Anker Soundcore Space One Pro

As we've noted on several occasions, Anker does surprisingly much more than produce a decent USB-C cable or the best power banks on the market. It's a surprisingly broad organisation consisting of several sub-brands, and we've actually briefly encountered one of these, Soundcore, before.

The Soundcore Motion X600 was a rather nice little Bluetooth speaker with a surprising amount of power, and if that tickled your fancy, they've now also launched a relatively expensive and surprisingly competitive over-ear headset called Soundcore Space One Pro, and although it's a lot cheaper than an AirPods Max, Sony WH-1000XM5 or similar, Anker is still trying to compete directly against the big boys.

So what is Soundcore Space One Pro? As mentioned above, it's an over-ear headset for around £150. There is a strong focus on foldability, an aspect that has been almost lost through the AirPods Max and Sonos Ace in particular - but the Space One Pro can be folded, and thanks to a lightweight and flexible build, there is absolutely no danger of it breaking.

It looks a bit anonymous, bordering on boring, and there's a real lack of distinctive design features here to make it stand out. A wider range of stronger colours, different materials or just a more premium build would have been preferable, but Anker is extremely conservative here, and it doesn't work in a crowded market like this.

Fortunately, there's much better news inside; the Space One Pro utilises 40mm drivers with triple diaphragms, and that means there's room and tuning to ensure LDAC high-res codecs. In addition, there's a host of microphones that give you noise cancellation in as many as four levels. It sounds pretty good, you have to hand it to Anker, and the sound achieves both an inherent balance and a punch we normally associate with JBL, for example. No, it's not the most finely tuned sound experience I've had, but this is where Anker excels.

With ANC switched on, you can expect 40 hours of battery life, which is really nothing to sneeze at either. No, it doesn't make the Space One Pro a champ, but it's perfectly serviceable, and again it's worth mentioning that the headset's main competitors cost quite a bit more.

The main problem is again some kind of distinctive quality, and then of course there's the fact that Anker sells you this headset without a hardshell, a bag with a frame that allows you to protect it in the bag. You don't get that, you have to make do with a bag, and that's no good for £150.

Space One Pro is cheap, but you can get the slightly outdated Sony WH-1000XM4 for the same price. No, it's nothing like new, but you get balanced sound, better noise cancellation and maybe even better comfort for the same price. That's not to say that Anker is missing the mark here, because that's not the case at all, but it does mean that the Space One Pro places itself awkwardly in the middle, where it's neither a flagship nor a flagship killer.