- This is a big box.
I'm gonna open to discover space, you hear that?
Eat your heart out James Webb telescope.
I got it right in here.
(cardboard rips)
So in today's video, sponsored by Soundcore,
we're going to be covering their brand new
Space Q45 and Space A40 headphones, earbuds, respectively.
Which should we start with.
Choose your own adventure.
Jake chose for you.
And the answer was earbuds.
So we have these Space A40 earbuds.
Anker's been pretty ambitious in the kind of press coverage
they've been giving to us.
They've been comparing themselves to products
that are of a much higher price point.
These are a hundred US dollars.
That's a pretty dang competitive price point.
There's a lot going on in the hundred dollar range.
But what these offer that you don't typically see
in the hundred dollars range is noise canceling.
That's pretty sick.
Inside the box, you get a type A to USB-C cable
for charging, some documentation, a quick start guide
as well as a bunch of ear tips.
This is something that I've always appreciated
from Soundcore. (plastic wrapping rips)
Every product that I've seen from them,
they're always offering like four or more extra ear tips.
I had their Liberty 2 Pros and those came with
like 12 sets of ear tips.
You're almost always guaranteed to get a proper seal
when you have the earbuds in your ears
which is really important to making sure
that you have good sound.
And even more important for good ANC.
I heard a movement over there.
(Adam laughs nervously)
Is the brand behind me?
(indistinct)
The brand's right behind me, aren't they?
We're not gonna spend too much time with the A40's
because I think that the Q45's
are the more interesting product
but still wanna show off what Soundcore has to offer.
So we have a nice little case.
These have really fast, fast charging.
For 10 minutes in the case,
you'll get four hours of playback.
With these headphones, you'll get 10 hours of listening
on the buds themselves and 50 with the included case
which is kind of crazy considering how small this case is.
Ooh, I have an idea.
Oh, Jesus Christ, there was a brand there.
Holy shit. (guy laughs)
I knew it. (guy laughs)
- Oh my god, I couldn't breathe in this any longer.
God dammit, just do it faster.
- How long were you there?
- [Bell] A long time. - Oh, a long time.
- I think it says something about like how we operate here
that there was a pile of leaves on the set.
I was just like, yeah, that's there.
- Did you get scared?
- Yes, I did.
(Adam laughs nervously)
I was scared.
And 50 hours of battery life is pretty impressive
because this is a pretty small case.
How small is it?
Draw!
(camera man laughs)
It's about half a banana.
Maybe a third of a banana, a third of a banana.
Should we do a quick listen to these?
These are very small.
Looks like the drivers are kind of big,
but like these are not gonna
stick outta your ears very much.
Like, look at that.
That's how does, can you see it from the sides very much?
Like, you know, I could do a fit test.
You know, people, you guys ask about fit tests
and stuff like that.
Like if they're gonna stay in my ears
and I did it in my first video,
but it doesn't really make sense.
Just 'cause they stay in my ears doesn't mean they're gonna
stay in your ears, especially if they're not something
that has a specific bracing ability.
This is just gonna stick into the pressure
of your ear canal.
Yeah, they stay.
I think we got multipoint 'cause we got Bluetooth 5.2,
I believe.
So, it's that classic V-shape.
There's a lot of oomph down in the lower frequencies
to give that bass that kind of, it's bass you can feel
versus like something maybe detailed and pronounced.
And then there's a little bit of a raise on the highs
to give that extra little bit of crispiness
that kind of makes like, you know high hats really stick out
so that you really feel rhythms, which is a good time.
I don't know, it's for fun.
I'm good, turn on the ANC now.
I mean, I don't have any sound playing right now
but the ANC's doing a good job of canceling out
just the general HVAC and room frequencies.
And it doesn't seem to have a profound effect
on the sound which is really nice
because sometimes that can be a big-ish.
Yeah, so these sound pretty good for a hundred dollars.
Soundcore's taking advantage of their self-developed
double layer diaphragm drivers.
Since it's a new piece of technology
that they are advertising for themselves,
there's not a whole lot out there about whether or not
it actually makes a big difference.
It is pretty neat.
Basically, it's like, you know how you usually
have that little cup, like you know how when you have
a speaker, it's a little cone.
What if you had another cone in the middle of that cone?
That's basically what they're doing is that so,
and they claim it provides a richer and more detailed sound
throughout the entire audio spectrum.
Supposedly these have LDAC support.
LDAC is the highest quality Bluetooth audio codec.
That's kind of available and found on a lot of devices.
That will change in the near future with Bluetooth LE audio
which I'll talk about more in a second.
These seem to have pretty good noise cancellation.
I know we didn't do the test with the speaker.
We'll do that with the other set of headphones
but they got these tested by a third party called SGS
who does a lot of different product testing.
And apparently these block out 98% of sound
and that noise canceling is adaptive.
If it detects that there's really loud noises around you,
it'll probably crank up the noise cancellation
maybe at the cost of a little bit of audio quality.
So if you're sitting in like an office,
it'll only cancel out as much noise as needed
to leave your audio as crisp and clear as possible.
And they come in a black, white and Navy blue.
We have the black ones here.
If you're shopping in the hundred dollar price range,
these are definitely worth checking out.
But let's move on to the big boys.
The space Q45 wireless noise canceling headphones.
This is very interesting to me because you know companies
they'll send us press information.
They want to make sure that we're providing you guys
with correct information.
But what they usually don't do is very boldly
send us a list of specifications and quality claims
that are targeting specific products
especially ones that are more than double the price.
What Soundcore has promised us is that these are supposed
to compete with like the Bose quiet comforts of the world,
the Sony XM3 and XM4, all of which are like $350.
These 150. ( headphones case unzipping)
It's really bold and I like bold.
Those look pretty nice.
This is a nice carrying case.
It's a, it's not super hard shell
but it's got a nice interior nylon.
What else we've got in the box?
Quick start guide and nothing else really.
Now look at what they have on the back.
We have adaptive, active noise canceling.
50 hours of playtime.
That's nuts that they have the same amount of playtime
in those earbuds as they do in these things.
Though these ones, you don't have to charge.
You get 50 hours without charging in between.
So it's 50 with ANC and 65 without.
That's like a work week.
You subtract your lunches and meetings from that,
you don't have to charge these the entire week.
I think that's industry leading.
I don't know of any other headphones that have them
but also you can charge these
and they do have quick charging.
So five minutes of charging
gives you four hours of listening.
Inside the carrying case we get some cables
and it looks to be an audio jack cable.
Thank you so much.
A lot of wireless headphones these days will let you plug
into your computer, but only for charging
or you can use an adapter to get USBC audio
but it still uses the battery on the headphones.
It's very frustrating, very annoying.
These are in a great addition to versatility
if it doesn't require power.
And I imagine it doesn't because every other headphone
can just usually do this, so.
They also give you a little charging cable which is nice.
Look at you Soundcore, look at all this for 150 bucks.
So let's look at this.
These are pretty firm.
They've got a hinge.
Reminds me of the Air Pods a little bit.
They don't have the same kind of articulation
that happens up here.
You can hear the notches.
Notches are pretty pronounced so it's not gonna be too hard
to adjust it to the same head shape every time.
Though usually I just put 'em on and then figure it out
and then crunch 'em back.
The right ear cup, we have controls.
We have our volume rocker, our play-pause button
and our headphone jack.
On the left side, more controls.
We have the power button to on-off and probably pairing
as well as the noise cancellation.
The ear cups, they are again a fake leather.
I kind of wish the ear cups were replaceable
because if you're gonna go with plastic leather
it's not gonna last that long.
And these might be something that can last a lot longer.
If you don't have to worry about the battery life
'cause of the audio cable.
So that would be nice to have
but they do feel quite soft and on the head
they're decent, decently comfortable.
They're spacious enough.
They're not touching my ears.
There's not too much pressure.
They might get a little warm.
This might be like a memory foam, I think.
The padding there leaves a little something to be desired,
but these are relatively light.
These are pretty light headphones.
Despite the fact that they have a metal headband
and just like the earbuds we have ANC,
we have four different microphones.
It's hybrid ANC so it listens to what's in your ear as well
as what's outside of you to make sure that you have
the best audio noise canceling experience.
And like the other headphones,
the noise counseling is adaptive based on where you are.
On the box, they have high res audio wireless
and high res audio markers.
That's great.
That indicates that these are supposed to be high res.
I don't know how hard it is to get a high res audio logo
on your box but it is like a third party verification.
So it means something.
Oh, another interesting thing
is that these have Bluetooth 5.3.
I've never used an item with 5.3.
My cursory research on 5.3 indicates that it's not a big,
it does not not do a lot on the audio front.
5.2 contained a lot of the audio features.
So you get everything from 5.2, you get the multipoint,
you get Bluetooth LE audio support.
What Bluetooth LE audio is,
is that it's a new technology from the Bluetooth SIG.
That's going to allow devices to send higher quality audio
at a lower bit rate with a new codec called LC3.
Okay, so I'm gonna put them on
and we're gonna give 'em a listen, right?
Yeah, the noise canceling is definitely on.
Thank you for putting controls
that just state what's happening.
It says transparency when it's transparency mode.
It is kind of a robotic voice though.
It does sound very Microsoft Sam.
Let's listen to some tunes.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so first impressions with the sound
is they're okay.
Tempering my expectations at $150,
I'd go so far as to say is they're fine.
They're pretty good.
To me these sound a little bit muddy in the midst.
It's kind of hard.
It's not very detailed.
The other ones sounded better.
Yeah, they're just lacking clarity.
If I listen to like hip hop, they're pretty fun.
But what we gotta do is we gotta compare 'em.
So we don't have XM3's or the XM4's
that Soundcore bravely is comparing themselves to.
So the XM5's might be a little bit of a different experience
than what we expect
but we're gonna take a listen, give a good comparison.
See if these really do punch above their price class.
Now I wanna come back to the other headphones.
So sound quality might not be there, but think about this.
These are more of an entry level pair of headphones,
but two, they almost have feature parity
with a $450 headphone.
They have ANC, they have LDAC.
They have incredible battery life.
They have multipoint connections.
They have fast charging.
They have so much stuff for just $150.
And that's something that is really, really tough
to compete with.
So if you're all about the convenience,
this has you covered, this has everything you'd want.
Now we're gonna do our mic test
and our noise canceling test.
(notification chime)
Dan has done a video on this.
I don't know if it's out yet,
but we're gonna use this big speaker
to basically simulate sound.
I get it.
It's not the same as just walking into traffic
with a big, heavy truck but that's not always
the most doable thing in a studio.
This is a reasonable approximation.
We're gonna put on a bunch of traffic noises
and see how well these cancel that noise.
Will they cancel?
(Adam sings)
(background traffic noise)
Oh, that was pretty good.
It really dulled it.
That's uncomfortably loud beside me.
Those did a pretty dang good job
of bringing down of the loudness.
Since these have good noise canceling,
I want to try out the space A40s.
(background traffic noise)
The active noise canceling on these
aren't as strong but there's just the natural benefit
of having something that's literally plugging your ears.
So they end up doing a pretty good job
of keeping the noise out just anyways, so.
This is a Soundcore space Q45 microphone test.
- [Adam] This is an audio test
of the space Q45 headphones.
This is what they sound like when I'm talking into them.
And now I'm going to play some traffic noise.
So how loud is it?
How's the traffic.
Can you understand me still?
Pretty loud but that's how traffic is.
- That's the mic test for the space Q45s.
Okay, this is a mic test of the Soundcore space A40s.
- [Adam] And this is a recording of the microphones
on the space A40 earbuds.
How do they sound?
And now I'm gonna play some traffic audio.
How do I sound right now?
Can you understand me?
I wanna say that you look really nice today.
All right.
That's everything.
Thanks, bye.
- This is doing a way better job.
The earbuds are doing a way better job
of cutting out the audio
than the headphones were.
I am more impressed by the earbuds than the headphones.
These do a great job of blocking your voice
from the traffic noises.
These not so much,
but think about the price.
Less than half the price of Air Pods Pro, so.
Less than half the price of Bose.
They offer very similar features
and they do most of them pretty well.
These are the kind of things that you're gonna be getting
if you're like, I don't know, you're a student,
you want some Air Pods but you don't want to pay
the Apple tax or you want some noise canceling headphones
but you don't wanna pay the Sony tax or the Bose tax.
Like these are great entry points.
Yeah, they're just,
especially these, these I'm really impressed with.
Good job, Soundcore.
Just like the little guys,
the big guys are gonna come in three different colors.
You got your white you're black and your Navy blue.
What other colors do you need?
As a man that's the only thing in my wardrobe.
(Adam zips sweatshirt)
(all laugh)
Also lttstore.com.
Get this in your wardrobe.
If you need a little bit more color in your life,
but not too much, 'cause you're a little scared
then get our RGB sweater.
It's got a little flex of color.
So there's a green in, there's an orange
and that's yeah, it's cool.
And it's also really comfy.
I think it's more comfy than any of our other sweaters.
Thank you Soundcore for sponsoring this video.
If you're interested in these, check out our links
down in the description and if you liked the video
why don't you just consider subscribing.
You know there's lots of other fun tech products.
We cover audio.
We cover anything.
We covered printings.
We covered a toaster.