OnePlus Buds Z  Headphones Review

The OnePlus Buds Z are all-white in-ears with a similar look to the OnePlus Buds Truly Wireless. However, they also have silicone earbud tips like the Apple AirPods Pro Truly Wireless. You can also purchase a special edition variant featuring Steven Harrington's colorful artwork design.

These headphones are comfortable. They're very lightweight and don't go deep into your ear. Unlike the OnePlus Buds Truly Wireless, they have different sizes of silicone tips, so you're able to get a comfortable fit for your needs. However, they stick out a bit from your ear, which some listeners may not like.

These headphones have touch-sensitive controls, but they only work when paired with a OnePlus phone. According to the manual, you can double-tap the controls to answer/end a call and hold for five seconds to reject a call. By default, double-tapping either bud skips ahead to the next track, but you can customize this feature on OnePlus 6 phones or higher to play/pause, return to the previous track, or activate the voice assistant. Even if they aren't paired to a OnePlus phone, you can remove one bud to automatically pause your audio.

The OnePlus Buds Z are incredibly portable. They're very small and lightweight, so you can easily carry them in your pocket. You can also use the carrying case to bring them on-the-go, which should fit in most pockets.

The case is impressive. It's made of plastic with a glossy finish, which feels hard and durable. There's a magnet to hold the buds in place while they charge. Also, the single LED light indicator helps you keep track of the battery level.

The OnePlus Buds Z have a good build quality. They feel pretty solid, even though they're made of plastic. The silicone tips don't seem like they could rip easily, which is nice. The earbuds also have an IP55 rating for dust and water resistance, but we don't currently test for this.

These headphones have good stability when you get a tight seal. They shouldn't fall out of your ears, even if you're working out at the gym.

• OnePlus Buds Z headphones
• Charging case
• USB-C charging cable
• 3x earbud tips
• Manuals

The OnePlus Buds Z have a bass-heavy sound profile. You can really feel the deep thump and rumble in bass-heavy genres like hip-hop and EDM, but some listeners may find that they sound boomy or muddy. Vocals and lead instruments may also be weak or distant.

These headphones have outstanding frequency response consistency. Assuming you achieve a proper fit with the included tips, you should get consistent bass and treble delivery each time you use them.

These headphones have poor bass accuracy. The entire range is overemphasized, resulting in a thumpy and punchy bass. It can sound a bit muddy as well, but fans of bass-heavy music may still enjoy it.

These headphones have great mid accuracy. Vocals and lead instruments are clear and present in the mix. However, the overemphasis in the low-mids carries over from the bass range, adding a muddy quality to the mix.

The OnePlus Buds Z have impressive treble accuracy. The range is fairly even, though the slight underemphasis in the low-treble can hurt the comprehensibility of vocals and lead instruments. Sibilants like S and T sounds are also slightly dull.

The OnePlus Buds Z have excellent peaks and dips performance. The peak in the low-bass ensures that you feel the deep thump and rumble in bass-heavy music. There's also a dip in the high-mid and low-treble ranges, so vocals and lead instruments can be weak and distant. The peak in the low-treble and mid-treble can make those same instruments as well as sibilants bright and piercing.

The OnePlus Buds Z have excellent imaging. Their weighted group delay falls mostly below the audibility threshold, resulting in a mostly tight bass and transparent treble. The L/R drivers of our test unit are also well-matched in amplitude, frequency, and phase response. As a result, objects in the stereo image like voices and footsteps are accurately placed and localized. However, these results are only valid for our test unit, so your experience may vary.

The OnePlus Buds Z have a terrible passive soundstage. Due to their in-ear design, they don't interact with the outer ear, which is one of the key factors in creating a large, speaker-like soundstage. Also, because of their closed-back design, their soundstage isn't perceived as being as open as that of open-back headphones.

According to the manufacturer, these headphones are compatible with the Dolby Atmos app, but only on OnePlus 7 phones or higher.

The OnePlus Buds Z have a middling weighted harmonic distortion performance. At normal listening volumes, audio reproduction is clean and pure. However, there's a slight jump in WHD at higher volumes, especially in the mid and treble ranges. You may be able to hear the distortion with real-life content if you play it at max volume.

These are the settings we used to test these headphones. Our results are only valid when using these settings.

The OnePlus Buds Z have fair noise isolation. They struggle to block out bass-heavy ambient noise like bus and plane engines. However, they perform better with higher-frequency background noises, so they can block out the sound of people talking around you or the hum of a nearby AC unit.

These headphones have a fantastic leakage performance. They don't leak a lot of noise, and any escaping audio sounds thin. It shouldn't really be noticeable to people around you at the office, even if you're listening to music at loud volumes.

The OnePlus Buds Z have an integrated microphone.

The microphone has a satisfactory recording quality. Whoever's on the other end of the line should be able to understand you, but your voice sounds thin and boxy.

Update 11/26/2021: These headphones have been updated to test bench 1.5. In this update, we made changes to the way we test noise handling. We now use a subjective evaluation of our audio clips. This new method has resulted in different results than what we had reported in our previous test bench. As a result, the scoring of this box has changed, and we have updated our results.

The microphone has a decent noise handling performance. It can separate your voice from moderate background noises, but the noise is still present. However, if there are loud sounds around you, like a train pulling into the station, your voice can be drowned out. The volume of your voice is also reduced.

The OnePlus Buds Z have adequate battery performance. They're advertised as having a 5-hour continuous battery life, but we measured continuous battery life of just 3.7 hours. Fortunately, their portable charging case offers about three extra charges for when you're on the go. There's also an auto-off timer to help you conserve battery life, so the buds turn off after ten minutes without a connection. Also, the in-ear detection feature only automatically resumes audio if you place it back in your ears within three minutes of removing them, otherwise, you have to resume the audio manually.

These headphones are compatible with the OnePlus Buds app, but since the app is only available on OnePlus 6 phones or higher, we weren't able to test for it. According to the manufacturer's website, you can use the app to check the battery level and map the double-tap feature on the right and left earbuds. If you're looking for OnePlus headphones with an app that works on Android or iOS devices, consider the OnePlus Buds Pro Truly Wireless.

The OnePlus Buds Z have decent Bluetooth connectivity. They don't support NFC or multi-device pairing. While their latency with PCs is likely too high to be suitable for gaming, they perform better with iOS and Android devices. While the manufacturer advertises 103ms of latency with OnePlus Phones when set to 'Fnatic Mode', we don't test for this. However, some apps compensate for latency, so your experience may vary.

These headphones are Bluetooth-only.

You can't use these headphones with a wired connection. The included USB-C cable is for charging the case.

These headphones aren't compatible with Xbox One.

The OnePlus Buds Z have a portable charging case. You can charge it using the included USB-C cable.