Soundcore Space One Pro Review: A Pro-found Myth

In a nutshell

The Soundcore Space One Pro has been available since September 19, 2024 for $199.99 a pop. You can purchase it from the official Soundcore store or retailers such as Amazon.

Soundcore Space One Pro Design

The design of the Soundcore Space One Pro perfectly sums up the manufacturer's philosophy. It feels like a premium product, despite some technical shortcomings.

Visually, I found the Soundcore Space One Pro to look very elegant in its shade of beige. It's also very comfortable to wear, with generously padded cushions in the headband and earcups. The headband is a little wide, though. Even with my large noggin, I could wear it at the tightest configuration.

The earcups can also be folded inwards and rotated 180 degrees. This makes the headphones very compact and easy to carry. They can also be worn comfortably around the neck. The carrying case included in the box is made of soft fabric with a faux-leather lining. This makes it not ideal to protect the headphones. Soundcore does sell a nicer, more rigid case, but it costs $34.99.

Design-wise, the Soundcore Space One Pro has two real shortcomings. The absence of an IP rating for water and dust resistance and lacking wear detection for the headphones.

Unbalanced Audio Quality

The Soundcore Space One Pro has a very bassy profile by default. This audio signature becomes even more unbalanced when Active Noise Cancellation is deactivated.

The frequency range that the Soundcore Space One Pro faithfully reproduces ranges from 20 to 20,000 Hz. This is par for the course. What does this mean? The headphones can't go very low in terms of bass. However, Soundcore's Bluetooth headphones also has the unfortunate tendency to amplify bass far too much.

When you combine these two elements, you get a sound signature that's totally drowned out by the bass. The bass isn't precise, and overflows into the rest of the sound, where the vocals and instruments lose too much details. What should be a warm, rounded sound becomes muddled.

Soundcore offers a very good equalizer in its application. However, you have to choose from 23 presets. That's far too many, and you tend to get lost. While there are plenty of online tutorials on how to use a third-party equalizer, I think this goes against the idea of a consumer Bluetooth headphones that's supposed to be ready to use right out of the box.

Incidentally, this bass imbalance becomes even worse when you disable Active Noise Cancellation. Be that as it may, the Soundcore Space One Pro's sound quality isn't bad. It's just unbalanced. I suspect most of you will have to spend some time to correct its audio signature.

Soundcore Space One Pro ANC

Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) has always been Soundcore's strong suit. The Soundcore Space One Pro's ANC is no exception. I also found the transparency mode very natural.

In manual mode, you can choose from five intensity levels for ANC. You can also leave it to the headphones to automatically adapt the intensity according to the surrounding sound environment.

I found the Soundcore Space One Pro cancelled all structure-borne noise very effectively. Airborne noises such as voices were also well attenuated, albeit less effectively. It's not the best ANC performer on the market but in the sub-$200 Bluetooth headphones segment, Soundcore is clearly at the top end.

I found the transparency mode very natural as well. There was no distortion nor hiss. However, it lacked power. Amplified ambient sounds, though faithful, were not loud enough for my preference.

A Comprehensive App

Soundcore has an Android and iOS app for setting up the Space One Pro. The app is very comprehensive with numerous features. There's plenty of control over Active Noise Cancellation and its audio signature.

I really liked the HearID Sound function. It allows you to perform several audio tests to customize the headphone's audio signature according to your hearing and preferences. You can also create your equalization profiles with the eight-band equalizer. It's nice to have such a degree of control.

The physical controls are not very customizable though. On the right earpiece, there are two volume buttons and a play/pause button. These buttons are not customizable at all. On the left earpiece, there's an on/off button and a button to activate ANC. Only the latter is customizable.

The Soundcore Space One Pro has no wear detection to pause music when the headphones is removed, but it does have an automatic sleep function. It is also nice to see multipoint connectivity supported.

The absence of Spotify Tap and Find My Device isn't a major flaw in my opinion. It is the kind of convenient feature I'd still have liked to have though, especially at this price point.

Battery life & Charging

The Soundcore Space One Pro has a pretty solid battery life on paper. The headphones claims to last 60 hours with ANC disabled. When ANC is enabled, battery life stands at 40 hours. Of course, I was unable to verify these figures.

We're a long way from the 90-hour battery life of the Audio-Technica ATH-S300BT (review). However, the Soundcore Space One Pro's claimed 60 hours places it at the very top tier.

However, the 60 hours of battery life are only possible with ANC and LDAC disabled. With ANC (and without LDAC), the figure rises to 40 hours. With LDAC and ANC enabled, the figure drops to 25 hours. Even then, the Soundcore Space One Pro is at least as long-lasting as a Bose Quietcomfort Headphones (review) or a much more expensive Apple AirPods Max.

Personally, I used the Soundcore Space One Pro within these parameters:

• 100% recharged
• No charging during my session
• ANC is always activated and set to maximum
• Transparency mode is always disabled
• 50% listening volume
• Paired to an Android smartphone
• AAC/SBC codec

I was able to achieve the advertised 40 hours under the conditions listed above.