soundcore Space One Review- The Best <$100 Over-Ear Bluetooth ANC Headphones?

If you’ve spent any time reading my reviews, you’ll know that I’m a fan of soundcore. An Anker company, soundcore has put out audio products that I’ve almost universally loved. The Space One over-ear Bluetooth ANC headphones from soundcore aren’t much different. As listeners to the AV Rant Podcast know, I don’t look at pricing before I start (and write much of a) review. This allows me to form my opinion without being influenced by the MSRP. Usually, I form an idea of how much I think a product will cost. If the MSRP is vastly different, that tells me something about the product. soundcore has often surprised me with their low prices. At under $100, the soundcore Space One over-ear Bluetooth ANC headphones are an insane value. Let’s take a closer look

soundcore Space One Specs

soundcore Space One Features and App

The soundcore Space One over-ear Bluetooth ANC headphones have many of the features you’d expect and a couple of extras that are really nice quality-of-life updates. Yes, the headphones sport Bluetooth connectivity, LDAC support, transparent mode, and ANC (active noise canceling). Their active noise canceling also has a couple of tweaks like wind reduction and adaptive functionality. Adaptive allows the ANC to adjust its level on its own based on outside conditions. Otherwise, you can customize the level of ANC to your preference.

One nice feature is that you can place your left hand over the left earcup to enable transparent mode (soundcore calls this “Easy Chat”). This nearly mutes your music while allowing in outside sounds. From the app, you can customize this feature so that it activates with your hand or when you begin to talk. Both seem to work very well though if you like to sing along with your music, you’ll probably want to use the hand controls for Easy Chat. There is also a feature that detects when you take off the headphones and pauses your content. This works well for music and most video.

The app allows you to customize the controls and functionality including all a fully customized EQ. For those with kids or who want to ensure that they don’t accidentally damage their hearing, there is a Safe Volume feature. Not only will it tell you the current volume of your content, but will allow you to limit to a specified limit (from 75dB to 100dB in 5dB increments).

Space One Controls

The soundcore Space One over-ear Bluetooth ANC headphones have a number of physical buttons for controls. Gone are the capacitance controls other headphones love to sport. Good riddance I say! Physical buttons are much easier to find and manipulate accurately. The right earcup has volume control and play/pause. The left earcup has an NC button (oddly shown on the right earcup in the app control screen) and a power button. The NC button can be pressed once to cycle through the different sound configurations (Noise Canceling, Transparency, and Normal).

You can configure this to eliminate any of those that you don’t want to use. You can also configure the button so that a double tap enables a “bass boost” mode. The neat thing about the BassUp mode is that it switches from your current EQ setting to the Bass Booster EQ setting. You can see this in the app. My fear was that it would forget your current EQ setting and dump you back into the soundcore Signature setting. That wasn’t the case. It always sent me back to whatever EQ setting I was originally using.

Space One Sound and Comfort

As always, I tested the soundcore Space One over-ear Bluetooth ANC headphones with the Custom EQ set to flat. This allows me to hear the headphones without any EQ applied. The Space One kicked in around 15kHz and played evenly down to around 30Hz. This is more than respectable for headphones of this price point.

soundcore makes a point to talk about the 8◦ floating axis design of these headphones. What this means for you is that they can angle perfectly for the shape of your head and ears. These are more than large enough to be considered “over-ear” for all but those with the most elephantine of lobes. I found them to be some of the most comfortable headphones I’ve ever worn – even directly out of the box. They clamped down tightly enough to stay in place without additional pressure. The earpads were plush and the headband pressure was non-existent. These are comfortable headphones.

It’s hard to really talk too much about sound quality with a pair of headphones with such a fully featured EQ in their app. That said, with the EQ set to flat, the soundcore Space One over-ear Bluetooth ANC headphones sounded great. Music had a natural and lifelike presentation. Even with LDAC enabled, there were no visible latency issues. Lips and voices matched perfectly. If you are looking for something wrong with these headphones, you’re going to have to look closer than me. They sounded great.

Take Away

While all the technology in the Space One over-ear Bluetooth ANC headphones is impressive, what’s most impressive is the price. At $99.99 retail, these are a very easy recommendation. soundcore makes good use of their very powerful and versatile app, an investment that is not going to waste. The functionality and features are everything you want and more. Most importantly, they sound great. For $100, you could get a lot less and still be happy. With the soundcore Space One, you are certain to be ecstatic! AV Gadgets approved!