OnePlus may have disappointed a significant number of longtime fans by “betraying” the “Never Settle” mantra with an avalanche of mid-range Nord handsets in the last couple of years or so, but said budget-friendly product portfolio undoubtedly helped the company find a whole new global audience.
Said audience, which boosted the brand’s sales figures by an astounding 524 percent year-on-year during Q4 2021 in the US alone, will apparently be treated to the first-ever OnePlus Nord earbuds in the near future. Unlike the ultra-low-cost Bullets Wireless Z, this largely mysterious product is essentially guaranteed to adopt a popular true wireless style, presumably eyeing to deliver a more affordable alternative to the high-end OnePlus Buds Pro.
Of course, that’s also what the Buds Z2 are for right now, so it remains to be seen how the two products will differ… under the hood. At first glance, these OnePlus Nord Buds sure look… unusual, easily distinguishing themselves from the OnePlus Buds Z2, Buds Z, and Buds Pro, not to mention Apple’s industry-leading AirPods and AirPods Pro, with relatively short and wide stems.
Perhaps even more notably, the black model rendered today by Steve Hemmerstoffer, aka @OnLeaks, exclusively for 91mobiles features decidedly eye-catching gold hardware buttons likely to be used for a variety of tasks, like pausing music, skipping tracks, or answering and rejecting phone calls.
All in all, this is definitely not what we’d call an instantly forgettable or “cheap” design, and the shape of the earbuds themselves and the inclined in-ear tips strongly suggest all-day comfort is also a key focus area for the company’s engineers.
The somewhat chunky charging case looks nothing like the one accompanying the OnePlus Buds Pro either, and although the specs and features are all kept under wraps for the time being, there’s a good chance these bad boys will integrate state-of-the-art active noise cancellation technology.
Before wrapping up, it’s important to highlight the OnePlus Nord Buds name is far from etched in stone, and even today’s depicted design could still suffer “tiny” changes, being purportedly based on “live images of final prototyping stage units.” That also suggests a commercial release might be at least several months away, so if you’re in a rush to buy some of the best cheap wireless earbuds out there, you should probably do exactly that and never look back.
