2022 has been a HUGE year for ANC Headphones. 1More has now entered the chat with the 1More SonoFlow – their FIRST EVER Bluetooth ANC headphones. It has everything on paper to beat the SoundCores and the Sonys! And stay till the end for the one killer feature we haven’t seen so far!
All right – we’re in an embargo period with 1More and we cannot do a review-review of these headphones yet, so this is a first-impressions video DHRME Style. Let’s start with what you get in the box. It’s a fairly standard unboxing experience – you get the case, headphones – duh, and some paperwork. The USB type C cable and a 3.5 to 2.5mm audio cable – with a little pouchy thingy to keep them safe. And there are no airplane adapters in the box. Because we don’t adapt to airplanes. Airplanes gotta start adapting to us.
With that out of the way, we have 10 important things to go through here.
1. Build: That case you get in the box is very much inspired by a well known set of headphones on the channel. Sony retired that case style on their newest XM5. But 1More saw that as an invitation to take over. But you know what. We like it! It’s a hard case that’ll protect the goods with an inlay mould for the right and left earcup so you can reduce your headphones-to-case lead time. The headphones do fold up – a rare sight these days.
2. Design: The SonoFlow is primarily a plastic build with some faux leather on the earpads and the headband. The headband has the 1More logo on it which looks cool. But the 1MORE text is very loud on each side of the headband. Unfortunately they only come in one colour for now. But since that color’s black, that’s something we can live with.
3. Input: Once you power them on, you’re greeted with some very dramatic sounds. Almost as if you’re watching the trailers at the movies. Then the headphones are controlled by your fingers. Nothing new there. AI just isn’t as far as we’d like. So the right earcup has all your controls in terms of buttons, no touching a surface. Unless that surface is… buttons. The button placement is a bit unique – all the buttons are on the right earcup. One to toggle noise cancelling, a separate volume up and down and a power button which doubles as a play-pause answer-hangup button.
4. Battery: The battery life numbers have been steadily going up on ANC headphones this year with the Sennheiser Momentum 4 and the SoundCore Q45 hitting crazy numbers. The 1More SonoFlow also manages to promise a ridiculous 50 hours with ANC on and 70 hours with ANC off. That is flagship territory, actually beyond flagship – it’s industry leading. The headphones take 80 minutes to charge from 0 to full, but give you 5 hours of playtime with about 5 minutes of charge. Very good numbers on paper.
5. Comfort: We’ve been using these cans for a while especially for many hours of Teams calls and so far the comfort has been great. They feel light, the earpads are soft and no weird pressure around the crown. The cups are more oval and less round, so depending on your ear shape the comfort may differ.
6. Sound: When it comes to sound, you’re getting LDAC for maximum resolution on supported devices. With the Hi-res audio branding 🙄 There’s a 40mm dynamic driver featuring a diamond-like-carbon composite diaphragm and soft TPU film – come on guys, diamonds – girl’s best friend – they last forever! These don’t have SoundID, but also don’t have customisable EQs. There’s a bunch of EQ presets in the app BUT NO ROCK OR METAL – COME ON HOW ABOUT 1MORE! HERE is a quick first impressions of the headphones.
7. Calls/Mics: Now we haven’t put the microphones through their paces in all conditions – but we’ve been exclusively using these for a while and in relatively quiet conditions… well it’s looking good. 1More says it has 5 mics and an AI algorithm and beam forming microphones, but big words don’t impress us, so we’ll be popping and testing these in the full review. HERE is a little sneak peak.
8. ANC: These have a QuietMax AI thingy which is – why do companies brand everything – it’s got noise cancelling – we get it. Noise cancelling so far – without A/B testing with other headphones – is pretty decent. Same with transparency. But you know we gotta get down and dirty with it for the full review. So stay subscribed – we’re gonna bring you all the tests your hearts desire.
9. Multipoint: 2022 has seen the mainstreaming of the Bluetooth multipoint feature. Connecting to two devices simultaneously is something you can get in very cheap wireless earbuds as well. And so 1More kicks off its debut with multipoint on board. The kicker here is you can have multipoint enabled at the same time as LDAC – which is still not a common feature. It’s still listed under experimental, but in our testing you know… it’s working. Quite well! But none of these so far is the killer feature.
10. Killer feature: The one killer feature of the 1More SonoFlow is… the price! These cost just $99. $99 guys! Even the 1More Evo is more expensive! In which world are earbuds more expensive than headphones? If 1More puts its money where its mouth is – these might just change the game. We will of course test all the features, sound and ANC – so stay tuned for our full review. And not just that – these are $20 off at launch. What!! But… not so fast… we’re still in the embargo phase and even though we know if you should buy it or not 😉 we can’t reveal 1More thing about these headphones.
So we can’t wait to put these headphones through its paces and test, test the sound, ANC, microphones and comfort. Are you guys excited? Anything you’d like to know specifically about them? Let us know in the comments or on our Discord server.
To check out our full review of another amazing low price headphones click HERE and to check out our review of 1More’s Evo earbuds, click HERE.
You’ve been Sonoconfused and we’ve been DHRME. Namaste!