Oh shit, it's ShortCircuit time.
Yo, what's up?
My name's Adam.
This is my first ShortCircuit.
Should we just get into it?
Who are you?
Oh, I'm Adam.
I'm a writer here.
I write some of the videos that you watch.
I just worked on an upcoming video
about our lab that we're building
that's gonna be doing like objective headphone testing.
That is not what we're here for today.
What we're here for today is a first impression,
an unboxing of the OnePlus Nord Buds.
The OnePlus Nord Buds are $50, Jono?
39 US.
39 US?
Yeah.
Okay, these are the newest headphones from OnePlus.
It's part of their Nord lineup,
which is their more budget kind of aim lineup.
Like they have the OnePlus Nord phone
as opposed to their flagships.
This is my personal device, OnePlus 7 Pro.
This is one that we got from work.
Yeah, so OnePlus has been making wireless earbuds
for a little while now.
I remember their first ones were iconic
for being the cheapest looking knockoffs
that you could find of the Apple AirPods.
So much so that, do you remember
that they got caught at the border?
There was a tweet from like the US Border Patrol.
We just blocked a bunch of fake AirPods from coming in,
but they were legitimate OnePlus products.
It was not, they're not knockoffs.
So OnePlus did come from kind of trying to bite Apple's steez,
but now it looks like they're trying to something
that looks pretty different, which is kind of cool.
I like the shape of this actually.
It's kind of a, it's like a very small watch box.
We got some Never Settle booklets.
That's just documented.
Documentation, instructions that I may refer to later.
Oh, the classic white and red OnePlus cable.
It is very short.
A little bit shorter than my face.
That's, it's one, it's a little bit longer than my face.
A banana?
If you're measuring from the outside,
it's one banana in length.
If you're measuring from the inner radius,
it is a little bit longer, so.
Whoa, that seemed technical for a short second.
Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I forgot it's an unboxing.
We got some spare ear tips.
Good, because, I don't know,
my ears don't always work with the default ones.
And now it's time for the OnePlus Nord Buds.
Ooh, ooh, that's actually a pretty slick look.
A nice hinge.
I like the hinge.
It's lightweight.
It doesn't feel premium because it's light.
I don't think that that makes it feel cheap in this part
because the mechanism is really smooth,
but I'm not going to get caught up on the hinge
of a $40 set of headphones.
There's a lot more.
There's things that I'd rather,
I'd rather worry about.
There's like random bits of plastic, like to peel.
Two, three, four, five.
Get off me.
Six peels.
If you have a button, when you put it in your ear,
you press the button and you push it deeper into your ear,
which feels not good, also changes the seal,
sounds, it's all not great.
And I agree, that is bad.
But you have these beautiful little like tic-tacs here
where you could have put a button
all along the side, maybe two buttons even,
which would allow you to press the button here.
That would allow,
you wouldn't be pushing into your ear,
creating more pressure.
You would still be able to like control things easily,
but who knows?
Capacitive can be done well.
It remains to be seen.
Okay.
Actually, the default ones for my ears
get a pretty good seal.
They feel like they're in pretty secure.
I actually find these surprisingly comfortable,
a lot better than I thought.
We'll see if it is,
but we'll see if they can hold on.
I, yeah, those are in.
I don't even think that they're like,
they're not even like loose.
Like those are in really nicely.
From the side view.
Yeah, no, I find these rather comfortable
and I actually do like the look of them.
I think they're quite stylish.
It's all plastic, but I think it looks classy.
This little reflective bit,
which I assume is gonna be the capacitive touch controls,
it like immediately got greasy and nasty.
I don't know, who's looking that close at your ears?
Probably weirdos.
The charging case and headphones,
they weigh about 50 grams together.
Case alone is saying 43.
So they're about four and a half grams each
in terms of weight, which is good.
They're nice and lightweight.
12.4 millimeter titanium drivers.
Bluetooth 5.2, which is great.
It allows you to connect to more than, to multiple devices.
Type C charger with fast charging
allows you to charge the headphones for 10 minutes.
That means you get three hours of charge.
Seven hours of playback with these at a full charge.
30 hours if you include the case.
So an extra 23 in the back.
So like three extra charges, not bad.
They're IP55 water and sweat resistant,
which is great if you're working out, stuff like that.
Don't take them swimming though.
These have an app called the Hey Melody app.
You don't need the app if you have a OnePlus 6 or later,
which is different than what I saw online.
So I might not actually need to get the app
on my aging but lovely OnePlus 7 Pro.
I agree, it is the last good one.
And it has the amazing pop-up camera, selfie camera.
So I get the whole screen all the times.
And when you put the D brand case on it,
he gets a little chapeau, like a little paper boy hat.
He's like getting you the news
and the news is that you look great, honey.
All right, we're gonna connect these,
put on some music, take a listen.
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Oh, there is a pairing button.
I didn't mention that.
There's pairing button.
There's a charging light indicator.
I assume a pulse
is working for something.
It is actually not working in the slightest bit.
So if you have an iPhone,
Apple's very good at making their pairing system
relatively seamless,
unless though there is the issue
of having other iPhones in the area.
But if you have an iPhone and you open up your AirPods,
it lights up the phone saying
that your AirPods have connected.
I'm not cutting them slack.
Come on OnePlus, this is no good.
If Apple can do it, you can.
No, they got charged.
Like the case has charged.
If they didn't come charged, that'd be a big issue.
Hey Melody.
Yeah.
This is fun.
We get to do the permissions game.
Should we allow Hey Melody access to my location?
Yeah.
Okay, we'll say while using the app.
Add.
Okay, that's it.
That's it.
Apparently they only wanna know where I am.
I mean, why do they need to know where I am?
Maybe before we get anywhere,
we should try pairing with one of their newer phones
because that's the ones that they said should just,
it should do the Apple magic pairing experience.
Because I read online that it only worked
on the 9 and 10 Pro,
which is why I specifically asked Jono
to bring out a 9 and 10 Pro.
In the documentation in the device,
it says OnePlus 6 versions are supported
for this pairing and connecting.
So we shall get to the bottom of that.
How is this possible?
So OnePlus back in the day,
I remember buying their OnePlus Bullets,
which were like $20 wired headphones.
It was like the first rise of what's called Chai-Fi,
Chinese Hi-Fi.
Chinese brands started making really high quality headphones
and selling them at very,
or at least, I guess, let's say high quality for the price.
And so OnePlus was able to take advantage of that
by releasing their Bullets,
which were pretty, which were quite well received.
I liked them.
I thought they sounded really good
and they were only 20 bucks.
The fact that like six, seven years later,
they can now release a set of wireless earbuds
with way more tech in them for just $20 more.
We did, I did a video about knockoff AirPods
and we had $35 AirPods.
These are $5 more than this.
These are $35.
Those knockoffs.
But like, it's not like you're buying it
from some sketchy, like random seller online.
Or AliExpress, exactly,
where you just don't have really have any recourse
for if you get a crappy product or a malfunctioning product.
Oh my God, look at these titles.
We have Balanced, that's just default.
Bold, which is the featured sound signature of today.
Serenade and Bass.
There's a customizable six level EQ.
And you can make custom profiles.
That's actually-
A $40 earbud.
Oh, it just offered me to do the tutorial
after I've spent 10 minutes fiddling in the app.
All controls learned.
To learn again, go to earbud controls,
learn earbud controls.
That's actually a nice experience.
I think for, the issue is that you have to download an app.
We're gonna listen to some tunes.
I use YouTube music.
Sweet, let's listen.
Initial impressions.
It tends to be a little bit sharp in the high end.
I think they kind of do that to boost it,
make a more excited sound.
It's a little bit bassy, not super detailed.
Yeah, so this is kind of actually, I don't know.
I mean, maybe I have to mess around.
Maybe I need something more like Serenade rather than,
so this is the EQ.
If the bass is boosted pretty heavily on the headphone,
the bass just disappears when it jumps up.
And that's 100% what's happening here.
So they're very much,
they're very aggressively curving the audio
to give it that kind of more fun and popular V-shaped feel.
I'm actually surprised by the imaging.
It actually makes a pretty wide soundstage,
a lot wider than I expect from something this cheap.
If we listen to something really dense,
let's see how we can hear the...
So this is a really dense track.
It's got a lot of instruments.
It's very noisy.
So trying to test like to hear if the separation's good.
I can't hear you.
I'm not playing the music very loud.
I see you talking, but I can't really hear you.
I'm very much in my own head here.
I'm pretty impressed.
I don't see at this point.
We're gonna listen to Crab Rave because if,
Crab Rave sounds like crap on this,
then what are you gonna do?
Oh, so Jono, this one's for you.
The bass, it's very fun.
It's a good experience.
The bass is tuned for a fun experience.
Let's check out, that's balanced.
It's not.
Let's check out Bold.
Okay, Bold is literally just that same V shape
that I was talking about, but worse.
Serenade just tones down the highs a little bit.
Bass sounds stupid.
It's just all bass.
It's just, it's just,
it's just, and then like the rest of you is like,
like it's horrible.
Hi, Jono.
Hey, how are you doing?
I'm doing pretty good.
Oh, I mistakenly called Nicole before calling you.
Oh, that's okay.
We have very similar names and also look the same.
You sound great.
How do I sound though?
You actually sound really good.
Like it sounds like you actually answered the phone itself.
Not like earbuds or anything.
Yeah, that's good to hear.
Cause I am definitely on the earbuds.
Bye Jono.
You know, all things considered at the end of the day
for $40, pretty good for, for 40 bucks.
Your next challenge is to just be flat out pretty good.
If this is too poor for your blood,
you can check out some of the more expensive stuff
that Linus has unboxed.
Like the Sennheiser headphones.
IE 600, I think they're 3D printed.
Check them out.
I think Linus liked them, right?
It ruined other things for him.
Yeah, so they're that good.
These didn't ruin anything for me.
That's it.