound, the earbuds also have good comfort, good microphone performance, reliable connectivity, and decent latency. Battery life should also be more than enough for most users.
Overall, a fairly capable pair of earbuds for the price. Definitely worth checking out.
