I have stacks of headphones, mostly because I have an obsession with gadgets and I’ve had my Space one headphones since they were released, And I gotta say they are now my go to headphones. I’ve had several of the soundcore Q series ANC headphones and still do, and I do love them, love the travel case but my Spaceone headphones blow them out of the water.
I’ll start with the first thing that I was a bit Leary of on the space one which was one of my favorite things about the Q series headphones, the case. The space one headphones just came with a carry bag instead of a semi hard travel case, which was the top thing that made me feel that the q series were more premium then their price point implied. The first thing I noticed about the space one headphones though was that they have a much better hinge then the Q series headphones. That made me feel a bit better but I was still nervous throwing them in my bag to travel and felt that a weak point would show itself in no time. Well I can safely say that these headphones hold up, they have been through multiple TSA checkpoints, carried in my backpack with lots of other gear, held up to my 4 kids grabbing them in various ways and not had any issues. Now I actually prefer the bag that they come with because they take less room in my bag when I’m traveling.
The next thing I was a bit Leary of was the claimed battery life, 40 hours with ANC on and 55 with it off, as I said I have quite a few pairs of headphones, from work headsets, to earbuds, gaming headsets on and on, and I thought that was quite a claim. Still I figured if they got half that in battery life it was still quite good. Again though my soundcore headphones blew me away, traveling as much as I do for work I sometimes have some quick turn around on business trips, I’ll be on a 6 hour flight on a Wednesday which means I’m using my headphones as soon as I get past TSA, then using them on the plane. Once we land I generally toss them in the bag and make my way to meetings and will be in and out of meetings on Thursday, followed by a similar airport and flight experience on Friday, all that with some use in between and I don’t hafta worry about a low battery. Even with longer trips and more use I generally am not worried about remember to pull them out of my bag to charge before a return flight home. So I would say the 40 hour battery life with ANC is probably spot on.
On the topic of traveling another thing I love about these headphones is that they still come with a 3.5 mm cord in the event you want to plug into a screen on the airplane. Say what want about it being unnecessary now days but I find it convenient.
Another item I’ll highlight that surprised me is that I wear glasses and often with some of my other headphones in long listening sessions the pressure it creates becomes very uncomfortable meaning that I either need to switch to my earbuds or take off my glasses. Since reading or watching anything without glasses is generally a no go that means I have to switch headphones, but not with these. The comfort on top of the head is great, even for my big head, and I truly have a big head, and the ear cups are well cushioned and don’t squeeze so tight as to creat discomfort with my glasses.
The final thing I’ll highlight is all the audio features that you have access to within the app. You can adjust your audio settings to your personal preference and utilize their gear ID to tune it to you personally, it’s really pretty cool. The next audio item that I thought was super gimmicky but found is actually really cool is the easy chat function, which will take the headset from noise canceling to transparency and turn down the audio so you can hold a conversation with someone without taking off your headset, then when your done it’ll revert back to noise canceling. It really is nice for a lot of situations, it seems gimmicky but I challenge you to use it a couple times and not be sold on the feature.
So to sum up all the features, build quality, battery life, audio quality they are all fantastic and make the headphones well worth the price point at full price and a steal if you snag them on sale. You will be hard pressed to find a pair of headphones that offer this much for such a great price point.