For controls, the Life Q30 primarily rely on physical buttons located on the outer sections of both earcups. On the left cup you’ll find the power button along with the “NC” button, which cycles through the three sound modes on offer: normal, transparency and noise-cancelling. So I ended up testing the headphones for probably over about 50+ hours worth of use in total. Not because I wanted to test it for this long for this particular review, but because I just kept using it as my headphones for daily use. So you could say that this pair of headphones has become my ‘go-to’ headset outside of product reviewing. Who would have guessed? Bouncing around my music library it soon became obvious that the A10s shine in Pop, R&B and Dance rather than Jazz, Folk or Classical. It’s very much a case of being better at some genres rather than being bad at others, though. Coltrane’s “Love Supreme” still sounded good, as did Myrkur’s outstanding new album “Folkesange”. The Life Q30’s default sound profile is referred to as “Soundcore Signature” and is V-shaped with bass frequencies particularly prominent. Too prominent, in fact, and that’s coming from someone with a penchant for low-end punch. Bass is to the fore, although sometimes just a little woolly but there’s plenty of detail to be heard as long as the source is good.

Going into the more positive side, earpads use soft pleather with tight stitching that doesn’t seem cheap. Like with many affordable headphones, these too change their sound when you enable noise cancellation. Transparency mode is adequate, but can make your own voice sound a little raspy in your own ears, and whilst there is only a minor amount of static noise that wasn't enough to bother me, it may not be to everyone's liking. It handles mid-distance conversations well, but any further and it may struggle - if someone is shouting at you from the other side of the room, you'll probably hear it, but you may not be able to decipher every word. Onto the audio, and as you can see from the graph, OneOdio have gone with a very upper-mid-centric 'monitor-style' tuning which favours a clean, lean sound signature, giving prominence to female vocals and instruments with a very gentle and lightweight lower frequency response.Even the active noise cancellation, despite a noticeable hissing noise from the left channel, is decent enough for commuting and airplane travels. The only issue is with those chrome earcups: they show up greasy fingerprints badly and need constant cleaning.

Moreover, the imaging is also quite good but not pinpoint accurate. There are some blurry spots in between channels, but nothing that would ruin your listening experience. OneOdio A30 Frequency Response The default tuning is great, however, the occasional sibilance can be too much for more sensitive users.

Final Thoughts

Much like other OneOdio headphones, the A10 have a strong V-shaped signature with a lot of bass and emphasised treble. In terms of technicalities, they don’t fare too well: soundstage is very limited in width and especially in depth; imaging is poor, as there is no central position (it just sounds like left and right playing together, with no proper centre); instrument separation is quite limited by the signature. Though she is still writing for Android Authority, she went on to start writing for MakeUseOf, KOINO IT Solutions, and, of course, Review Geek.

You must manually switch between a laptop and a phone to answer a call. What Bluetooth Codecs Do They Use? Multipoint connectivity is always a bonus. I was able to connect to two simultaneous devices without any issue. Whilst I haven't tried the headphones out for any serious gaming, latency on videos is pretty much lip synchronised. On the flip side, there’s no mention of multi-point connection, so you can’t expect these to be connected to multiple devices such as a phone or laptop. Battery Life These headphones feature a mostly plastic build but with a metal headband, which gives them much more hope for longevity. They may be built out of plastic, but they don't look it, with a metallic look on much of the outside casing that fits nicely with the actual metal of the headband.The Soundcore Life Q30 are over-ear headphones capable of connecting to two devices simultaneously via Bluetooth 5.0 and support the two most widely used audio codecs, AAC and SBC. In addition to regular Bluetooth pairing, they offer NFC pairing by tapping your smartphone on the right earcup. ANC-capable earphones have also improved quite a bit in recent years. The greatest advantage of these models is their passive isolation; their eartips seal off your ear canal and effectively eliminate high frequencies even before you enable the ANC. All that said, the sound of these Focus A10s is good. The longer you use them, the more you should find the sound opening up, and getting better, as the drivers loosen up, but the sound is already subjectively good straight out of the box, no question. They’re comfortable enough for daily use, have good active noise cancelling performance, more than adequate battery capacity, and excellent microphone quality.