Soundcore Space A40 and Q45 Review 🔥 Listen to Sound Quality Here.
Hey guys, this is a first look at two new products from Soundcore, the Space Q45 Noise Cancelling headphones, and the Space A40 noise cancelling earbuds. These Hi-Res certified products are capable of reproducing double the frequency range of human hearing, that’s up to 40khz, and it needs to support high bandwidth codecs like LDAC too.
But I gotta say what really grabs my attention about these products is their battery life.
Battery Life
The Q45’s rated to have up to 50 hours of playtime, that is with ANC. Without ANC Soundcore states it can last up to 65 Hours. That’s around 30% more than the most popular noise cancelling headphones.
The A40 earbuds have up to 8 hours in the earbuds with ANC, and a total of 40 hours with its case, again, ahead of most earbuds right now. However, your mileage will vary depending on whether you’re using Hi-Res. After all, LDAC is a more power-hungry codec than regular SBC or AAC.
App
What I also like about products from Soundcore is the app. It’s one of the best apps for audio right now with the biggest range of EQ presets that I’ve seen in an app. On the A40 earbuds there’s also a great feature called HearID. It analyzes your hearing abilities and optimizes the sound accordingly. This saves you time from having to EQ them manually.
But of course, if you have a certain preference to sound that HearID can’t capture, or you got the Q45 cans which doesn’t have HearID, you can EQ them manually with a wide range of EQ presets or a graphic EQ.
Sound Quality
On default settings though, both the Q45 and A40 sound decent. With the Q45 headphones you’ll get that familiar Anker sound. The frequency sweep below shows a heavier emphasis on bass frequencies, with the mid and treble frequencies sculpted to sound more crisp and exciting. Listen to its sound here.
Soundcore Space Q45 Headphones
I find that the A40 earbuds have a more muted bass response, with brighter mids and more brilliance in the treble. The emphasis here is more on sounding airy and spacious rather than sounding more exciting. Listen to its sound here.
Soundcore Space A40 Earbuds
Call Quality
The Space A40’s microphone pickup was quite decent in quiet conditions, but in very noisy conditions, its noise-gating is very aggressive. It was cutting into my vocals but otherwise, you don’t hear much of the background noise, not bad. The Q45s did better at voice pickup. I was sounding more natural, and in noisy conditions it was still maintaining that vocal clarity. Its background noise cancelling was also quite good.
I tested their call quality under both quiet and noisy conditions, using some really loud cafe style background noise, and some wind noise coming a fan. You can listen to the samples here.
Noise Cancelling
Both of them were quite decent in terms of active noise cancelling. But the Q45s were much more effective at cancelling mid-range noise, so you are going to hear less human chatter, and get more silence in places like the restaurant, the cafe compared to the A40. You can listen to the samples here.
Transparency
In terms of transparency, in this price category the Q45’s transparent mode is one of the cleanest sounding. There just isn’t much background hiss when you turn on transparency mode on the Q45. I wish I can say the same about the A40 but the A40’s transparency does still have some white noise leaking in. However it is still within expectations considering the price.
Conclusion
To conclude, if you like bass, the Q45 does sound great, and for the price it’s going for it’s got great build quality. Stretching the headband like I did in the image below, it definitely is a very sturdy headband. You can watch me do it here.
It does have a firm clamp but luckily the cushions are quite thick and plush, so it stays comfortable to wear for hours. I also like that it’s got multipoint pairing, so I am able to connect to both my laptop and my phone at the same time. It does not allow both Hi-Res LDAC streaming and multipoint to be activated at once, but at least the option is available for power users. Noise cancelling is on point, so is transparency on the Q45. It also folds flat, and it comes with a hard carry case.
The only complaint I have about it is the controls. It’s got a learning curve, to put it mildly, cause you’ve got buttons on both earcups. That complicates things cause you’ll have to learn the positions of the buttons and what they do, but overall, great headphones for the price.
I am a little conflicted with the Space A40. Now, these do check most boxes, it’s got decent noise cancelling, transparency. It’s also got a gaming mode that cuts down the latency when you’re gaming. That’s all great. But I do have the Soundcore Liberty 3 Pro, and I do prefer that tuning.
On the other hand, I will pick these over the Liberty 3 Pro cause its bluetooth signal is more reliable, it doesn’t stutter at all unlike the 3 Pros, and it’s got a fatter battery. For some people, that could be the deciding factor.
Check their latest prices and get them through the Amazon links below.
Space Q45: https://amzn.to/3AOSKQl
Space A40: https://amzn.to/3ciqA6S
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