Motorola Buds+ Review: Does Motorola Plus Bose Equal Great Value?

The Motorola Buds+ have great Bose-tuned audio and ANC, but their Android-specific nature makes them a lot less compelling.

Score: 3/5

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In this review

Motorola Buds+ Specifications
Motorola Buds+ Design
Motorola Buds+ Performance
Motorola Buds+ Battery
Motorola Buds+ Conclusion

For a long time, Motorola’s produced bud-style headphones for its phones that were fine, but nothing all that special; the kind of buds you’d probably just get as an ordering bonus with a phone without going out of your way to buy.

The Motorola Buds+ are pitched as something special for Motorola, thanks to a tie-in with Bose that kinda-sorta makes them into Bose true wireless buds at a slightly lower price than you’d typically pay for a premium brand like that.
For some users they’re going to be a very good value indeed. However, the lack of cross platform app compatibility and some audio quirks do detract from their overall value proposition.

Design

Motorola builds the Motorola Buds+ in two different colours, either “Beach Sand” or “Forest Grey”, which is what I’ve tested with. Honestly, they could have just called it “Black” and been done with it, but that’s marketing for you.

While they’re the “plus” buds in Motorola’s range, the design of each bud isn’t much out of the ordinary, with a simple, rounded stalk design leading to each actual bud. As is common across most buds with removable tips, you get a range of sizes in the box, though I found I didn’t really need them to get a satisfyingly secure connection in each ear.

At ~4g (Motorola doesn’t specify weights, so these are my own measurements) each and ~50g within their carrying case, they’re quite suitable for taking with you – I’ve even run with the case in my pocket without feeling much in the way of drag or discomfort while testing them out.

If I ever release an album of easy listening country tunes, this will be the cover photo.

Each bud uses a touch sensitive area for simple tap commands, which isn’t to my personal listening taste – more on this in the performance section – but I was pleased to find a dedicated pairing button in the case.

I prefer that approach because it makes it a no-fuss proposition when you want to pair the Motorola Buds+ to a new device. Just tap the button, wait until it starts flashing blue and you’re good to go with pairing.

Lots of true wireless headphones, and especially those that sit north of the $200 AUD barrier – the RRP of the Motorola Buds+ is $249 – offer IP-rated water resistance, typically to stop your sweat killing them outright. Annoyingly, all that Motorola says about the Motorola Buds+ is that they’re “water repellent”. As I’ve written before, that’s a mostly-meaningless statement, because outside of sponges, most items are water repellent.

While I have gone running and sweating in the Motorola Buds+, I’d have long-term concerns about their durability based on the lack of IP-rated water resistance. If that’s you, consider a more directly robust set – or even a dedicated swimming set if you prefer.

Also read:
Shokz OpenSwim Pro Review
Why your waterproof phone isn’t actually “waterproof” the way you think it is

Performance

The Motorola Buds+ are Bluetooth 5.3 headphones, so pairing them can be as simple as opening up the case and pressing down on the pairing button before finding your device of choice’s Bluetooth menu. That 100% works, and I’ve tested it across both Android and iOS devices, Nintendo Switches and laptops without pairing issues to speak of.

However, if you want to get the most out of the Motorola Buds+, you’re going to need an Android device to pair them to.

There’s support for Google’s Fast Pair functionality across most modern Android devices to make that quite simple, but more importantly, that’s how you access the Moto Buds app.

Lots of headphones have brand-specific apps these days, and Motorola’s doesn’t do much more than any other, with options for equalisation, toggling multipoint pairing on and off, switching between audio modes and firmware updates. What’s slightly annoying here is that some functions only operate through the Moto Buds app, and no other way at all.

As an example, a long press on either bud will switch noise cancellation on or off, or if enabled through a transparency mode, but the Motorola Buds+ also support an adaptive noise cancelling mode, and you can only fire that up through the Moto Buds app.

Want to enable multipoint pairing? That’s also only within the app.

There’s an added inducement here if you’re a Motorola phone user, as features such as Dolby Atmos and Dolby Head Tracking only work if the Motorola Buds+ are paired to a Motorola phone – not even across other Android phones.

The Motorola Buds+ supports touch controls with multiple and single tap functions, and I can't say I'm a fan of their implementation. Look, honestly, I don't much like thumping my ears when they have buds with them at any time, but I found the correct strike zones for the Motorola Buds+ to be particularly small and fiddly. You're always going to be better off using a paired phone with the Moto Buds app in every case.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you -- I've got the Motorola Buds+ in my ears.

Audio quality when paired to an Android phone is genuinely very good, and that’s no surprise at all. While the Motorola Buds+ are a Motorola product, they’re produced in association with Bose, bringing their expertise in audio equalisation and noise cancelling into play.

Are you getting a true, full-on competitor to more premium sets like the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds? No, not quite, but in the right setup situations it’s very close, with the Motorola Buds+ delivering great audio across genres and audio types.

There’s a slight fly in the ointment here, and it’s one I’ve only hit when pairing up to devices that don’t or can’t have the Motorola Buds app installed, though that may just be coincidental.

Every once in a while – it’s intermittent, but it’s happened more than once – audio quality will drop out nearly entirely, leaving the Motorola Buds+ delivering a really weak, AM-radio style sound. Removing and re-pairing to the same device did fix audio issues every time – but this isn’t something that should happen at any time on a $249 pair of headphones!

The battle for active noise cancelling supremacy rages between the premium brands – for my money Bose’s higher-end buds tend to beat out the offerings of firms like Apple or Sony, but it’s close – so I was keen to see how good the Motorola Buds+ would be, given the Bose connection.

The answer is that they’re pretty good for buds in this price range, nicely reducing the noise of fans inside my home office and traffic noise while out running. You absolutely can get better and more nuanced ANC – but it’ll cost you more.

For calling purposes, the microphones on the Motorola Buds+ are serviceable, with callers during my tests noting that it was clear I was using some kind of Bluetooth microphone or speaker mode.

Battery

Officially, the only thing that Motorola says about the battery life of the Motorola Buds+ is that they’ll support music playback for up to 8 hours with ANC disabled.

I can’t quite grasp why you’d spend up for an ANC-enabled pair and not use it most of the time, but this didn’t give me too much to go on for comparison with my own tests.

What I found was that the Motorola Buds+ were good for about 5 hours with ANC enabled, or up towards 6 hours with it disabled, a little lower than Motorola’s only estimated value.

That figure could be a little better, though you do get a decent whack of additional power through the charging case, with a claimed total of 38 hours of playback time from a charged case, which suggests around 3-4 additional charges in most typical scenarios.

The charging case itself supports USB-C charging with a USB-C cable supplied in the box but no charger, or via Qi wireless, though that will understandably be a touch slower and less efficient.

I can definitely tell when I’ve charged the Motorola Buds+ up wirelessly, because the case comes off the charger quite warm.

Motorola Buds+: Alex’s Verdict

The Motorola Buds+ provide very good audio and decent noise cancellation relative to their asking price, and if you’re just after a set of wireless buds to pair up to your Android devices, they’re worth considering to be sure.

However, in the wider Bluetooth space, they’re a little less compelling. Unless you’ve got an Android device you can configure them with, you’re never going to be able to access all of their noise cancelling features or enable multipoint pairing.

Then there’s the odd audio issues that I only seemed to hit when switching to non-Android devices. That was a problem that could be solved by re-pairing the buds, but it’s not one you should really have to deal with at all!

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Motorola Buds+: Pricing and availability

The Motorola Buds+ retail in Australia for $249.

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