SoundcoreP40i by Anker, Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds, Adaptive Noise Cancelling to Environments, Heavy Bass, 60H Playtime, 2-in-1 Case and Phone Stand, IPX5, Wireless Charging, Bluetooth 5.3ClimatePartner certified

I owned the Soundcore P3i's for a couple years prior to this, and after one finally got run over by a car and crushed, I decided to try these out. I have now had these for about a year, and am very happy with them.Negatives:- They don't stay in my ears as well as the P3i's (although that may just be me).- I put earbuds in my pockets loose often, and I'm always bumping the touch controls.- Sound out of the box is meh. Switching to the acoustic profile in the app made them sound great, though.- Passive noise cancelling is meh. That's also fine, though, as it is not advertised.Positives:- Comfortable.- Sound is GREAT for the price point once you go into the app.- Active noise cancelling works as expected.- Bluetooth range is good. They only start cutting out if I walk all the way across the house.- Call quality is good.- Battery life is good. I usually have one in at a time, but even with both, they've never died on me inconveniently.- Definitely water-resistant! I have accidentally dropped them in water and gotten rained on many times.- Durable!The last point is the reason I'm leaving this review. Last night, I accidentally dropped one in hot pork fat while I was cooking. I thought that was definitely the end of these earbuds, so I just washed it with soap and water and prayed. I let it dry overnight, and I just tried it out--it still works! How!? It's maybe ever so slightly quieter than the other one, but the sound quality is unaffected. I'm going to leave it out for a bit longer and check on it again tomorrow.I'm not mad about having spent $50 on these, but if you can get them on sale, they're definitely worth the money.

I got these as a lower-cost replacement for the 1st generation AirPods Pro that I had used for a few years (before one of the pods finally met its unfortunate demise), and I’d say they’re just about as good all-around as those were. The fact that these are a quarter of the price of the AirPods Pro is certainly astounding, and I’m legitimately very impressed. I have always thought highly of Anker/Soundcore’s products, but I bought these for $36 (on sale) and certainly did not expect them to be THIS good LOLSound quality: While the sound quality is not quite as good as the AirPods Pro, I found the smart EQ feature on the Soundcore app to be EXTREMELY helpful in getting the p40i earbuds to sound much better. The noise-cancellation of these p40i is also comparable to that of the AirPods Pro 1st gen in my opinion, given that you fit them properly into your ears (and I’m often in a noisy environment). I am happy with the way these sound; I own an expensive pair of over-the-ear headphones and I am generally picky about sound. When I do wear earBUDS though, I am not super super picky, and I just want something that can (1) be easily connected to my device (2) have long battery life (3) be durable, water-resistant. Basically, for earbuds, I’m looking for a workhorse, and these do the job while sounding excellent for the price!Battery life and Durability: I wear these earbuds A LOT (I can hear street noise inside my house at all hours, and wearing earbuds helps me to focus); while walking, exercising, cleaning, cooking, and also while showering (when I am not submerging my head in water of course), and the p40i have been perfect for all of those! The battery life is incredible, even after months of daily use- the battery life of the p40i is definitely better than that of the 1st gen AP Pros (which struggled to maintain even 2 hrs use even when fully charged after 2 yrs). They are definitely water-resistant and durable as well, having survived multiple instances of light water exposure and multiple drops. I have not kept the case in any sort of protector, and there are essentially no visible scratches on the exterior (again, this is another category in which the p40i offers better performance in my opinion than Apple’s airpods).Connectivity + conclusion: I used to think only Apple products could connect so seamlessly to my iPhone (which is a major selling point of Apple’s Airpods), but these p40i changing my mind! 98% of the time, I am connecting these to my iPhone 14. Connection is seamless, and I have only had to fully re-pair my phone and the p40i once in 5 months of ownership (pairing is also incredibly easy). Also, I have a Dell laptop and a Surface Pro (Windows OS), and the connectivity between my computers and the p40i is a much nicer experience than that of my computers and the Apple AirPods.Conclusion: Honestly, I will not be buying any AirPods device again because of the experience I have had with the p40i- although Airpods work great and are nice, I’ve accepted that earbuds in general just won’t last forever with daily use, so it doesn’t make sense to spend over $100 on them. In 2-3 years when I’m ready for new earbuds, I will likely buy one of Soundcore’s more expensive models as I am truly impressed with the overall quality of these budget-friendly p40i earbuds!

I bought these specifically for making hands-free calls when driving. My older car is not very quiet, especially when I'm going over 40mph. My Plantronics (bought by Polycom which changed their name to Poly which got bought by HP, I believe) Voyager Legend was the last bluetooth headset that actually did this well. Unfortunately, after Plantronics was bought, even buying the old Voyager Legend directly from the company yielded lower reliability/longevity. So, I sought out a new option for making calls, especially in my car.These earbuds worked pretty well. Most people could understand me when I was driving at speed (45+mph), but my Dad couldn't until I slowed to 25mph or less. That's significant to me, so I'm going to return them. But, it is worth mentioning that these earbuds' microphone noise cancellation did work better than my *1.5 yr old* Plantronics Voyager Legend headset (its quality failed after 1-1.5yrs). Also, the microphone noise cancellation worked WAY better than my Bose QuietComfort earbuds (which sound great and cancel noise wonderfully for listening, but do nothing for the microphone quality) ever did. My Skullcandy ANC earbuds worked a little better than the Bose QuietComfort2 earbuds, but that's not saying much.Also, total lack of any mute ability from the headset is a huge miss, in my opinion. The single button's functions are easily programmable (through the app) for single-/double-/triple-/long-press for listening to media, but the functions are hardcoded for calls. And, regardless, the mute functionality was nowhere to be found. I found it difficult to avoid contacting the touch button, accidentally, when pushing the earbuds back in or putting them in my ears. Thankfully, the single-press does nothing, by default, so it never caused any issues.Otherwise, I really need to give a nod to the app quality. Soundcore/Anker is a Chinese company, so my expectation of the usability was low. However, the app actually works remarkably well and is very intuitive and usable compared to other headset vendors' apps (Poly, Bose, and Skullcandy)! I was most impressed with the ability to connect to 2 devices at a time. I often connected to my cell phone and my work laptop. When I wanted to switch to my phone and my personal laptop, I simply told the app that I wanted to add another device and it was crazy easy! I can easily select in the app which 1 or 2 devices I wanted to be connected to. It takes a fraction of a second to open the audio channel for either device so I would miss the first half or so of a notification sound (e.g. a ding), but calls and listening to media was *super* reliable since the audio channel stays open. This is a huge improvement over my Plantronics Voyager Legend which was very unreliable when connecting to multiple devices, and sometimes failed to even stay connected to a single device.These Soundcore earbuds were very slightly uncomfortable to wear and tended to fall out of my ears, several times, when walking. I could wear them for a few hours, but really noticed the discomfort after an hour or so. I only owned them for a week or so, but they fell out of my ears multiple times when walking. I did try one step larger earbuds in an effort to secure them in my head, but they were uncomfortable and apparently the medium earbuds were closer to the right size. There's a slight possibility that the small ones would go into my ear better, but that isn't the main issue, so they're still getting returned as soon as I have a few minutes to spare at home.Sound quality was pretty good and I enjoyed listening to videos and music through them. Especially considering the price, I would say these delivered very well in this area. They do pretty well at cancelling surrounding noises for my listening benefit. I can select "Noise Cancellation", "Normal", or "Transparency Mode" via the app. My coworkers don't entirely disappear in "Noise Cancellation" mode like they do with my Bose QuietComfort earbuds, but for less than 1/3 the price, I would say that's not a fair comparison. They did work very well when my coworkers were getting noisy/chatty in an open office atmosphere. Most of my coworkers seemed to disappear and the really noisy ones were much quieter. I was able to play soft music to drown out the noisiest ones.All in all, I'm going to buy the Poly (Plantronics) Voyager Legend, again, and hopefully I'll get another year or so out of it and hopefully, by then, there will be a better option on the market (maybe the Voyager Legend 50 by then?). Based on the past 3 Voyager Legend headsets that I've bought, I expect comfort to last for a few hours and call quality to be great, as long as I can stay connected to my phone before and during the call. 🫤Would I recommend these earbuds? Yes for listening and noise cancellation while listening, and probably for calls, unless you need superb call quality in a relatively noisy environment. My car isn't horribly loud (maybe it's louder than I think?) but it's enough to frustrate the person I'm talking to when the noise got louder. Most people I talked to were fine with it, even when I was driving faster (55mph), but if I can't talk to my Dad, then these missed the mark.