Soundcore by Anker Life Q30 Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling Headphones with Multiple Modes, Hi-Res Sound, Custom EQ via App, 40H

Let me preface this by saying that I bought these mainly for the noise cancelling, to use both to focus when working/watching media on my PC and to mitigate external sound when sleeping. I actually don’t really listen to music that often and can’t say much about the audio quality beyond “it’s acceptable”. I do have many things to say about the other two use cases though.When using it on the PC :As long as you plan to use it by BT you should be fine. I had some trouble getting it to connect at first but I blame that on my PC being old (Win 7), I made it work somehow by using a newer BT dongle, the fact that it somehow works at all on such an old setup is a plus to me, whether this was intentional or not. There’s two inconveniences though :1.- Even though you can connect by 3.5mm, the product listing doesn’t tell you anywhere that NC or EQ features are not supported during this mode. What’s worse, apparently the feature WAS supported a few years ago, but it got disabled by a firmware update somewhere down the line because of some bogus reason (the fact that more expensive models that came after this still support the feature is kinda fishy too). If you were an old user, this was a choice, whether you wanted to update or not, but new buyers will find that the product now ships with the latest firmware when you buy it, so you’re stuck with it. I wouldn’t blame you if you just assumed NC should work over 3.5mm, as it is a normally a standard feature in this price range, even worse, a lot of the reviews out there on the product are from the time when the feature was available, so people deciding to buy without doing research or based on old information are in for a bad surprise. As it is now, when you use 3.5mm the logic part of the headphones is completely turned off and only the speakers work, so you’re left with the regular unfiltered sound, and to put it frankly, the audio quality like this is terrible and not worth it, do not buy these if you plan to use 3.5mm at all, you’ll be sorely disappointed.2.- Speaking of NC and EQ, those features have several options that can be adjusted to your liking through a phone app. This is a good thing as the default config may not suit everybody’s use case, what’s not so good is tying these adjustments to a phone app only. Why do I have to switch over to my phone when I want to adjust a setting on the fly instead of being able to do it directly from my computer? What if something happens to my phone or the app stops working/gets pulled from the store sometime in the future? A PC app would have been a great alternative, and being able to modify some of the options just by using buttons would have been even better.When using as a sleep aid :This is gonna be a very picky and niche use case, but sometimes, I may be woken by unexpected noise in the middle of the night, at that point I like to be able to grab my NC headphones and put them on as soon as possible, without having to think too much about it or turn on the lights, to be able to go back to sleep. This product fails in that regard in several ways.First, the case that they ship with : The headphones only fit in when you fold them inwards a specific way, taking them out and unfolding them is a bit cumbersome and I wish they would have given you a bigger case in which the headphones fit normally without doing this. I think the idea is to make it so it takes less space when packing them or something, but the case is fairly big as it is, so if you want to save space you’re probably gonna take them out of it anyways. Should keep the folding ability but make the case itself bigger so you don’t need to store them folded.Turning on the thing is also unnecessarily complicated, the power button is same size and shape as every other button, and you have to hold it for 3 secs to turn it on, again, not the fastest or easiest thing to do in the dark. My generic brand headphones from similar price range but much older have a single slide toggle switch, it’s size and shape are different from the other buttons and turning it on just takes a flick, I would much have preferred something like that.Once the thing is actually on, turns out it will turn itself off after a few minutes if it’s not paired to anything. So if you want to just use the NC by itself, though luck, you better have your phone nearby with BT turned on so you can connect to it, even if you don’t play anything on it. Again, not the fastest thing to do when you’re on bed.Lastly, and this is a minor gripe, the device has an LED status light to indicate whether it’s ON, in pairing mode, etc. For some reason the thing is perpetually blinking regardless of state. I can understand for pairing mode, but why not just make it solid when it’s actually connected? If I take off the headphones and lie them around on my desk and forget about it, I can’t tell from a quick glance if they’re ON or OFF, I have to stare carefully for a few seconds to see if the blinking comes on and what color it is to know what’s going on. Annoying.”Better sleep” function :This is a feature of the app, it is not highlighted that often but a few reviews mention it, as one of the few people that could make use of it, I will give my thoughts on it : It’s basically a white noise machine, you have a few white noise loops to choose from and you can adjust the volume of each one individually so you can mix and match to your liking, so for example, you can have loud rain with faint sounds of birds in the background or vice versa. You can also set a timer for how long this will play for. It’s a handy feature but nothing exceptional, the stock noises are limited and may not be of everybody’s liking, the loops also feel kinda short. I find myself using mostly the rain only. If you’re into this, chances are you probably already have your own long white noise loops saved on your phone anyways, which would work just as well.Good things :Putting all that negativity aside, I do think the hardware itself is very good at this price range. The NC has 3 different settings and is worth trying them all out to see which one works better for your environment, it won’t silence everything a 100%, but it works much better than my previous cheapy headphones, and I doubt you can get much better NC at this price range. The headphones are comfortable and I have no problem sleeping with them or wearing them for hours. Is hard to tell how well the build will hold over time, but after a month of usage, nothing has broken yet. The battery is LONG and I only have to charge it once a week if anything. Although it’s not something I was even aware when I bought the product, turns out it has a built in mic and it’s surprisingly good quality, I have been able to do many long voice calls with it with no complains about the quality from the other party so far.Overall, despite the poor user experience and having to adapt to its many quirks, I do find this product useful and plan to keep using it in the future. I just hope when/if I upgrade sometime in the future, that the newer products on the line don’t suffer from the same usability problems.